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Does it make a difference overclocking 9800Pro?

E

eddie500

Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
Messages
1,009
Simple question, do you guys actually notice any difference overclocking your 9800pro in games? I have my 2500+ CPU overclocked and notice a difference but was wondering about the video card?

I am a little hesitant to overclock my 9800Pro becuase of the amazing amount of heat it already throws off, The ram chips get very hot with some games.
 
Like all OC's, it depends entirely on how much of an OC you can get. I definitely notice a difference in performance between stock speeds of 378/338 vs my OC speed of 445/380.
 
Originally posted by jmcmike
Like all OC's, it depends entirely on how much of an OC you can get. I definitely notice a difference in performance between stock speeds of 378/338 vs my OC speed of 445/380.
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Did you get better overclock with the ramsinks? and new heatsink?

Is it crazy to overclock without better then stock cooling?
 
445/400 stock

Yes its worth it. I can tell on earth and Beyond with high res and stuff... when i hit heavy damge + attacking + teammate hurt.... i lag... but when im o/ced lag becomes playable lag.
 
Originally posted by Cloud15x
445/400 stock

Yes its worth it. I can tell on earth and Beyond with high res and stuff... when i hit heavy damge + attacking + teammate hurt.... i lag... but when im o/ced lag becomes playable lag.
Click to expand...

lol
 
Originally posted by eddie500
Did you get better overclock with the ramsinks? and new heatsink?

Is it crazy to overclock without better then stock cooling?
Click to expand...

Difficult to answer the ramsink question. With my current card, I originally got another 5 MHz out of the ram with the ramsinks but this degraded after putting different ramsinks on because the original ramsinks I was using had old thermal tape. (I think I'm going to get new thermal tape for the old ramsinks and put them back on. It's just it's a pain to clean the thermal tape off the ramsinks.) But on my previous 9800 Pro, ramsinks got my memory up from 348 to 375. Nobody probably believed my story but it's true. In the end I kept this card because the RAM would (at first) do 380 without any ramsinks and the core would clock higher.

As for a new heatsink (waterblock in my case) this will almost assuredly get you more MHz out of the core. My current 9800 Pro would only do 417 (artifact free) with stock cooling. With a VGA Silencer it would do 435. Now with the waterblock it will do 445. True, some fortunate folks like Cloud15x will get theirs up to 445 on stock cooling but that is the exception rather than the rule I think.

As for whether it's crazy to OC with stock cooling, absolutely not, so long as you OC in small increments and check for artifacts. (This is true with or without stock cooling.) Since you have a 9800 Pro, you can use the most excellent ATITool to find the sweet spot for your card, even with stock cooling.
 
Some games I don't notice a difference, but there are occasions that I have seen a real improvement, especially for the games that lag at 4XAA / 8XAF settings here and there.

Take Brecourt in Call of Duty for example. At 1024x768, 4XAA / 8XAF, I was getting some slowdown in heavy firefights on that map. After going from 324/290 to ~450/360, the occasional lag seemed to disappear :)
 
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