Weird problem with overclocking an old card - Radeon 9600 PRO

chaoscreater

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Dec 26, 2008
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Hi guys, so yesterday i found my old Radeon 9600 PRO buried in my house somewhere, i don't even remember buying it since it's old as hell, lyk at least 4 or 5 years old. So anyway, since i love overclocking, i decide to try and overclock this card and see how well it goes coz if i remember correct, this is a pretty good card for overclocking back in its days.

So i started up ATI Tools v0.26, and begin to overclock it. The weird thing is, ATI Tools showed that the default Memory clock is at 200Mhz, but i thought it should be 300Mhz? I read a few review sites and topics about overclocking this card just to get an idea of how far this thing can go, and they all show that the default Memory clock is at 300Mhz, so what's up with that??

So anyway, since i had plenty of read on several topics already, i thought i might as well start at a specific point instead of adjusting the Core & Memory 10Mhz at a time, so i started at a safe clock point at 480/300, and wtf it crashed my PC!

So then i adjusted it to 450/280 and it crashed YET AGAIN.

So now i'm just letting ATI Tools finding the max core and max memory for me right now, coz i think something is wrong, it shouldn't crash at such low clocks.


I'm using a GECUBE Radeon 9600 PRO 256mb 128bit. I've read a few topics about overclocking a "STOCK" 9600 PRO and it went up to 519/366 perfectly fine, or somewhere around there, the GECUBE one that i have has pretty big fan so it should be no problem, but the memory won't even stay stable at 300Mhz.......the Core clock can be set to 500 no problem, just that something is wrong with the memory........

the default clock for my card is 400/200, at least that's what it shows on my ATI Tools, but for other people it's 400/300.......



and btw when i found my card, it was in good condition, it was sealed in those proper plastic bags that comes with any graphics card you buy, and it was in the box as well so it's not damaged, i even played a few games and they ran fine before i started to overclock.



Anyway here're some infos about the card:

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/gigabyte_r96p/
http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/l/aaSapphireR96P.htm
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/radeon/r9600pro.html
http://hothardware.com/Articles/ATi-Radeon-9600-Pro-Overclocked/
http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=87


and i'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86 build 7600

and yes i'm using the latest drivers for the 9600.
 

chaoscreater

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Dec 26, 2008
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ok the most stable clock i could get is 479.25 / 236.25

which is crap and WEIRD considering the default Memory clock is at 300, whereas mine starts at 200 and only goes up by 36.25Mhz, wtf??


edit:


I think i know why my card has a different memory stock to what others have. I think i got scammed when i bought my card, i found the box and receipt and it showed i purchased it 2 years ago but back then i was still a kid and was noob so dunno anything about overclocking or graphics card at all, and the guy probably just put in a 9600 in the box that actually advertised Gecube 9600 PRO instead......

coz when i go to Catalyst or use GPUZ, i only see 9600 and not 9600 PRO......which should explain why the memory clock is at 200MHZ for me instead of 300MHZ, because 200MHZ is the stock for 9600 and not 9600 PRO.......damn it.