found a good way to use CCC overdrive for the X1900XT

[necroshine67]

My X1900XT was having problems useing the CCC overdrive. it would get half way through then lock up on me.
a few weeks ago i ask for help on how to use the CCC and and a guy told me to use ATI tray tools instead of the CCC. that led to a huge debate between the ape and the other guy :lol:
anyway i found out the problem was that the CCC sucks at controling the temps of the card.
so i used the ATI tool trays fan control options to set the fan at 80% while using the CCC overdrive to OC the card and it worked perfectly.
the card never got hotter than 65C where as before it was getting around 85C and crashing.
so for that poor guy that got owned by great ape. i did find one thing that tray tools can do better than CCC
now the card is set to 662/720..

 

[sojrner]

My X1900XT was having problems useing the CCC overdrive. it would get half way through then lock up on me.
a few weeks ago i ask for help on how to use the CCC and and a guy told me to use ATI tray tools instead of the CCC. that led to a huge debate between the ape and the other guy :lol:
anyway i found out the problem was that the CCC sucks at controling the temps of the card.
so i used the ATI tool trays fan control options to set the fan at 80% while using the CCC overdrive to OC the card and it worked perfectly.
the card never got hotter than 65C where as before it was getting around 85C and crashing.
so for that poor guy that got owned by great ape. i did find one thing that tray tools can do better than CCC
now the card is set to 662/720..

curious on this one: by "get half way through" do you mean you used the auto set function that "determines" the clock for you? If that is the case I would strongly reccomend to not use that feature of any software for any hardware. Rarely does it work, and reality is that doing it "manually" w/ small steps results in a much more stable clock at the true highest points for a given system.

This is not meant as a defense of ccc (or slam of ati tools) but rather a support of proper OC'ing methods.

 

[scales]

I just bought an x1900xt, and did the auto oc thing. wierd but the first time i ran it, it went through fine. second time, it started crashing half way. crashing meaning i would get an error and the screen would go black for a sec. the error would say graphics driver was reset, blah blah. so you say use ati tools to set the fan, then oc with catalyst? is there a tutorial on this? does this damage my nice new vid card? the first time when i ran the auto oc, and it worked, i fired up FEAR and the game looked fantastic, why doesnt it look like that normally?(all settings were high, and at 1280by1050)
__________________________
x1900xt
E6400
2gigs ram

 

[sojrner]

I just bought an x1900xt, and did the auto oc thing. wierd but the first time i ran it, it went through fine. second time, it started crashing half way. crashing meaning i would get an error and the screen would go black for a sec. the error would say graphics driver was reset, blah blah. so you say use ati tools to set the fan, then oc with catalyst? is there a tutorial on this? does this damage my nice new vid card? the first time when i ran the auto oc, and it worked, i fired up FEAR and the game looked fantastic, why doesnt it look like that normally?(all settings were high, and at 1280by1050)
__________________________
x1900xt
E6400
2gigs ram

no, what I am saying is that whatever you use (cat or atitools) you should do it "manually". I.e. step the sliders up manually and not w/ any "auto-config" utility. For catalyst that means just unlock the overdrive function and slowly move the sliders up. For each ~5 mhz you should then test it for a while. 3dMark or UT2004(on a loop) both work for that. If you start to see graphical glitches, you have gone to far and back it down to the last known good step and/or try smaller step increments at that point. It is time-consuming, but it is the right way to oc. If you hit the ceiling of the cat drivers (which can happen quickly) then atiTools is the only way.

Not really sure why someone does not like the cat's settings for temps as they work fine for modest oc'ing. Naturally atiTools has a finer-tuned setup but as you mentioned that could void the warranty. (depending on maker) What was mentioned above just increases fan noise. Yes, at the reduction of heat but even a "nice" 20-30 Mhz oc can be had on some cards using nothing more then default cat settings and the overdrive.

If warranties are not a concern and you want better management to try for higher clocks then for sure use atiTools for the whole job. (To use the 'tools at all disables the cat temp monitor/adjustments anyway)

Hope that was clear enough for ya... good luck.

 

[scales]

pretty clear, quick couple questions:
how safe is the ati overdrive? do i risk damaging the card?
what temperature is too high while running a game?
i am a newb, and would preferably do things the safe way which may just mean no overclocking....i could play with the 3d settings a bit...

