I just scared myself...

S

socK

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 25, 2004
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I picked up a cheap-o 9600xt for BF2 (which does a fantastic job, 50+ fps with most stuff on medium, good enough for me) and I was messing around with overdrive and looking at how it would increase my fps by a few. I've dicked around with my GF4 a bit and figured I knew enough. So I got ATI-Tool, let it work it's magic for a bit. Let it hit it's limits and then turn it turn a bit from there. My temps in games hovered around 50's tops. ATI tool would put that almost into the 60's. Anyway, when it started finding the errors I toned it down a bit and didnt quite hit that button that applys it. I moved over to my overdrive window and was just watching my temps move around while ATI tools tests thingy went on. In an atempt to move that window and somebody calling me I managed to hit the overdriver checkbox and my screen became somewhat garbled and ATI tool let out it's fabled error beeps. Needless to say that scared the shit out of me and I turned off the computer pronto. What the fuck was that, why did hitting that make it go so ape shit. :X Everything seems fine and dandy now, no fires, didnt smell anything cook, but damn that almost gave me a heart attack.
 
Being as brave as I am, I decided to open the program again. For no apparent reason I decided to smack artifact tester and it watch it for a minute. I got bored and hit abort. My screen got garbled again, is something fucked or am I just doing something wrong. :X I checked my temps real quick when everything was going wonky and they where at 42, thats not bad is it, temps cant be the problem since that real hdr awesome program heats it upto a good 48-50.
 
Turn OverDrive off and restore defaults. You said it was good enough for you before :p

9600XT's are quite overclocking friendly though, but you may have your core or mem too high.
 
The second time around I didnt change a single thing, I just tried artifact tester for like 30 seconds for no real reason and when I turned it off it happened again, I didnt change anything, clocks where back at default. :[
Lets see, the first time my core was at like 525 and mem was at like 30 points higher when it found it's first error. So I dropped them both 10 and then thats when I accidently hit my overdrive switch and the screen right off went wonky, so I quickly put them back at defaults and well, they didnt go away so I just shut it down there.

Second time I didnt do anything, they where back at default and happy and for no reason, I felt like watching the artifact tester. It was fine but went ape shit when I tried to close it. Temps seemed fine, everything did except I had green lines, so I once again quickly rebooted.

Im confused so i'll just leave it to overdrive to works its magic rather than trusting myself. :X
 
I have no idea how OverDrive works exactly, but if you overclocked your card with ATI Tool, and then hit OverDrive, it may have taken your current value and upped it further than it would have if it was stock.
 
From what I can see overdrive seems to turn the core speed (and only it) up or down depending on temps. Right now it's 38-39 and overdrive put it upto like 526. When I ran that HDR thing for a few minutes and got the temp up a bit higher, near 46 it went down to 511, so it seems to keep itself at a happy temp. I think I had it on while doing the first tests with ATI Tool. Maybe since it was hot it was keeping itself low and cool enough and when I clicked it, thus turning it off (since ati tool had 526 as my core) the temps shot up. Sounds logical enough I guess, but it happened again, the second time I tried ATI tool, when I didnt do anything. Everything now was at defaults so why they would come up again, AFTER I dicked with that test is beyond me.

I just dont know what the fuck. Im going to leave it be, im happy with it. Does what I wanted it too, run BF2 (and quite nicely might I add, better than I expected. :X) while beating out my GF4 by a large bit in games, all for cheap. So I guess case closed. Seems fine in games and everything, guess nothing terrible happened to it. (I hope atleast :X, somebody please reassure me and say that those 5 seconds of artifacts, which are obviously bad probually didnt do shit to the card, im worried about it now :X)
 
Chix4mat said:
Turn OverDrive off and restore defaults. You said it was good enough for you before :p

9600XT's are quite overclocking friendly though, but you may have your core or mem too high.
Click to expand...

Let's see I remember my 8600xt reached pretty high OCs...

585/309 I believe...

stock was
500/300

memory doesn't like to be oced....
 
So you think I just pissed off the memory? Ok, I can live with that, hot memory can cause weird corruptions like that, right? But why did it go nutso when I hit overdrive by mistake, that messes with the core, which I doubt was too high at a mere 526. Even then, it was only all borked for maybe 5 seconds before I had it off. I let it sit for a minute and put it back on. All was fine and the defaults where back. So why did it go crazy again when I tried to exit out of the artifact tester, it was fine during the test. Do you think anything managed to get smote during those few seconds? The memory was only 315 at most. Im just a bit paranoid and spooked about it.

Needless to say, I dont want to touch it again. (for now :X) But want to figure out what caused it to go looney, twice.
 
socK said:
So you think I just pissed off the memory? Ok, I can live with that, hot memory can cause weird corruptions like that, right? But why did it go nutso when I hit overdrive by mistake, that messes with the core, which I doubt was too high at a mere 526. Even then, it was only all borked for maybe 5 seconds before I had it off. I let it sit for a minute and put it back on. All was fine and the defaults where back. So why did it go crazy again when I tried to exit out of the artifact tester, it was fine during the test. Do you think anything managed to get smote during those few seconds? The memory was only 315 at most. Im just a bit paranoid and spooked about it.

Needless to say, I dont want to touch it again. (for now :X) But want to figure out what caused it to go looney, twice.
Click to expand...


Your lucky, I bought a cheapo 9600xt and it was fubared by just by running ATI tool's max core and mem test luckly it can be RMAed....
 
ray4389 said:
Let's see I remember my 8600xt reached pretty high OCs...

585/309 I believe...

stock was
500/300

memory doesn't like to be oced....
Click to expand...

I don't remember having any problems with oc'ing the memory on that card. I forget what I ended up getting both values to, but I had one killer oc on it.
 
I just played some HalfLife2 for a while and it seemed perfectly fine. If I have any terrible problems with it, I guess i'll send it back for a new one.
 
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