x800 pro with ati silencer 4

[redbird]

can someone give me advice on oc my x800 pro with the ati silencer 4
as i am new to oc graphics cards

[Stewart]

Advice? Well, firstly, double check everything, make sure the silencer is on correctly, make sure the thermal comp is applied correctly. Once sure, go and download a copy of Power Strip and 3DMark2003.

Now, take your stock core and mem clocks, and raise them by 10mhz each, using the simple PowerStrip interface.

Run 3DMark2003, watch it, look for any tearing, any slight problems at all with the display. Then, if you are happy, raise again by another 10mhz, core and mem.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

At some stage, you will reach the limit on the core or mem, and 3DMark will either exit, or there will be tearing during the tests. Watch the Ragtroll in paticular, this is a good indicater that you've gone too far.

Now, thats your limit. Ease off, by at least 10mhz on the clocks, so the card is not running on the very edge of its limit 24 hours a day.

And Roberts your Fathers Brother. (Now loop 3DMark2003 overnight to make sure)

[Zak33]

and make sure your case has fresh air zooming about inside...cos if the cooler IS working, it will disipate the heat from the card to the case air...and may POSSIBLY make the rest of your system less stable.

[Stewart]

True. All overclocks = more heat. So you want intake, exhaust and general cooling case fans, good cable managment, and all that boring stuff sorted, before you start overclocking £300 GPUs.

Get the dull stuff done first. Better safe than sorry.

Always feel free to ask for help here though matey, Hexus is very newbie friendly, and the Mods team is here to help.

[pre]

Would suggest ATiTool for "safe" ATi card overclocking for a beginner. Will detect artifacts that the eye couldnt possibly see (usually) and will give you a better idea of 24/7 limits.

[SilentDeath]

Now, do you want to overclock properly, or like that?
Everyone has there preffered ways of doing things, I think this is a better way myself:

First, no overclock is complete without a vmod, I suggest you get the required parts and do some practice, or get someone skilled to do it... Or if your lazy, leave it as is.
If done properly, there is no risk to your card, just like theres no risk with a mild voltage increase to your cpu. This should give a more than noticable increase, like with my 9700 from 390mhz @ 1.5v, to ~500mhz @ 1.7v.

important:
Next, you need to closly monitor the heat produced by the gpu - wheather volt modded or not. The cooler you are using, if mounted properly has a c/w rating of around 0.5c/w. Not great (but better than the stock cooler fo around 0.9c/w).
Note that a thermalright SLK800 with a resonable fan has a c/w of around 0.22c/w - just for the sake of example.
That means for each watt of power consumed by the gpu, the temp will go up 0.5°c.

Now for me, I like to keep overclocked items below 50°c, whether they are volt modded or not. Generaly, most people find 50-60°c to feel very hot, you shouldnt be able to keep your finger on it indefinatly if its that hot. The finger-to-back-of-gpu test, works well here.

Doing as said above, extra fans etc.. is usefull upto a certain point. I define that point as being one or two extracting fans by the cpu and an inlet fan at the front of the case. Fans in side panels help too... but dont bother if you havent got one...

Past that its just luck. It rarely helps so dont bother, just get a decent cooler (like the one you have.. most people would call it decent - although I wouldnt) and make sure it behaves as it should.

important
I have found powerstrip has very BAD support for 9x00 cards. Im assuming the same for all ati cards. I recommend using radlinker or atitool for overclocking.

Also ATItool doesnt put nearly as much load on the gfx as other bench marks do. Often resulting in the card not heating up as much as it usually would, and giving unrealistic max speeds, so I recommend using the normal way of overclocking.

[pre]

You know you can set ATitool to run for x amount of time without error if you dont think it gets hot enough.

My 9800XT got to a core limit of ~428 after setting it to find 1hr of error free operation reaching stable 61/62 temp. Looping 03 nature it only got to 59/60 and was "visually" artifact free above 435.

If you're only going to run ATitool for a brief period its pretty obvious you wouldnt find a stable max temp.

[Richdog]

Now, do you want to overclock properly, or like that?
Everyone has there preffered ways of doing things, I think this is a better way myself:

First, no overclock is complete without a vmod, I suggest you get the required parts and do some practice, or get someone skilled to do it... Or if your lazy, leave it as is.
If done properly, there is no risk to your card, just like theres no risk with a mild voltage increase to your cpu. This should give a more than noticable increase, like with my 9700 from 390mhz @ 1.5v, to ~500mhz @ 1.7v.

important:
Next, you need to closly monitor the heat produced by the gpu - wheather volt modded or not. The cooler you are using, if mounted properly has a c/w rating of around 0.5c/w. Not great (but better than the stock cooler fo around 0.9c/w).
Note that a thermalright SLK800 with a resonable fan has a c/w of around 0.22c/w - just for the sake of example.
That means for each watt of power consumed by the gpu, the temp will go up 0.5°c.

