Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

I think that when they get realeased, I'll get one and see how hot it gets. Then. I may add a gpu waterblock to the card and have the swift tech system cooling it as well as the cpu. Will I need 1 or 2 waterblocks?

Also, do you know how hot a 8800GTX gets? I think around 65-70C load right?

 

Probably a bit more than that, maybe in the 70s, I don't own one so I couldn't say.
You need a water block for every device you cool, a radiator, a reservoir, a pump and some pipes. A fill and drain cap is always useful to have as well.

 

Yeah, it all comes in that kit, but the gpu block isnt included. We'll just have to see what the temps are when the card get released.

 

The temps will be fine, water cooling graphics cards is usually only done for extreme overclocks, for people who want quiet PCs (and there are far cheaper ways) or for fun.

 

Ok, but I would definetly want to water cool the Q6600, if I want to get to 3Ghz right?

 

I reckon you could air cool a Q6600 at 3Ghz. I barely break 40C at 3Ghz with my E4300 if I turn the fan up, and that CPU started at a much lower clock speed.

 

waymon
kardson
sammorris
dinc
abuzar

hey guys,

Ray, you shouldn't have to use Travis' disable ATI hotkey poller each time you want to play a 3d game. If you have it set in the preferences, the way kardson told you, then I believe that as long as you are loading ati tray tools on bootup, (for example with a shortcut in the startup folder) it will sit there in memory and defeat the ati hotkey poller. You'll never have to set it again. (Correct me if I am wrong on that Travis.)

That one graph you showed came from that one review I was talking about, but as I recall, Ray, that one game, company of heroes, showed very low because they couldn't defeat the 60fps lock for the 2900 for some reason that they couldn't figure out.

In general the 2900 did pretty well in those tests, although the ultra is pretty strong though, and it did come out ahead of the 2900xt on a lot of tests. (Again, though, with all the parallel shader operations that the 2900 can support, I wonder if all the developers have begun to use its full capabilities.)
Rich

 

Hey sam I heard that the Quad cores don't overclock as well as the Dual core cpus. So I'm not sure about the 3 Ghz quad core on air cooling. Could be wrong though, but I remember reading somewhere that it is very hard to do on air cooling.

 

I was under the impression that 3Ghz was the air cooled limit for quads, in the same way that 3.5-4.0 depending on the model is the air cooled limit for duos.

 

Waymon3X6,

Exactly what harvrdguy said, follow the directions I gave you and you shouldn't have to set it each time. There is also a checkbox to choose "Do this evertime ATT starts"

This will have it kill the poller on Ati Tray Tools startup.


The only Side effect from doing this is that the card will stay at whatever clock you set and will not downclock out of game.
So instead of having cool 500mhz card while not in game, it will be sitting at whatever clock you hardset it too.

Though, typically the heat output still won't be that high as the card will not be under a heavy load while at the desktop.

 

Little info on why the card fails to go into "3d mode" sometimes.


In order for the card to clock up to it's intended 3d speed, it must recognize the change from 2d to 3d.

For some reason, certain games do not cause this transition to happen properly. Thus your card will not clock up.

Also, if you run games in windowed mode... The card will not see the change from 2d/3d so again, the card will not clock up.
On this subject here about windowed mode games, if you use Anti Aliasing any Higher than 1x and you move your mouse out of the games play window, you will see noticeable lag...
Thats because the system doesn't know how to switch from #x to 1x on the fly like that.......... lol, doubt that makes any sense but back to what I was saying...

Without the acknowledgement of the transition from 2d to 3d the card won't clock up normally..
If you have your system go into sleep mode or standby when you come out of it, there is a good chance that it won't clock up until you reboot as well.

By using the method to clock up your card as I described earlier, it will override the Hotpoller and keep it at a constant clock speed.

Well, enough Rambling.

Back to work.

 

Yeah, it did work, but i tried again, whithout tray tools and with the 2d speeds, because I rebooted and started at the 499/594, and played a game and after I quit I saw that the card did go to the 3d speeds like it was supposted to. I guess the card does it when it wants to...

 

To be pedantic, it does what it's told, but it's not always told the right thing!
Computers have no brains of their own, that's good in one way, but bad in another!
With luck enough Sci-Fi films have been made to prevent it from ever becoming the case!

I can't say I've ever paid much attention to the clock speed transition, but then in the only games that ever lag, it's quite certain it has clocked up, so I've never really had to. Guess I'm lucky with the PCI express version...

 

How much of an fps difference is there between the 2d clocks 499/594 and the 3d clocks 645/702? Also, does overlocking really pump more fps out if I have my card at 675/846?

 

Put it this way:

Standard 3D clocks 625/725: 3dmark score 5600
Raised 3D clocks 668/873: 3dmark score 6750
I think it makes a huge difference!

 

wow, well thats for you with a C2D. I get around 4400 with no overclock, except for the processor, and around 4800 with the video card at 675/846

 

Fair enough, the CPU shouldn't play a huge part though.

 

Hey Sam and Ray, that is pretty impressive what overclocking does to the 3dmark scores.

Travis, you mentioned that killing the ati hot poller will always leave the clocks in the 3d state. But ati tray tools itself provides for automatic overclocking - going into 3d, and then coming out of 3d. That's how I set it up on mine. So won't Ati tray tools take care of dropping it back down or are you saying that when you enable that kill hot poller feature, it also disables ati tray tool's ability to drop the clocks back down?

 

harvrdguy,

There are 2 places in ATI TRAY TOOLS to overclock the card.

1 spot requires the Hotkey Poller to be running.
The other does not.

Hardware --> Overclocking Settings -->
Should be used when the Hotkey Poller is OFF

Hardware --> ATI Overdrive 3 -->
Should be used when the Hotkey Poller is On
This is the default way the ATI Card is setup and suffers from the same trouble as the normal ati overclocking utility... as it pretty much is the default ATI overclocking utility found in the CCC.


Maybe your talking about the Game Profiles? which then Yes, you can set it up to upclock the card when a certain EXE file is ran. and then downclock when finished....

 

waymon
kardson

Ati Tray Tools -- Kill Hotkey Poller

I checked my settings on my gaming computer, and I found that I had enabled the checks that Travis was talking about, as shown here:

...................

and this is how I have my auto overclocking (very minor overclocking for now on the x850xtpe)

...................

I have a shortcut to ati tray tools in my startup folder (because I am running in a non-admin user account - usually you would just have it start in msconfig startup tab) and except for a few programs that don't signal they are going into 3d mode, it pretty much goes into 3d mode, and then comes out of 3d mode, automatically, just like it is supposed to! -Rich