ATI's Catalyst 3.8 Drivers: ATI Sanctioned Overclocking
by Derek Wilson on October 8, 2003 3:02 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Turning up the Heat
With any system that involves overclocking (factory regulated or otherwise), we are going to want to know it’s stable. To try to push the system, we ran the Final Fantasy XI benchmark on a loop for about 2 hours, followed by a run of X2 at the highest settings possible, then we hit it with GunMetal and finished off with TRAOD.
Tomb Raider is our most intensive test here, as when all the options are set all the way up, with no compression on anything, 6x AA, at 1800x1440 we squeeze out just about 9 frames per second.
Everything ran smoothly and beautifully. There were no stability issues or problems with the graphics.
Of course, that brings us to the next question we have to ask. Since the card overclocks itself based on heat, how does it respond when we heat it up?
To test this, we ran our "kill -9" TRAOD test a couple times to raise the temperature of the card as high as we know how to get it without a blow torch. We then reran the Aquamark3 and Unreal benchmarks. Here's what we saw:
The Aquamark3 score dropped from 47.62 to 46.78
The Unreal score dropped from 135.42 to 132.47
Of course, the performance should never drop below that of the stock clock speed, as the chip will never clock it self that lower than that. What this does mean is that as you are playing a graphically intensive game, your cards performance increase from overdrive will degrade over time.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
I'm just setting up a new rig with a 1/2in watercooling system. I have the maze4 GPU cooler and was about to buy a 9800-Pro. I assume that if I got an XT instead and used the C3.8 drivers it will probably run permenantly at the full overdrive speed because the chip should be cool even under full load?I wonder if the new drivers will cause any problems if I manualy overclock an XT...
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
lol, when ATI renders only the half in TRAOD it is clear that ATI is leading. Also please look at the 52.14 fpsAnonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
Sounds like #28 has a case of the sour grapes ;)Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
I think, reading the reference numbering that something has knocked them out of sync.Still, for want of a better reference, what I see as #12 has a good point. Try cooling the case and see what happens. I'd like to know how far the overdrive is prepared to take it.
Also, perhaps the 9600XT part may see more dramatic improvements since the base running temperature should be lower than the 9800XT.
Scott
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
OOOHHHH! that explains it! i didnt know the overdrive feature only went up to 432mhz...well, i guess its a step in the right direction, but still pretty conservative all things considered
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Checking out other sites reviews (I wonder why it wasn't mentioned here...), Overdrive only goes up to 432Mhz on the core and doesn't touch mem speed at all (although they said it will in future releases). That's such a small increase it's pretty much as if it wasn't there at all.Manual overclocking won't get replaced anytime soon.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Should try the 3.8 with IL2. My framerate went in the crapper and now there is texture tearing. They did fix the white water "perfect mode" bug though. Well,except in perfect mode it does about 20 FPS now. Whoopie..........!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#33... was that a comeback? LOLStop talking about HL2 cause it aint coming out for half a year now. Doom3 will most likely come out before it =)
And why are some of you people acting like theres nothing to prove RIGHT NOW that ATi beats NV in DX9 games?
Im not going to bash GeforceFX owners. You had your own reasons for buying that line of cards. Whether it was to support your favorite company or to get the really cool leaf blower. Who cares.
But dont try and say no one knows if ATI cards will perform better then Nvidia. It does and its been proven. In developer interviews for almost all DX9 games, developers say they needed to code a special NV path to try and get compareable frame rates to the R3XX series. (With no special coding for ATI cards)
If your going to tell me that the developers dont know, then whatever, put on your fanboy cape and jump of a bridge.
p.s. ROFL @ #8
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#31, this is #28 ...I wasn't talking about HL2 frame rates.
I was talking about TRAOD fram rates.
I thuroughly expect HL2 to perform MUCH better than TRAOD. I'm really pissed off at CORE for writing a shitty game. I dont' think their performance problems are due to a lack of graphics power, but to incompitant programming.
But I can play at 10x7 with AA and AF, as long as the horrid PS2.0 effects are off.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#31 atleast he can play the game...what are u using ? maybe intel extreme graphics...