 

[sojrner]

hey man, we were all n00bs at one time so no worries

any oc'ing could damage a card. If you take the clock up in small steps, testing in between then you will save yourself that heartache. The R580 core in the 1900s can take a LOT of heat, more so than any other gpu I have seen since I can remember. At first seeing 80 C scared me, and even the ~70 C (both on stock speeds depending on game) was a worry... but it just takes it like a champ. Just unlocking the overdrive will not do anything, and even taking it up the first roughly 10 Mhz or so will be painless as well. (should be anyway )

The one thing to look for after each step is that when you test the system each time you should run tough graphics to heat up the core. When you have gone too far you will notice the glitches and you can ratchet back down. With small steps you avoid going way too far and bringing damage. Small steps ensure no damage...

Honestly though, to start you may just want to use the card as-is if you are sketchy about any of this. That 1900xt is plenty fast for current stuff, and much of what is coming around the corner. My card is only clocked about 15Mhz over stock just b/c I messed w/ it and left it. On stock cooling my card hit the ceiling at about 30Mhz over on the memory, and 25 on the core. Mine was bought early in the run of that core though, yours may go much higher. Sometimes the alure to fiddle w/ the speed outweighs the fact that you dont need it yet. lol

 

[necroshine67]

Hey sojrner: thanks for the advice and not flaming!
I reset my card back to normal speeds and started playing BF2 and it hit 85C normal clocks. I think that's to hot for something I payed so much for and no one of as yet knows what the long term effect of running those temps can do to the card ' since no one has ran one longer than 6 months '.
who's to say after 8 months with 85C temps the card won't die?
sure some might have extended warrenties, but that's extra cash and hassle

I mean the card runs nice and cool and when in 2D mode with no extra voltage.
So i deleted CCC off my comp since the fan control on it blows, and just use ATI tray tools so when I game my temps stay at 60C.
Some might say buy the V90.. well I payed over 300.00 for the card and shouldn't have to buy an aftermarked fan to keep it cool at stock speeds.
or ATI should look into making CCC more fan friendly..
Hey maybe the cards were built to run at those temps, but i'm not testing it!

 

[sojrner]

I have owned mine since the start of Feb and never see an issue. Granted, I have a lifetime warranty on it so if something does happen I am covered for a good while.

I have seen articles that state ati's position on it was that the card could handle that temp and they chose the fan speeds for noise. If noise is not an issue for ya then changing the speed on it from atiTools is cool too. I do know that it was a concious decision on the part of ati, so the card can handle it. (and there are no issues on any forums of heat killing anything that I have seen)

of course, I have that nice warranty that I dont want to kill just yet.

the 'tools are great, but ccc does not really "blow" as such... just has less options. rock on man.

 

[necroshine67]

I don't mind the leaf blower, keeps me from hearing my g/f snoar at night :lol:
I only have it set to 50% once it hits 65C, so to me it's not that loud, but to others i guess it is.
CCC is a great program, but i like the fan control on ATT and it gives the same options as CCC.

The ones who made titanic said it couldn't be sunk
I'm sure nvidia was blind sided by the 7900GT failures..
I'm not like some who when a new card or CPU comes out ' here's 500 bucks '
my comps on top. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to my temps, so it'll last me all those years my trusty geforce3 did 8)

 

[sojrner]

I don't mind the leaf blower, keeps me from hearing my g/f snoar at night :lol:
I only have it set to 50% once it hits 65C, so to me it's not that loud, but to others i guess it is.
CCC is a great program, but i like the fan control on ATT and it gives the same options as CCC.

The ones who made titanic said it couldn't be sunk
I'm sure nvidia was blind sided by the 7900GT failures..
I'm not like some who when a new card or CPU comes out ' here's 500 bucks '
my comps on top. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to my temps, so it'll last me all those years my trusty geforce3 did 8)

totally understand man. rock on.

 

[scales]

humm, i just am curious i was hoping i could run fear at full res and settings, i run it now and i see some lag or just not 100% smooth. granted my monitor is old, prob isnt best, also it is fearcombat which is online so might be lag. anyway, with 2 gigs of ram, E6400 and the x1900xt, i should be able to blow 1280by1024 away maybe 1600by1200?

