OCing X1600 in W3j

That is fine. But if you leave it at anything other than stock/default, and powerplay tries to change modes, it can produce very strange results. Anything from artifacting and major screen corruption, to your screen blacking out, to the laptop powering off, BSOD, lock-ups, or even hardware failure. Just be careful.

 

I managed to get my W3J to 510.30/513.00 with a score of 4797. Then I got scared and set it back to default and stopped messing with Ati Tools. It's a new laptop and I get rather nervous. Don't wanna take any chances.

 

Ok, yesterday I played with some mem/core values on X1600 in my W3j. For safeness I used mobile air-conditioner. All scores with no artifacts, 100% stable. These settings are useless cause you need really good cooling solution, nevertheless the card is capable to get such high scores. All tests @ Catalyst 6.7

X1600 @ core 530 / mem 540

3dm05 : 4887 (9 marks to 2nd place in Futuremark ranking!!! Grrr!!! ) http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2158007
3dm06 : 2503 (1st place by a long shot , 2nd is 2304) http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=432453




And remember kids : don't do it @ home

BTW I noticed one thing :
If you're using Notebook Hardware Control, the temps that program is showing is HDD and GPU!! NOT CPU!!, don't know why but that's for sure.

 

wow those are low temps..is that with nhc2.0?

 

No, it's with air-conditioner set to high

 

Is that your girlfriend hiding behing the scores?

 

No, it's Evangeline Lilly She's not my girlfriend...not yet

 

hrmmm ... What makes u say that NHC shows GPU/HD temps and not CPU/HD temps? also ... where the hell can i get somthing to show my GPU temps?! clarfication + a tool for GPU (or CPU, which ever im not actually getting) temps would be great. thanks!

 

I'm almost 100% sure with this. I even expected that for some time but now it's confirmed. NHC shows temperature for hdd which is about 40 degrees and that's fine. But second temp is jumping from 52 to 60 (than fans start to blow). I can do absolutely nothing but that doesn't change anything. In idle CPU temp should be on one level not jumping especially in laptops where power consumption is low (that's why laptops with dedicated graphics are much louder - gpu is making the heat). Moreover yesterday I installed some program to OC CPU (it didn't work, nevermind) but had an option to monitor CPU and HDD temps. I enabled them. HDD temp was the same as in NHC but CPU was...40 degrees STABLE. I wait couple of minutes to see what happen and nothing. The temp was the same (idle). At the same time NHC shows 15-20 degrees more and it was jumping from 55-60. That's why I think it shows not CPU but GPU temps. Finally : during 3dmarks NHS shows about 78-80 degrees for CPU and that is way too much...but not for GPU during benches. Of course I may be wrong but something tells me that I'm not.

 

do you have to have omegas to OC, or can i use ati tool w/ Mobile Catalyst 6.7?

 

Like I said : scores above are made with Catalyst 6.7 + Ati Tool, no Omega's required.

 

i just tried to up my clock to 490 and my screen crashed lol, it came bck and i had 6 funky looking screens...

 

in fact if i move the slider at all it crashes... that's not good....

 

dude that same thing happened to me when i unselected extend desktop...either way not good..i wasn't even OCed..i notice that powerplay is forced to optimal performance when you are driving an external monitor..extended or not

 

yeah when i click the 'mem' button says my card is not supported . I get a blank screen whenever i try to mess with it lol. Whats a good program for monitoring cpu/gpu temp clock speeds?

 

the older nhc monitors but currently since im using rmclock i use everest to monitor my temps hd/cpu/gpu

 

anyone have any ideas on the blank screen?

 

I heard the Z96J's will do that when you OC them too far. I would just forget the OC'ing. not worth it in a laptop.

 

If you are using ATI Tool close the 3D view before moving the sliders (3D View is the fuzzy rotating block) For some reason it crashes when the box is open. Once you have set your new clock you can open the 3D view again if you want.

