Overclocking Radeon 9600?

[Durinthiam]

I've got ATI Tools sitting on my desktop in my secondary machine wondering wether I should bother overclocking my Radeon 9600 128mb AGP card, its sitting in my secondary now because i've got a 6800 GT on the way for my main rig. Just wondering if anyone has overclocked a 9600 and what settings you now have it on? I would drop my foot into the pool and try it out straight off but im relativly new to overclocking and after forking out the cash for the 6800GT I dont want to fry the secondary card

[Rave]

OCing video cards is very safe as long as you're careful about it. There's always some risk to overclocking, but the risk of damaging the card is low and you could probably replace it for <£40 anyway.

Just start out by raising the core speed 5-10MHz at a time, then running a 3D app to test for artifacts- I tend to use the first game test of 3Dmark01 just for convenience. When you see noticeable errors on screen (like jagged lines that shouldn't be there) back off the core speed to the last stable setting. Then do the same thing with the memory frequency- memory errors tend to look like coloured sparkly dots all over the screen. With a 9600 you will probably be able to overclock the core further than the memory.

Once it's overclocked, depending on how good the card's cooling is, you may find that it starts to artifact after a few minutes of gaming as the core overheats. In that case just back off the core speed a bit more, or get a better cooler for the card.

As an aside, if the computer is on for long periods while the graphics card isn't being used, you can save electricity and reduce temperatures in your case by underclocking the card. When I'm not gaming my 9500 runs at 135MHz core and 250MHz memory (any lower on the memory causes corruption for some reason). Then before I start a game I just whack it back up to full speed.

[Zak33]

on a 9600 I'd try the memory first.....that card is restricted by bandwidth more than core clock. Core clock is 400 if I remember.

Try one thing at a time, and be PATIENT

dont presume its solid after 5 minutes..

memory bandwidth would be good

[Durinthiam]

Cheers, much appreciated. I had never thought to underclock it when not gaming actually