 

[necroshine67]

Fear is a beast of a game to run.
Look at these benchmarks and it should answer your question 8)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/02/10/radeon_x1900_series_roundup/6.html

at 1280x960 the x1900xt did hiccup a bit,

 

[paulpod]

But again, people are ignoring my result on Cat 6.3.

OVERDRIVE WORKS PERFECTLY! The Overdrive test ran GPU clock up to 689 and mem clock up to 792 before crapping out. And that was with temp held at 90 degrees throughout the test.

After seeing the app go to those numbers, I pulled back to 670/770 when running games just to be safe. I have run Oblivion, Riddick, and Prey demo with not the slightest glitch.

On Cat 6.8 I get the same bad result as the original poster. The Overdrive test hangs before raising mem clock at all. Going by those results the poster sets his memory at 720, even after applying the fan fix. This behavior is a pure bug ATI needs to fix.

In addition to the memory clock bug, they now seem to limit the frequency sliders at 668/765 (sliders bounce back to those limits when set higher). That is just plain cruel to anyone who installs watercooling. Cat 6.3 would allow a 700/800 setting.

So it is a simple request to ATI. Restore Overdrive to the quality and freedom of control that existed in 6.3. Save us from having to install kludgy third party tools.

But now that they are going out of the standalone graphics card business (wake up and smell the coffee people), the need to keep customers like self-builders is zero. So I'm not holding my breath.

 

[scales]

so, if my vid card is stock, with no cooling applications, how hot is too hot? fear would be the good game to test i guess. is fear a beast to run because of its engine? will unreal 2007 be able to run at very nice speeds? generally unreal use a much better engine than other games......

 

[sojrner]

But again, people are ignoring my result on Cat 6.3.

OVERDRIVE WORKS PERFECTLY! The Overdrive test ran GPU clock up to 689 and mem clock up to 792 before crapping out. And that was with temp held at 90 degrees throughout the test.

After seeing the app go to those numbers, I pulled back to 670/770 when running games just to be safe. I have run Oblivion, Riddick, and Prey demo with not the slightest glitch.

On Cat 6.8 I get the same bad result as the original poster. The Overdrive test hangs before raising mem clock at all. Going by those results the poster sets his memory at 720, even after applying the fan fix. This behavior is a pure bug ATI needs to fix.

In addition to the memory clock bug, they now seem to limit the frequency sliders at 668/765 (sliders bounce back to those limits when set higher). That is just plain cruel to anyone who installs watercooling. Cat 6.3 would allow a 700/800 setting.

So it is a simple request to ATI. Restore Overdrive to the quality and freedom of control that existed in 6.3. Save us from having to install kludgy third party tools.

But now that they are going out of the standalone graphics card business (wake up and smell the coffee people), the need to keep customers like self-builders is zero. So I'm not holding my breath.

you know, normally I defend ccc if only b/c it is simple and works... but if I were a n00b reading this your post would convince me to use anything but ccc. :lol: Just the contradiction is priceless. (It works great! and it doesn't! )

but I digress... reality is that my point earlier still stands. You should not use any oc app that automatically clocks the thing. This is bad oc practice. You should do it manually in small steps. Auto-config apps do hang, they always have from time to time and ccc is no different. I actually had it hang on 6.3 for me, so it has been there for a while. Even atiTool has froze on my in the past when I tried the auto-clock in it. Point is, do it yourself and do it right.

Finally; while teh above was not meant as an argument against you but a follow up to what you said, this one IS an argument: wth are you smoking man w/ the "out of standalone graphics" thing? They have not released any statement like that. Until amd/ati say that then it is just rumor and fanboi speculation. It removes any credibility and makes you sound like a fanboi-tool.

 

[IcY18]

i understand what both of you are saying and to me this one is split pretty much down the middle

Yes ATi has not said they are going out of the stand alone graphics development but it has highly rumored and probable that in late 2007 when the merger is complete ATi will focus more development on the integrated graphics solution which i think may take some edge off of their products...

as of right now its speculation and no one really knows how much AMD will effect ATi but we will see in a year or so

 

[sailer]

But again, people are ignoring my result on Cat 6.3.

OVERDRIVE WORKS PERFECTLY! The Overdrive test ran GPU clock up to 689 and mem clock up to 792 before crapping out. And that was with temp held at 90 degrees throughout the test.

