The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Sam my 3870 has totaly changed the way i feel about gaming, now I can just log into servers with a low ping on cod4, shoot people from the other end of the map with ease ect, was using my mates 7600gt previous to this and its in a whole different class, when the game starts you get a slight lag as the card comes upto speed (1-2 secs), other than that no probs at all )

your old 939 mobo should be cool just read up on its crossfire performance and it seems to be one of the better 939 crossfire boards.

 

Wow, that x2 card is romping away at the high resolutions in the games with CF support! Looks to be a bit of a monster. For us in the UK tho, if it is gonna cost that much, unless you have a 24"+ monitor and play mainly CF supported games I couldn't see a case for buying one of those over a G92 GTS say (£210 vs £330). Looking at the power figures too the TCO of that card is going to be pretty high compared with the rest of the market.

 

The latest beta of ATITool works with 3870s doesn't it? I'll use the fan speed adjusment in that if I can.
As for the performance of the card, sounds good, but what resolution do you play at? One of the main reasons I bought the card is so sick resolutions are playable, but huge frame rates in lower ones could also be useful...

 

has anyone gotten the E8400 yet? done any testing on it?

 

I found ati tool useless, none of the options came up as usable,
this is worth a read sam http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33912408.

oh yeh 3870x2's are in overclockers for £300 so expect them to be £250 else where lol http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-091-HT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416

if your going to overclock your cards you will more than likely have to flash them, but you might be lucky and get them with the newer bios. 850 core 1200 mem seems to be a sweet spot

 

JUST BUY IT!!!! lol. ;P Rob I've done some reading and that CPU (E8400) will OC WAY better than my E6850 for about $60 less. GGgggrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! lol. For you needs Rob you'll NOT need another CPU for at least 5 years!! Maybe longer.....

ck5134,
Thanks for the link to the company. I don't know about Russ but I'm thinking about a NEW chipset heatsink.

in stock here Russ. sidewindercomputers.com

looks like jab-tech.com has them too. link

Sorry got excited!! That's a beautiful product. lol. I'm sick I know....hehehe.

...gm

 

if i had the space i would have gone for one of these http://www.leftclicks.co.uk/userimgs/antazone/antazone_as-n2000_chipset_cooler.htm

 

Just looked at Ebuyer, they have the standard X2 coming in soon at £275 inc vat, but then a standard G92 GTS is £185 on there too! Still nearly £100 difference for nothing noticeable in performance.

Back on the overclocking - I got my CPU to 2.95Ghz totally stable by setting the Vdimm to 2.1v (as spec'ed in the EPP), and I was able to lower my Vcore from 1.425v to 1.412v. This is with the ram unlinked at 789mhz and tight EPP timings. I notice that there are only certain FSB speeds that run the full 800 mhz, so it must be working on some kind of divider still. I'm at 1685 qfsb and the next one up that runs the full 800mhz is 1707 (2.99Ghz). I had a look at my N/b voltage and when set to auto and at 2.88/2.95ghz this runs at 1.55v. Thought I'd up this to 1.6v and try 2.99ghz. Managed to get it to boot stable and run 3dmark and Orthos fine, tried 3.0ghz and this also booted and ran 3dmark but crashed on Orthos. Thought I'd drop back to 2.99 as that seemed pretty stable but it crashed about 10mins into playing Dirt so I've now backed back off again to 2.95Ghz.
I'd like to get it up to 2.99 stable if poss - and it was in Orthos - any ideas?
Another thing I notice is that when the voltages are set to auto the s/b voltage ramps up in line with the n/b (to 1.55v vs 1.25v - I think.) Is there any need to be running the two chipsets at the same voltage? I'm not overclocking the PCI bus, so is this extra voltage just creating more heat or would it cause instability if they were different?

Edit: have booted it at 2.99ghz with 1.418v and 1.55v manual n/b - will try some testing now and see what happens!

 

the 3870 x2 performs better at high resolutions though which is who theyre aiming the card at. http://translate.google.com/transla...com.cn/diy/graphics/reviews/0801/1210234.html






I know the translated page is hard to read but it shows its better than the 8800 ultra in 13 out of 17 tests with immature drivers, in time it will shine, its about 15- 25% faster than the gts in most cases. and the gts still has the advantage of mature drivers at the moment couldnt be bothered to post all the images. thought putting the link in would give the interested partys the chance to read the weird translation

 

Still no hiding the fact that the 8800GTS is barely more than half the price though...

 

the gts512 is about £100 less, not half price.

 

closer to 2/3 P, and the ultra is still more, and so are the expected x2 nvidia cards.... still image quality is where im going to stand by got to love converting video through my 3870 much faster than using the cpu, 30 mins of avi converts in just over 5 mins to high quality mpeg2 using the ati ccc in basic mode

 

Ah so that works now does it? It seemed pretty much beta stage last time I looked at it.

 

flys along all i can say is ati seem to be pushing the usefulness of a graphics card beyong games / design, making it a worthwhile attribute to more than just the gamer / designer

bit like their owners when the produced the first true quad lol, everything has its teething stage, and i think with ati / amd being one and the same we are going to see many good new things

 

You can encode videos in CCC? How do you do that? I looked and I didn't find it.

 

ATi are also the only ones who put ViVo on their cards as standard, which is a nice touch if you do any video work.
Got my system stable at 2.99ghz with the settings mentioned - 1.418v vcore, 1.55v n/b 2.1v vdimm and 4-4-4-12 timings ram at 800mhz. Happy with that now, got 11,727 on 3dmark06. CPU cores top out at 54c full Orthos load so I reckon I'll need better cooling to push any further - maybe the Thermalright 120. Plus which if I go up to 3.0ghz or higher I'll loose speed on the ram which will probably wipe out any gain I get from the cpu.
Anyone got any views on the nbridge/sbridge voltages?

 

catalyst 8.1 has it but you need to install the vivo part

 

'ATi are also the only ones who put ViVo on their cards as standard'

its not on the 3850 or 3870 but you have got the nice video features, and they can be utilised through ccc, you need the ati video codecs installed. it was in the download of 8.1 when i got it s

 

if you havent got it add it from here to ccc http//**************/download.php?view.139

download it extract and run the setup
batch file, then in ccc go to basic mode
use the basic setup and quick settings.

on the next page youll see it

 

Will it convert Divx to MPEG?