Now for me, I like to keep overclocked items below 50°c, whether they are volt modded or not. Generaly, most people find 50-60°c to feel very hot, you shouldnt be able to keep your finger on it indefinatly if its that hot. The finger-to-back-of-gpu test, works well here.

lol the guy says he's a complete n00b to graphics card overclocking and you suggest a Vmod and then start throwing thermal properties at him, priceless.

[Stewart]

lol the guy says he's a complete n00b to graphics card overclocking and you suggest a Vmod and then start throwing thermal properties at him, priceless.

Indeed.

Also, not sure where you get that stuff about PowerStrip being bad or having bad support for 9x00 cards, it was perfect for my 9800pro before and after I flashed it to an XT, and I'm still using it for my X800XT-PE. Nowt wrong with it in my eyes.

Easy to use as well, which should help Redbird out.

Good luck Redbird.

[SilentDeath]

lol the guy says he's a complete n00b to graphics card overclocking and you suggest a Vmod and then start throwing thermal properties at him, priceless.

I assumed he has o/c before, cpu or whatever... anyway any good guide on overclocking includes volt modding, even if its through the bios... its not hard to do anyway.. the only risky bit is soldering, which is not hard if you practice for a bit first, or get someone good to do it..
Always a good idea to overclock it normally first though...

Indeed.

Also, not sure where you get that stuff about PowerStrip being bad or having bad support for 9x00 cards, it was perfect for my 9800pro before and after I flashed it to an XT, and I'm still using it for my X800XT-PE. Nowt wrong with it in my eyes.

Easy to use as well, which should help Redbird out.

Good luck Redbird.

Hmm lets see...
I installed powerstrip for its monitor timing options - so I can run my ps one lcd.
However once I accidently clicked on the gpu overclockign tab, default speeds.
Guess what it though my 9700 defualt speeds were? no not 275/275, but instead 50/50!!!

As you should know, memory will corrupt if it goes too low, this resulted in instant screen corruption and the need to restart pc.

However powerstip was set to auto start, and applyed those clocks again, at next boot.

I had to use safe mode to stop it autoloading, then edit the config to get it to stop when the program started - I couldnt lose my timings for the lcd, took me ages to find them.

That was a recent version of powerstrip too, maybe a month or two old - only the latest version (at the time) would let me play with monitor timings.
Ive had plenty of other problems with powerstrip. I hate it, in its entirity - the only usefull thing it offers which is unique is monitor timing options, which I find are still not that well done - the UI mainly.
Several times though no fault of my own it has set 720*576 @ 25hz on my primary monitor, even though they are only on the secondary monitor page, which I was in at the times it set it...

I dont see whats wrong with radlinker (esp as it comes with the omega drivers, which he should be using anyway [unless he plays doom3, for which he should use the off. cat 4.9betas]), or rage3d tweak. Both are great alternatives - rage3d for those needing to tweak gfx settings a lot or radlinker for just o.cing.
I have all three installed, I only use radlinker for clocking, but the others are there If I want them.
Also theres atitool, which again, much mroe usefull than powerstrip for o/c.

[Stewart]

Hmm lets see...
I installed powerstrip for its monitor timing options - so I can run my ps one lcd.
However once I accidently clicked on the gpu overclockign tab, default speeds.
Guess what it though my 9700 defualt speeds were? no not 275/275, but instead 50/50!!!

As you should know, memory will corrupt if it goes too low, this resulted in instant screen corruption and the need to restart pc.

However powerstip was set to auto start, and applyed those clocks again, at next boot.

I had to use safe mode to stop it autoloading, then edit the config to get it to stop when the program started - I couldnt lose my timings for the lcd, took me ages to find them.

That was a recent version of powerstrip too, maybe a month or two old - only the latest version (at the time) would let me play with monitor timings.

Bad luck. That didn't happen to me, I've had nothing but a simple to use, reliable, quality overclocking prog. PowerStrip has been top for me. I reccomend it to anyone looking for a easy to use OC tool.

Anyway, I don't think anyone has said there is anything wrong with RadLinker, have they?

[SilentDeath]

Only the installer, imcompatable with win98se without an installer update - as I found out yesterday , but apart from that its great.

I just really hate ps, its caused me a lot of frustration.. it probably behaves for most people though...