X1800XT Voltages on Water & Temp question

oweneades · 23 May 2006 at 11:41

Vegeta said:
Mine crashes in game at 1.5V it doesnt even show artifacts it just crashes, could this be because the msofets or something are getting too hot? I'm on air cooling so I think 1.5V maybe too much because I dont have a cooler for the mosfets etc normal crap one.

When I had a X1800XT 512mb I had to use a Small Vantec Stealth Blowing over the Voltage regulators to get it stable with voltages over 1.475Volts. (VGA Fan @ 100%).

The red Heatsink that covers them gets very hot and coul really do with being actively cooled.

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 11:44

sablabra said:
Really? That's interesting, I have to try that out. I haven't played with the mem volts a whole lot. Btw, do you use ati tool for overclocking? I do, but whenever I start a game, the screen turns black, and I have to restart my computer. The only way to make it work is starting the game without oc, and after it has loaded I can oc again. Any solutions to this???

I'm using ATI Tool at the moment and everything seems fine, I've set it to ramp up the clocks when it goes into 3D and I've check that its working and it seems good so far

I'm using the Omega Drivers which may be making a difference as they don't have the CCC and Overdrive.

Slowly backing on both the memory voltages and the memory buffer volts seems to be having real gains in memory clocks, I couldn't do 800mhz stable with stock volts on the memory but dropping them from 2.097 to 1.875 has got me nice and stable. I've dropped the memory buffer to 2.015Vs also, but haven't gone lower yet.

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 11:45

Vegeta said:
Mine crashes in game at 1.5V it doesnt even show artifacts it just crashes, could this be because the msofets or something are getting too hot? I'm on air cooling so I think 1.5V maybe too much because I dont have a cooler for the mosfets etc normal crap one.

I think 1.5V is a lot for air cooling come what may from the brief reading I've done.

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 11:54

Yeah I think its too much, man these babies must fly on water when the mosfets are covered also, I'm sure they will outscore most 7900gt oc's on water! Shame they're so goddamn hot.
O've just ran a benchmark of the gpu at 1.45V and it seems to handle that under air, I'm tempted to get a fan onto the voltage regulators - however I wish a company like zalman would make one that is longer and has a tiny fan on that would work awesomly.

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 12:08

Vegeta said:
Yeah I think its too much, man these babies must fly on water when the mosfets are covered also, I'm sure they will outscore most 7900gt oc's on water! Shame they're so goddamn hot.
O've just ran a benchmark of the gpu at 1.45V and it seems to handle that under air, I'm tempted to get a fan onto the voltage regulators - however I wish a company like zalman would make one that is longer and has a tiny fan on that would work awesomly.

What clocks are you getting mate? I don't seem to be getting that far without ATI Tool artifacts.

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 12:13

I dont use ati tool for artifacting mate - it's not right quite simply mine deteects artifacts at stock after a while!
Set clock/gpu voltages/fan speed via ATI Tool then run a game to test if its stable, atm i'm running 710/819 on 1.45V (I havent pushed the core its just a random number to test it and it worked).
I'm going to keep it at this setting for a few days to see how it goes, seems 100% stable so far mind and I just hit 10K with this (opty [email protected] but memory at 190, will get memory soon that'll run at 290! so should give me a nice increase of a few hundred I reckon).

Also when your in 2d mode - load default settings on volts/clocks because it will crash, especcially if you watch a video under overclocked settings.
Theres soo many slight niggles, ones you figure them out your sorted.
Another thing - use cat.s 6.3 displayer driver only and ATI Tool, dont use ATI Tray tools or ATI Tool will not work!

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 12:14

Bugger it cant be bothered to run it at 710 for a few days, i'll push it to 730 for a few days then it'll show errors quickly if there is any

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 12:29

Vegeta said:
Bugger it cant be bothered to run it at 710 for a few days, i'll push it to 730 for a few days then it'll show errors quickly if there is any

Did a quick 3D Mark demo at 675/800 and things look great, but ATI tool would probably find errors so I'll just ignore it.

I've set it to run seperate 2D and 3D clocks like you suggested, and set seperate voltages, so when it goes into 3D it bumps vGPU and drops the memory volts.

