x800xl clock speeds

[dclowd9901]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, but I hope I can provide some insight as well as get insight into questions I have.

My question is, I have the ATI version of an x800 xl 256MB card, and I was checking Tom's Hardware's lineup of how the card compares to other cards (http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/index.html), and I saw that in 3d mark 05, they were hitting scores close to 5000. I only get about 3700 for my score, which I chocked up to a memory and cpu bottleneck (I'm running a p4 2.4 HT with 1gb of memory).

But when I cross-checked the specs of an x800xl (http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page2.html) with those of my own card, I found that the x800xl card they're using is running at 400 MHz on the cpu side, and about 1000 on the memory side. My card runs at the 400 MHz on the cpu, but only 492 MHz on the memory side.

Is there something wrong with my card? Are there different versions of this card? They're both agp, and my mobo is 8x AGP compliant. Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[cleeve]

Video Memory is 'DDR'... which stands for double data rate.

Your 492 Mhz memory is running at '984 Mhz effective' because it is DDR memory.

You could overclock it the 8 mhz (16 effective), but it won't make much difference. Your CPU probably is limiting you a bit, but your score does sound a bit low.

You might want to download Atitool and see how far the card will go, although the X800 XL isn't known or being a great overclocker.

The amount of system memory has no impact on 3dMark, BTW.

 

[dclowd9901]

Thanks for the head's up on the DDR. That makes perfect sense now.

I've been trying to tweak it with ATI tool, but like you said, it's receptive to maybe 20 Mhz difference on both cpu and Mem, but that's about it before it locks up. I'm only up to 3800 on 3dmark05.

I know it's the million dollar question, but is there something I can do to maximize performance? As I suspected, and you somewhat reiterated, my score seems a little too low.

I have a hardware profile set to turn off unnecessary applications or services running in the background while I do my tests. I'm not sure if that does anything at all, but it's all I could think of.

Any help to tweak some settings or hardware configurations are greatly welcome. I've done a lot of different things myself with the bios and whatnot, but I'd like to hear from the community here what some good methods might be.

I'll give you guys some specs:

MSI 865 PE NEO2 board
p4 2.4 @ 2.6 HT cpu
1GB DDR Mem (1x512, 2x256)
ATI X800 xl 256MB AGP 8x (catalyst 6.3 drivers)
Win xp SP2 Media Center Edition
SB Audigy 2 Value

 

[DJ-of-E]

two things that could hinder your performance.

First, your ram. 1 stick of 512 with 2 sticks of 256? That's not really efficient for Ram placement. 2 sticks of 512mb RAM will run better than your 1gb total placement because of dual channeling of RAM rather than waiting for one ram to fill up to move onto the next. Also, they have 2GB of RAM, that means they could fill it up with more graphic instructions than just 1GB. Already a difference of probably 100-200 marks.

Another bottleneck is background programs. Maybe you have something running in the background like AIM, WINAMP, MSN Messenger (damn windows), etc. They run theirs without any background programs. Another 100-200 marks.

They also have their test systems running on AMD Athlon 64 4000+. These processesors are more powerful as single cores than their Pentium counterparts when it comes to single application use. Another loss of 100 marks.

I don't know where does the other 500marks went. Probably you need to have a more updated graphic drivers, but I'm not sure about that one myself.

All I know is that I'm pumping out 3DMark05 at 6100 with my set-up.

AMD 64 3000+ OC to 2.0GHz
4x 512MB RAM
256MB Connect3D x800GTO 16-pipe unlock (PCI-EXPRESS 16X) & OC'd to 580/1160

 

[cleeve]

Well, first off I'd do a comparison in Futuremark to see what you should expect to get with your CPU and that card:

The stock-clocked X800 XL's on Pentium 4's, clocked from 2550 to 2650 mhz, were about 4100 to 4600. So the mean score with your rig should be about 4300-ish.

So you're not as far off as you think.

Other hardware factors that might be slowing you down are memory timings. Looks like you've got three different types of memory sticks there, they might not like each other all that much and may be causing a latency problem. You might want to try taking the two 256mb sticks out and see if your score goes up. Also check each stick and see what they're rated for as far as latency goes (CL3? CL 2.5?) and make sure the system is running them as fast as it can.

Also, don't assume your memory can run at BIOS 'agressive' or 'performance' timings. I tried to force an old rig of mine to do that, it didn't crash or anything, but it lowered my 3dMark03 score by a thousand points!

Also update your drivers. If your windows install is old it might be eating a couple hundred points.

 

[dclowd9901]

Thanks a lot for your answers, guys! I'm at work now, but I'll definitely try these tips out when I get home. I'll keep you posted.

 

[bobbydamm]

The X800XL has alot more 'punch' than the 3D marks will give.
on ATi Tool I managed OC of 425/532 out of the X800xl(my card prior to 7600GT).
Don't expect much more out of it than that, and it looks like your 3D scores are pretty much, well, right.
As far as playing games it is a supreme card and the 3DC really gets noticeable in games like the Sims 2 where the detail gets a bit better and anything textured looks better.
X800XL is a screaming card, but not much of an overclocker.

(PS my default XL clock speeds were 392/498, lower than stated.)

 

[dclowd9901]

I wanted to give an update to everyone who helped me on this thread.

I started out this evening with a 3d mark05 score of about 3200. Meek, at best, considering I am running an x800 xl.

I turned on Everest to check my system functions, as well as memory timings to find that my computer was running HOT. I say HOT, but I mean borderline meltdown. upwards of 80 C on the CPU and 75 C on the GPU. Needless to say, I shut down everything and popped open the case to inspect.

Sure enough, dust was clogging just about every port and heatsink on the system. A full can of compressed air later, and now I'm running at a steady 45 C CPU and GPU, with a 3d mark of 4700.

Thanks again to everyone who helped, and I hope someone can find an answer in their own problems with my particular solution.

 

[Scougs]

Yep, your CPU was throttleing (reducing its internal clock speed) because it was too hot. Like the other guys said, you are probably bottlenecked with only single channel memory.

If you are interested in more speed, you should be able to overclock your CPU no problem. 2.4c Pentium 4s like yours have been known to hit 280+MHz fsb.

For comparison my system scores 5500:
P4 2.8c @ 3.64GHz
1GB OCZ EL dual channel DDR400 @ DDR416
Saphire X800GTO flashed to XL specs and OCed to 438 core and 528 memory

 

[dclowd9901]

Yep, I think my next purchase will be dual 1gb sticks. I imagine that will help quite a bit. Thanks, also, for that tip about overclocking my cpu. I was running it at 2.8 GHz in 3d mark 05 again (score of 5000!), and it didn't even blink above 45ºC.

Thanks again to everyone.