Tried overclocking gto2 w/ ATITool

[Cruc1al]

Hey, I have never overclocked a vid card before, and now I bought a card that's supposed to overclocked pretty nicely.

I'm using ATITool, since that's the tool ppl tell me to use. Is it recommended to use the "Find max core" function?

I used it. The default core frequency for my sapphire gto2 is 400MHz. ATITool was raising up the core frequency and checking for artefacts at the same time. There was no artefacts at any point, but at about 2min45sec the 3D View froze. That happened even at stock speeds, why?
But a bit over 436MHz my screen went dark. Why did it do that before showing any symptoms that would indicate for a too high temperature? I had to reset, and when I loaded ATITool again, it said: "ATITool did not exit properly. Crash because of a too high overclock? Last working frequency was 436.15."

About those temperatures.. The temp for the core at frequency seems to be about 32C, and when I use ATITool's 3D View. the temp rises at about 40C or so. [EDIT: Actually, it was 46C at some point too.] That's pretty normal, right? Right before ATITool froze, the temp was somewhere around 50C. Is that too high for a video card? I'm using the stock cooler that came with it, since some reviews about the card said that it's seriously overclockable even with the stock cooler.

Also, is the frequencies that work using ATITool stable? I mean, a couple of minutes testing can't really tell me if it's stable or not, and I should run a 3DMark to really test it?

[EDIT: Should I use ATITool's fan speed control? The defaults it sets for dynamic fan speed raising with temperature seem weird. 100% fan speed only after 75C ?!? Isn't that like VERY high temp for a vid card? Now that I have it fixed at 100%, using the 3DView raises temp just few degrees.]

Thanks

 

[SonicTron]

well the 3dview stops and if you notice, it says its doing something else at that time. The 3dview starts up again in a short time.

 

[Cruc1al]

hmm? What is it doing then..? I should just wait then? When will it bring my display up again? You've probably noticed by now that I have a lot of questions

I tried finding max core with the fan fixed at 100%. ATITool froze at a bit over 2 min this time and at about 422MHz core. Why is that?

 

[Cruc1al]

OK...

I ran ATITool's find max core and mem. Both for about 15 minutes, and then lowered the clocks by 5MHz. They were then set at ~435 core and ~534 memory. Then I ran 3DMark2001 to see if it had any problems handling that and if there was any improvement in the score. My score of 3DMark2001 with stock speeds and unlocked GTO2 (16 pipelines instead of 12) is 21276. I have Athlon 64 3500+.
The new score was 21764.

(The 3DMark2001 score with the new frequencies was, for some weird reason, only 18436. I thought it must be the programs I have on, so I closed some programs, blocked internet and disabled my symantec antivirus auto-protect. Then I uses Cacheman XP to free some RAM and defragged the RAM with RAM Def 26XT.
I ran 3DMark2001 again with the same freqs and the score was even LOWER - 18436.
Can someone tell me why ?! Does that actually have something to do with the overclocking?)

EDIT to the above in brackets: LOL am I a noob or what. I forgot to check if I have AA or AF on 4x and 16x. Again and again I find myself doing noobish mistakes when messing with hardware But I'm learning.