 

Ok, this may be a dumb question, but I have a w2jb with x1600 256mb, I thought all x1600 256 are all the same? when I checked the default core and mem in the ccc panel, hardware section, it shows 419/468, I thought the default was 450/450 or is it 470/470? and why is even when I oc'ed to 450/450, ccc panel is still showing as 419/468? I'm not looking to oc but I do think 3dmark05 of 4150 is pretty low with everything stock, I would like at least above 4200. does anyone know the answer?

 

NO, they are not all the same. Notebook manufacturers get the final say in clock speeds. They will change the clock speeds so that the card will operate at reasonable temperatures and run stably. Do not fret over a score of 4150. A lot of people with an X1600 get well below a 3700.

50 Points in 3D mark 05 is NOTHING. You can re-run it get get scores that are atleast 100 apart. If you were to re-run it right now, you might get a 4250. You also might get a 4050. You could even get below 4k, or over 4300. Usually you will gets scores which are all within 100 of each other. My Z96J will get anything between 3750 and 3850.

You could get that 3D mark score up about 100-300 points by upgrading to a T2600 or T2700. Or you could improve your score by 50 more by closing a few background appliations.

3D mark really doesn't mean much. It's the real-life situations that count.

Most people's desktops won't get above 1500 in 3D mark 05. A lot of desktop won't even come close to 1000. 4150 in a notebook is very nice. Sure, it can't compete with a $3000 desktop with $2000 in graphics hardware. But you've got a machine that will run any game on the market, which is more powerful than quite a few people's main systems.

 

ok i got it to give me a non-blank screen. You need version .25, version .24 doesn't support the x1600. Oh and the program says changing memory timings is not supported on my chipset? Also is there some good gpu/cpu clockspeed/temp measuring software?

 

bumpity bump

 

Ok, I should be getting my new laptop tomorrow and I may overclock the card. Now the guide at the beginning is very useful and so shouldn't be too hard to follow.
Never overclocked any card of mine and I do have a few questions. Am I meant to use 3Dmark05 AND 3Dmark06 or just any one.
Also are they easy enough for me to understand i.e. will I know what is stable and what isn't from looking at the results from the program?

Sorry if these have been asked in one of the earlier pages but I haven't got the time to read through them all.

 

3D mark is a BENCHMARKING tool. Not an overclocking tool. You cannot overclock with it. 3D mark 05 does not detect artifacts/stability. Although if your laptop crashes while running a benchmark, then it is obviously unstable.

Judging by your post, I would honestly highly advise against overclocking your laptop. It sounds like you have minimal knowledge in this area of computers. Also, overclocking in a laptop is already risky enough, and I would advise just about anyone from doing such a thing. IF you must overclock, I would advise that you start with a desktop. And the first thing I would do to start overclocking a desktop is to read up more on the subject.

The last thing you want is a BRAND NEW $2000 DEAD LAPTOP WITH A VOIDED WARRANTY.

Just my advice. You will not notice any performance gains while gaming on the laptop if you overclock. But you will void your warranty, your laptop will run hotter, you risk instability and fried parts, and you will stress the laptop's power circuits. Definately not a good idea.

 

I followed the instructions detailed for OCing the W3J.

I have atitools .25 beta 10 and omega drivers 3.8.273

The results I get from 3dmark06 are around 3-10fps, and a score of around 1700

Does anyone have any idea what might be going wrong?

 

As an update: I just checked on CPU-z to see some stats and found that my CPU appears to be running at 997MHz most of the time.

Also, The RAM freqency says 333MHz. I ordered the laptop with DDR-2 667 MHz; Did I get screwed or am I just missing the multiplier somewhere?

 

you need to set your proc to performance mode in order to allow it to clock up to full speeds..the ram is fine 333x2=666 right? nothing to worry about there

 

DDR = DOUBLE Data Rate which means exactly that 333 x2=667. And about CPU : you have 1Ghz most of the time cause you don't strees the CPU enough to put his multiplier up. Besides you can set mulitplier in NHC or P4G and you will have 1,83Ghz non stop, but what's the point??

