Overclocking 9700 Pro

[MurphmanL]

When the time is right, I might think about overclocking my lovely 9700 Pro.
As I have a VGA Silenced cooler strapped on im looking forward to some serious numbers out of th4 card.
I hear from different sources I can reach 9800 Pro speeds or over if I'm lucky, question is what software do I use to achieve such a task?
As I'm new to overclocking, i must NOT bust the card, as the only backup is ym GF 2 Mx 400, which now when inserted does not boot with the system.
So how does one overclock?
I might and that is might, get a 6800 Ultra for christmas, if i can be arsed to pay for 1, and if i decide not to get a new tv.

[Rave]

You can use various programs to overclock video cards- I use Powerstrip, but I believe that Rivatuner, Radclocker etc. will also be suitable. As for killing the card, it isn't easy; As long as your Arctic Cooler is installed properly you'll get either visible artifacts or crashes long before you're in danger of actually cooking the card. Just go slowly, increase the clock speed by 5-10MHz at a time, and memory by 5MHz a time.

Rich :¬)

[Platinum]

As rave said, up the speeds a little and see what happens, back it down a little when you get artifacting, Looping 3dmark is a good easy test to run to stress the newly clocked card.
I had a 9700 PRO @ 400 Core with stock cooling before

[funnelhead]

The omega drivers are very popular: tweaked for improved image quality and speed, tey also have built in overclocknig and artifact tester. They are officially recoginised by ATI.

http://www.omegadrivers.net/



In 3dmark 2003 look for texture corruption on the bodies of the space soldiers, the hair of the woman, the rocks in nature. Also look for sparklies ( white dots) on the walls in the trolls lair. You will probably have to run the test 2/3 times before you can asses whether the card is stable.

And remember that once you find the limit of the card, clock back 10mhz and leave it at that. in a month try putting it up a little further. My card originally got artifacts at 330mhz (ita a non-pro) but after 2 months at 325 it would go uo to 350. Now its up to 375 / 340

hope this helps

f

note :

texture corruption ie textures going funny shapes and colours usually = core too high.

sparklies ie little white dots going crazy = mem too high

[hwAnalyst]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned ATITool. It is a very useful overclocking utility which OCs the card with just a few MHz increments automatically. It keeps increasing the clock speeds until it detects artifacts on a 3d 'fluffy' cube.

this means that you no longer need to sit there and do the labour yourself, you just leave it running and it will overlclock your card for you - safely.

[jakeshaw123]

mine didnt work

[ERU]

I'd vote for Rivatuner

[Proplus]

Tried all the other OCing appz available, but always came back to using RivaTuner, so much better than the others IMO. Plus I used Rivatuner to softmod my GF4 Ti4200 into a Quadro a while back.....

[Shogun]

Tried all the other OCing appz available, but always came back to using RivaTuner, so much better than the others IMO. Plus I used Rivatuner to softmod my GF4 Ti4200 into a Quadro a while back.....

Going a bit OT here but did modding it to a quadro actually increase performance at all?

[Proplus]

It was my missus rendering work, and she said there was a 'slight' increase in performance....not that I noticed anything!

[SilentDeath]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned ATITool. It is a very useful overclocking utility which OCs the card with just a few MHz increments automatically. It keeps increasing the clock speeds until it detects artifacts on a 3d 'fluffy' cube.

this means that you no longer need to sit there and do the labour yourself, you just leave it running and it will overlclock your card for you - safely.

Its got bugs. The auto find is pathetic, in that it goes to far, then has to drop speeds to make up for it. It doesnt push the card enough so you wont get a decent value for overclocking with.

With 9700's and all other cards, temp is important. If the back of the card is above 50c then its not going to clock well.

Stock voltage a 9700np/pro should easly beat 400mhz on core. 1.7v should get it all the way to 450, depending on how good your card is. Upping it to 1.7 is entierly safe, its what the 9800 use which is almost exactly the same card. The heatspreader at the back should be cooled with a small heatsink resting on it.

Mem speed depends a lot on what chips you get, I was unlucky - with samsung chips expect 350+ on mem.