After seeing the app go to those numbers, I pulled back to 670/770 when running games just to be safe. I have run Oblivion, Riddick, and Prey demo with not the slightest glitch.

On Cat 6.8 I get the same bad result as the original poster. The Overdrive test hangs before raising mem clock at all. Going by those results the poster sets his memory at 720, even after applying the fan fix. This behavior is a pure bug ATI needs to fix.

In addition to the memory clock bug, they now seem to limit the frequency sliders at 668/765 (sliders bounce back to those limits when set higher). That is just plain cruel to anyone who installs watercooling. Cat 6.3 would allow a 700/800 setting.

So it is a simple request to ATI. Restore Overdrive to the quality and freedom of control that existed in 6.3. Save us from having to install kludgy third party tools.

But now that they are going out of the standalone graphics card business (wake up and smell the coffee people), the need to keep customers like self-builders is zero. So I'm not holding my breath.

Not sure what's up with your computer, but mine runs CCC 6.8 just fine. I get 689/801 out of it with ease. The watercooling keeps the temp down at 41c at idle, 49c under load at present, so I'm happy with that.

I've tried ATI Tools, but my computer keeps crashing with it. I've heard some other people having similar troubles with their Sapphire cards, so have concluded that its got something to do with how Sapphire put things together. Don't know for sure. Always ready to try something and learn along the way, but for the moment, the ATI Tools haven't worked for me.

 

[The_Gremlin]

kludgy???????? :? is that an engineering term :lol: 8O (joking)
is that your word? what is the meaning of kludgy,could you use it in another sentence and make use of a different instance of its meaning?

notify websters we have a new word. :!: :!:

[flame]
Get with the times, Daddy-O! That word is old school!

See?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kludgy

And see more?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kludge&x=30&y=8

Even Webster knows that word.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/kludgy
[/flame]

 

[sojrner]

bam! :lol:

 

[sojrner]

considering the performance improvements that have happened over the last 4 releases since 6.4 I do not consider it a good thing if that is as high as you can go on atiTools.

score one more for ccc.

 

[sojrner]

lol

I was only making a point that w/ ccc (or even "just" tray tools) you have newer driver revs. To me I have noticed a good chunk of performance improvements in the last few driver jumps that could very well negate even a good oc...

...that is my only point there. atiTools is a good app, not saying ccc is "better" at all. (but then it does not suck either) Just that I have better drivers as a result of not using atiTools.

EDIT:
hmm... seems that Tom's used 6.5 w/ atiTool on that vga cooler article so you may be behind on the drivers man.

 

[sailer]

I was running ccc 6.3 earlier, and ATI Tool kept crashing, so I tried 6.8 and got the same result. At least for my Sapphire card, there was no difference between 6.3 and 6.8. I also tried both 0.25 14 beta and 0.25 15 Beta versions of ATI Tool, with no difference in effect.

 

[scales]

so i am not overclocking my gpu, but i played aoe3 and it got up to 83 celcius. how high can it go? and when should i worry? does it make sense to put an aftermarket fan/cooler on it?

 

[sojrner]

so i am not overclocking my gpu, but i played aoe3 and it got up to 83 celcius. how high can it go? and when should i worry? does it make sense to put an aftermarket fan/cooler on it?

Reading different reviews shows that 90 is not out of the question, and mine hits that from time to time.

 

[sojrner]

Well lets put it this way, I had about the same temps as you before I changed to an aftermarket cooler. I put on the Accelero X2 and my temps went from 85c load to 70c load, I then got creative and mounted 2 120MM fans directly underneath the X1900XT :!: and had the air to blow up onto the card. The results are my load temps are now 60C max and my card idles at 39C 8)

Even with the added 2 120 MM fans my system is much more silent than before when I had that leaf blower mounted to my card. You cannot even hear the Accelero X2 it is just dead silent


This resulted in some good overclocks for me. 730core and 832mem using ATI TOOL. Not bad for being on air.

holy crap man! how much room is there under the 1900?!

regardless, the same could be done by mounting just one 120 fan pointed at the back of the stock cooler. This keeps temps down which keeps the fan from spinning up on the cooler. Quiet and much cheaper/easier then mounting an aftermarket cooler and doing the same thing.