• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

6800 overclock

Soldato
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
2,590
Location
Blythe
I have a 6800 as you may have guessed and I would like to overclock it.
I have seen the memory clock frequency to be a 1 ghz on many guides. mine is at 600 mhz. the temperature of the video card is around 42 degrees when idle and just out of games I rarely see it above 50. can I just band the memory clock frequency to 1ghz and leave the core clock frequecy as standard.
I may upgrade to a 7600 but I want the most out of this card first. Although I may wait until the Dx10 cards come out. ? .

Thanks
 
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Sep 2004
Posts
25,821
Location
Glasgow
Do you have a 6800le, 6800, 6800gt or 6800ultra? Only the 6800gt and ultra will normally have memory that is GDDR3 and can therefore get to 1ghz or higher. Most if not all standard 6800 cards use DDR which should be at 700mhz(all speeds are doubled here so it really runs at 350mhz).

Basically chance are you can only get the memory clock up a little from the 6-700mhz that you are at, I'd be surprised if you got anywhere above 800mhz but maybe :)
 
Associate
Joined
2 Nov 2003
Posts
1,693
What utility are you using to overclock? coolbits is good and includes a basic test option to check your new settings. You need to overclock in small steps though and each time check that the card isn't being pushed too hard by running 3dmark and checking for artifacts.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2003
Posts
2,636
Location
Wicklow, Ireland
collisster said:
how come?
Why would you expect the ram to overclock by nearly 50%? If it was that good, they would be running it at 900Mhz instead of 700Mhz.
Anywhere from 5% to 15% is a reasonable o/c expectation, so expect to get 720 to 800Mhz.
You can use "detect optimal frequencies" in the control panel to quickly find the maximum speeds of your card, or do it manually by starting at 710 and moving up in increments of 5 (testing after each increase).
 
Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2006
Posts
273
Location
Newbury
Youll gonna get better results from oc'ing your gpu rather than mem. Dont know much bout that card but mine i used riva tuner to enable masked pipes and vertex shader, then just minor oc on gpu and mem to gt speeds was good enough. I actually previously flashed it with an xfx ultra bios running 425mhz 3d gpu clock(standard 350) and 1100mhz mem (standard 900) along with iva tuner giving it 16pipes and 6 vertex shaders was giving great results in 3dmark06 (2865 with 3700+ cpu @2.7ghz), unfortunatly wih standard heatsink temps were spiralling out of control!
 
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Sep 2004
Posts
25,821
Location
Glasgow
Ok then, colour me surprised :o :) That is a very impressive jump from stock speeds if Coolbits is correct, normally it is pretty good but sometimes it does get it wrong. If you want to set it to those then I'd suggest you run through 3dmark03/05/06, any one would do for a few runs and see if it a) artifacts or overheats and b) gives any improvement from stock speeds. If it passes those simple tests then enjoy the speed increase but I'd still check from time to time just to make sure it continues to work ok.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
16 Mar 2005
Posts
8,052
Location
Clevedon , Bristol
I've just run Coolbits on my 6800GT

Stock ;

370 gpu
1.00 Ram

Coolbits Optimised ;

416 gpu
1.09 Ram

Either my 6800gt is bloody slow or you have a great card there.

Let us know the temps and stabilility of your clock.


Cheers,

Mark
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Aug 2004
Posts
2,503
Location
Oop North
just auto detecting might not give you the best results. My 6800 nu clocks much higher than I run it, but I'm running with the settings that give the best benchmarks. My advice is to increase slowly (say 5Mhz) at a time, and bench each time to find your optimal settings
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
2,590
Location
Blythe
It was a big jump so I've taken it down on the mem and the core, seems to be running fine now :D
Does an arctic cooler cover the whole card ? Because I was thinking of getting some of those memory heat spreaders from OCUK the little blue ones you stick on.
 
Last edited:
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Sep 2004
Posts
25,821
Location
Glasgow
The Arctic Cooler for the 6800 cards does cover more or less the whole card but I'd suggest getting a Zalman VF900 or VF700 as although I've got an Arctic Cooler pre-fitted(Galaxy 6800gt) I would rate the Zalman coolers higher. Also memory heatsinks generally aren't really all that much use as the memory doesn't tend to get all that hot but if it makes you feel more comfortable then there is no harm in them.
 
Back
Top Bottom