I'll probably lower the vMem in 2D mode too, the RAM seems to do a lot better with less volts :confused:

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 12:36

I havent got a clue about the best setting on my ram but I know it'll take forever to find out :/
Which is ashame because when I up the ram I get a massive increase in fps according to 3dmark, I think the ram needs to run faster to accomodate the the increase in core tbh.

Which ram voltages do you change? MVDDC or MVDDQ?

sablabra · 23 May 2006 at 12:50

I might want to try the omega drivers then

Anyhow, I think my card is pretty cool. Check it out, it's watercooled with MCW60 + the two 120mm fans blowing over the card

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 12:56

Vegeta said:
Which ram voltages do you change? MVDDC or MVDDQ?

I found dropping MVDDC to get me memory gains

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 12:57

I've just put some spare zalman ramsinks ontop of the red heatsink as its still bloody crashing under 1.45V now but it just takes longer to get there than 1.5V.

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 13:12

Hmm i'm starting to think the problem maybe software based as it always seems to crash under the same place on the firefly test but not ingame :/

I have uninstalled/install different cats along with a 7800gtx a lot on this windows setup, I think when i reformat I shall install cats 6.5 ati tool only hopefully this should fix it.

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 14:55

Right i'm discovering what idiots ATI are.

I think ATI might have done something to disable high clocks in x1800xt for some cards - thats why overdrive only allows 690 on the core.
When I try overclocking the card to 730 it will always crash after a while no matter what volts I use, If I put the card to 710 no matter what volts its stable (well not too little a reasonable 1.4V).
i'm starting to think theres some kinda issues with these cards if you push the core above 720 maybe which would explain why ati overdrive only allows upto 690.
I used to have this issue with a 6800ultra actually - if you pushed it soo far from its orginal stock clocks it would crash - however if you changed it in the bios to a higher setting as default then pushed it higher it wouldnt crash - i'm guessing something similar is happening as all the temps are low even the voltage ones.

Only problem with doing that with this ATI Card is I dunno how to set 2d/3d volts/clocks via the bios seperatly so I cant do it :/
Maybe with a driver update this maybe fixed I dont know.

JonnyGLC · 23 May 2006 at 15:51

With the fan on the stock heatsink at 100% i've run 3dmark a few times with 1.575v through my card, got me 750 core and over 11,000 in 3dmark 05.

I've not had a proper chance to play with the memory yet, but with some tweaking with the voltage i managed to get 920mhz on the memory.

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 15:55

I cant seem to get the core to 730 regardless of temp/volts and its annoying the hell out of me, theres like a X factor stop me from doing it I reckon its probably the bios/drivers.

I've got the sapphire btw, anyone else with the sapphire having problems like this? Currently its at 10,100 which is preety good, I reckon once my new ram comes this should be closed to 10,500, would be lovely to be gaming at 11,000 though (around a 2,000 increase on stock).

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 15:57

A random name said:
I've not had a proper chance to play with the memory yet, but with some tweaking with the voltage i managed to get 920mhz on the memory.

What volts did you achieve this with on the memory? I've tried someone elses memory voltage and it seems to hit the sweet spot for me.

Minstadave · 23 May 2006 at 16:02

I went for the X1800XT -> X1800XTPE bios flash, will report back on if that helps clocking.

It sets 3D clocks to 700/800

sablabra · 23 May 2006 at 16:07

Minstadave said:
I went for the X1800XT -> X1800XTPE bios flash, will report back on if that helps clocking.

It sets 3D clocks to 700/800

I've run PE for ages without that affecting my clocking. A few days ago I did some testing. Here are the results for 3dmark 05:

Stock gpu(625/750) and stock cpu(2ghz): 9155
Stock gpu(625/750) and [email protected]: 9676
Gpu@780/864 and stock cpu(2ghz): 9827
Gpu@780/864 and [email protected]: 11281

PS: I have a x2 3800+

Vegeta · 23 May 2006 at 16:16

Thats really nice.

This is what i'm getting with my [email protected], memory at 190 (bad memory upgraded soon will tell of score after) and gpu at 710/900 - hopefully i figure out why the card wont allow me to go past 730 - I might give the x1800xtpe bios a try but I only have the 256mb model.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2031180

I think my memory at 900 is maybe a bit too much, it didnt artifact in 2dmark 05 but im semi sure I might have seen slight black flashes in the background, will game and test its stability.