Weird Overcloking Occurance

[{NcsO}ReichstaG]

I still have my ASUS 5900 Ultra. Once in a while, when I get bored and try running benchmarks and things, I overclock it. To overclock it I tried all sorts of programs, including-
Powerstrip, RivaTuner, ASUS Smart Doctor, Coolbits.

When I ran the older Nvidia drivers (around 45), I could overclock it and see a performance increase (or at least I think I could). However, now with the newer drivers - 66.93 and some below that ( I forget which versions), I cant overclock at all. I try raising the CORE. After raising its stock speed of 450 Mhz by 3 Mhz to 453 Mhz and running benchmarks/ games... the performance really drops. In CS Steam v1.6-
with max resolution, full eye candy, and high quality, I ususally get around 60-80 FPS. After the overclocking I cant get more than 30 FPS. The funny thing is that I barely even overclocked it. Even when I underclock it back to its normal speeds- I still get the same poor results- like 30 FPS in CS instead of the usual 60-80. To fix the problem, I uninstall the drivers and then reinstall. -That always fixes it- back to normal game performance.

Also- I overclock my CORE by the same amount as I overclock the memory- to keep the same ratio. I have always overclocked it like that (from the Nvidia 45 drivers, about a year ago- to todays drivers)

Before it did not react like this to overclocking. Could it be the drivers?

Also- I do not have any freezeups/artifacts in games, even when I overclocked it, to 550 Mhz core by 1 Ghz memory.

Your *cough*constructive *cough* opinions are always welcome.

 

[UoMDeacon]

How are your temps looking? Try running rthdribl in windowed mode, and monitoring your GPU temps at the same time. Maybe the core temp is getting too high for some odd reason (heatsink getting unseated? bad contact?) and your GPU is doing some clock throttling to prevent itself from burning up.

 

[{NcsO}ReichstaG]

Could be...

Under the Nvidia drivers...it says that the temperature at which the GPU will throttle back is...
lol....140 C

My GPU never hits that high. I monitored in game temperatures (quickly switching windows)
and saw the highest was at 76 C. However the weird thing is that... I am running a fullscreen game and I switch to the windows screen to check the temps. The temps read for a sec (like. 74 C) and then in a matter of seconds drop to 65 C. How is that possible, for the temps to change so drastically and so quickly?