@ jterp7 : sorry man

 

Thanks to both of you for the tips on that. I wouldn't wanna put it at 1.83, rather 2.0 if I were to go that route

I was just making sure that I wasn't doing anything wrong there.

Do either of you have any insight into what might be causing my extremely poor video performance? Elder Scrolls plays fairly well, a little jump at times; but the 3dmark06 runs DIRT slow, on both 450(default) and 500 (oc).

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Update: I reinstalled directx and .net framework 2.0, and got 2411. This is still REALLY low, or am I crazy?

Second Update: I see now that 2411 isn't that bad for 3dm06, it just seemed horribly slow when I was watching it run. I was finally able to get 3dm05 installed, and just got a score of 4773, which seems to be fairly in-line with everyone else. FYI, this was running at 510.3/513, and it was initiated via vnc, so there might have been some initial slowness that caused the loss of a few points.

 

Mastha: I just checked your 3dm05 and saw that you were running at 530/540.. did you really get that high??

If so, I might push a little harder just to see how far I can go.

Also, just a heads up for anyone else doing this, I highly recommend putting your laptop on some kind of setup that allows better airflow underneath. I did this, and even when running 3dm05/06, I get nothing more than a luke warm heat from the side vent

Edit: tried 530/540 and it locked during one of the later stages of the 3dmark. I think I'm just going to stick with 510, as it's quite a performance increase over the default 450, and so far is rock solid

Update:
OK so far my best scores are:

3dm05: 4579
3dm06: 2174

 

Guys,

I downloaded and installed catalyst 6.9 and ATITool_0.25b-10(btw, there is a new v 0.25b-15). It seems everything is ok by now with drivers. I set it with 500/500 and got 4636 in 3DMark.

1.Do default settings go back after I close ATITool? And the same after restart ?
2. If ATITool is opened with overlocked settings,the locked settings in catalyst 6.9 stay the same, dont change. Is it right?


Also, It was possible just download ATITool and use it with ATI driver that came with w3j. Right?

Thank you !

 

I don't think ATI Tool works with the catalyst drivers; I'm pretty sure that you have to install the Omega drivers for it to allow changes. There was a link to them 1-2 pages back

 

I overclock my desktop with ATI drivers. I OC'ed my Uniwill a while back as well. ATI drivers there too. My x800xl runs perfectly fine at 520/605 under ATI drivers using ATI tool as opposed to the stock 400/490. And I notice a HUGE difference in performance.

Anyway, When you close ATI tool, the clock speeds remain the same until you either change them again with ATI tool, or Catalyst Control center resets clocks(i.e. powerplay). You should disable power play while overclocking though if you have a laptop, because it can cause some serious issues when you have the laptop overclocked and it tries to switch to a different mode.

When you restart your computer, the clocks will reset to theigh default clock speeds. The way this works is that the clock speeds for the card are stored in the VGA BIOS. When you restart a system and it POST's again, it reloads the VGA BIOS and thus runs the card at stock speeds. The only way to change the clock speeds in the BIOS is to flash the BIOS with either a modded BIOS or the BIOS from a different card.

 

Thank you guys !

I tried both, catalyst and omega drivers, with ATI tool and it works ok. Even using overlocking while powerplay is on I didnt have problems with w3j( knock knock knock ). Set easily to 520/520 and got over 4800 in 3DMark, but decided to stay with500/500.

 

You were probably plugged into the AC the whole time, yes? Problems only start to begin when Powerplay switches modes, which will only occur when on battery or switching between battery and AC.

What can happen is that when Powerplay goes to change the clock speeds, it screws up the new speeds because the old ones are overclocked.

Think of what happens when you take a 400/490 graphics card and set it to 800/1000 without trying anything between. It's going to lock up immediately, and you can potentially have some serious hardware failure. This is essentially what can happen when you overclock with Powerplay enabled and it tries to switch modes.

 

THANK YOU JPZ !

You are right. I was plugged into the AC the whole time.
I understood ...I'll be very careful with PowerPlay.

