Help Me Overclock my Radeon!?

[Impulse4life]

Well heres what I have:

Its a ATI Radeon 9600SE running stock at:
Core: 324.00MHZ
Mem: 195.75

Ever since my upsetting benchmark on 3DMark01 of 6350 I have wanted to get this thing running faster then that! I am very new to this but have some knowledge on what to do.

My first question is would Rage3D Tweak v3.9b be your guys program of choice to do this?

My second question about why (after installing the newest Catalyst Drivers) it shows up in the device manager as the following:

Radeon 9600 Series
Radeon 9600 Series - Secondary

I was thinking that this may cause a problem because after running WIYP.exe from the Rage3D folder it says there are more then one video card installed. Could someone please help me if at all possible. I would appreciate as much help as I could get right about now!! (Especially a walk-thru )

 

[Sazar]

most new cards have dual ramdacs... this allows them to operate each display output (one analog.. one digital) almost like 2 separate entities and provides better performance and IQ...

that is why you get the primary and secondary displays it is perfectly normal...

there are a few apps you can use to test the card @ various speeds....

if you dl the Omega 4.1 drivers ( we should have a link on the front page) you can download the overclocking tool that comes with it and use that to drive your clocks higher...

everyone has different results with overclocking so don't expect the moon but there is a handy little tool to test your card.. every time you bump up your core/memory clocks... do the artifact test burn-in using the tool that you are provided... try not going more than a 5mhz increments to start with and if you see artifacting go back down and go up in 1mhz increments...

this is just coz you are new to overclocking.. once you have more experience and knowhow about the product @ hand you can try out various other devices

overclocking itself with omega's add on tools is simple... just move the slider and click SET and there you go... make sure to test it though to make sure...

if you see any artifacting this is due to heat and you need to go to a lower temperature...

further check your control panel and more all directX and openGL sliders to PERFORMANCE... your score indicates that you have left it @ the default level (in the middle) and this means you have anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on... both of these things affect frame-rates and therefore your score...

once you have achieved an appropriate score (to your liking) post it in the BENCHMARK section in the appropriate thread.... we have threads for all the major benchmarks

btw... disclaimer

I am just giving you an idea of how to OC.. whatever you do is @ your own risk... everyone gets different mileage on their cards and you should not expect your product to perform @ the same level as someone else's card... enjoy and welcome to the boards...

 

[Taurus]

if you dl the Omega 4.1 drivers ( we should have a link on the front page) you can download the overclocking tool that comes with it and use that to drive your clocks higher...

i feel like such a newb. but i really am when it comes to ati. where is the built-in overclocking? i have 4.1.

 

[Xie]

i feel like such a newb. but i really am when it comes to ati. where is the built-in overclocking? i have 4.1.

I think in the ATI drivers its the "overdrive" feature thats only for the "XT" cards ... as for the omega drivers I haven't used them With the Rage3D tweak it shows an "overclock" tab right along w/ the rest of them.

 

[Sazar]

i feel like such a newb. but i really am when it comes to ati. where is the built-in overclocking? i have 4.1.

its part of the OMEGA suite and you have to dl it as a separate part..

its called 3dprof and allows you to play with various settings...

what card are you running right now?

if its the 9800XT you have built in overdrive like Xie said... you just have to turn it on and it automatically adjusts to a higher clock level if the temperatures are below a certain threshold...

 

[Taurus]

duh... omega.

 

[joko_xp]

Have you tried?
ATI Tool http://atitool.ocfaq.com/
RadClocker http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/
and dont expect anything more from that 64bit card it's slower than
a fx5200 ultra

 

[Sazar]

EP/myself and Xie were just doing some tests on atitool

my max oc's per the tool are 380.5 and 360.x (x stands for a number I can't remember ) for core mem...

seems decent enough... I spose when I mod myself some ramsinks next week I can perhaps oc to around 370/350 or so standard 24/7

 

[Black-Syth]

Personally, I use Powerstrip to overclock.

Powerstrip is basically fail-safe, if something ****s up, it restarts your PC and downclocks your card to the factory settings. Also, it's free. Can't lose.

 

[joko_xp]

dont remember pstrip was free?

 

[Black-Syth]

dont remember pstrip was free?

Yep.

 

[Impulse4life]

Have you tried?
ATI Tool http://atitool.ocfaq.com/
RadClocker http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/
and dont expect anything more from that 64bit card it's slower than
a fx5200 ultra

Actually its a 128DDR Card not, 64 megs. And I have tryed RadClocker but not the other one. Thanks for all your help everyone

 

[Impulse4life]

Okay heres the problem Im having.
No matter what overclocking tool/program I use, the values that I set for both the core & memory will ALWAYS reset themself back to the default values. Does anyone have any idea whats happening here?

 

[Xie]

Okay heres the problem Im having.
No matter what overclocking tool/program I use, the values that I set for both the core & memory will ALWAYS reset themself back to the default values. Does anyone have any idea whats happening here?

yes unless you have have an XT card ATI drivers will reset your card to defualt clock speeds ... you'll need a hacked for oc'ing set. That "atitool" program has a link in it telling about this issue (well it pop'd up for my 9600pro anyways).

 

[Black-Syth]

^ He's got the idea.

Okay heres the problem Im having.
No matter what overclocking tool/program I use, the values that I set for both the core & memory will ALWAYS reset themself back to the default values. Does anyone have any idea whats happening here?

Yeah, you're not using Powerstrip.

 

[Taurus]

these omega drivers aren't doing me any good so far. the menu in battlefield (only game i've played since reformatting) is corrupt to where the bottom 20% and right 10% is off the screen. in game seems okay, though.

also, the "3dprof" app that comes with it... is that the main overclocking tool? the slider bars only go to 350, which ends up actually underclocking my gpu. not to mention the interface seems to made for the one guy who made the program and no one else. it's so confusing and UNintuitive.

think i'll go back to the cats and try powerstrip.

 

[pap]

Actually its a 128DDR Card not, 64 megs. And I have tryed RadClocker but not the other one. Thanks for all your help everyone

your card is a 64-bit memory interface with 128 mb of ram and your lucky you got that score with that card because it's not much. i had an 9600se for 1 day and brought it back to get the 9600XT which blows the 9600se away! for $70 i got more than twice the card in my opinion. the 9600se would not even out perform my old geforce3 ti 200. i did try all 3 cards on my setup and here are the results from COD with no overclocking at all.

Call of Duty frames per sec.

geforce3 ti 200 35-45fps
ATI 9600SE 30-40fps
ATI 9600XT 60-70fps
ATI 9600XT 75-90fps O/C 556/646

 

[pap]

to clarify i spent $70 more for the XT that the SE and the 9600, 9600PRO, 9600XT are 128 bit memory interface which is much faster

 

[Taurus]

*points to

*

 

[Sazar]

to clarify i spent $70 more for the XT that the SE and the 9600, 9600PRO, 9600XT are 128 bit memory interface which is much faster

128bit memory interface is not faster.. it just allows more bandwidth availability... which allows more data to be worked on @ the same time...

the reason the SE is slower is the memory/core is slower... much slower than the XT's AND the memory bandwidth is more limited...