What's about battery when PowerPlay is off ? I mean, how long will I be able to use w3 with powerplay off ?

 

^ Really depends on what your doing with it, and your screen brightness if wi-fi is on etc.

 

Thanks kierkegaard for the link, it's an awsome post (the one about Nvidia overclocking).

 

Can't tell you because I don't have a W3J. I'm not overclocking my Z96J, plus it is different from your W3J anyway.

It also depends on how high your overclocks are.

I personally wouldn't even think of overclocking on battery power. I have run my Uniwill OC'ed on battery(ATI 9700) and the battery life dropped from about an hour to 30 minutes. And that was with a mild OC.

I am currently working on a mobile liquid cooling solution for that same Uniwill, so I might go back and overclock it to death once I'm done. I haven't used it much since I got my Z96J. But the Uniwill is my 'voided warranty - mod it to death and do whatever I want with it for fun' laptop.

 

But if I oveclocked on AC and then put notebook on battery power with powerplay off can I play games then?

thank you !

 

Well I don't know why you would want to... but as long as powerplay is disabled, you shouldn't have much trouble, other than shorter battery life.

I honestly wouldn't even think about OC'ing a laptop, unless I didn't care whether or not the parts failed and I was unable to get it fixed.

As I mentioned before, I'll be overclocking the 9700 pro in my Uniwill laptop once I get the liquid cooling system done, but that is different. First of all, I'm going to have sufficient cooling, second, it is my secondary laptop which I rarely use and I don't care if it stops working. 3rd, it has a powerful(for a laptop) 165W PSU, and my processor has been undervolted so that it uses less than half of the original 81.5 watts it consumed.

That can be another problem with laptop OC'ing. Your electrical hardware is not designed to be running any extra power to your parts; your power supply can easily be stressed out. Your PSU could fail prematurely and end up frying all your laptop hardware.

 

JPZ - one more time THANK YOU ! That is very useful to know.
"Well I don't know why you would want to" - just in case

 

this might be a little off-topic but is the reason why my w3j won't run battery mode with the new Catalyst 6.9 is because its auto-overclocks me, forcing powerplay to keep rebooting my computer in the desktop loading screen?

once i plugged in battery all was well and fine.


EDIT: well i tried it myself.. and it works.. so 6.9 is fine aslong as i have powerplay optimized or disabled.

 

First of all, DON'T overclock on battery, it just won't work. At least with Omega + AtiTool. In my case, when I accidentally unplug AC, I get all kinds of artefacts on screen, scary

Second thing, x1600 standard is 500/500, ASUS just lowered it, so 99.99% unless your overclock it higher than 500/500 nothing bad will happen. Concerning the power - who told you that it will start consuming more? According to your reasoning an overclocked CPU consumes more power, which isn't neccesarily the case. While rasing voltage can help stability.

Btw, a funny fact, I have 1.66 Ghz cpu and my 3dmark05 score @500/500 is 4602, the difference in price was around 150$ and perfomance difference is 30 points, heh =)

 

You honestly don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. Everything you have said in this post is incorrect or was said for incorrect reasons, except for Asus having lowered the clock speeds.

First of all, you CAN overclock on the battery. Read what you quoted. It is entirely possible to overclock on battery power, however there are two concerns. The first is that battery life will be shorter because of increased power consumption. Yes, overclocked parts DO consume more power, I'll explain that in a moment. The second concern is the relationship between powerplay and overclocking. When your computer switches profiles when overclocked, back things happen. You have experienced the minor effects of it(massive screen artifacting) because the clock profiling gets all screwed up and tries to reclock your card at some insane setting.

Now then, you are correct that Asus lowered the clock speeds. Obviously, they did this for a reason. If the X1600 ran stably at higher clock speeds, they would have raised them. Something that you have to factor in which I mentioned before is the power adapter. The stock power adapter was chosen by Asus to be run with the system not overclocked. It is entirely possible, but unlikely, to push the power requirements past the supply's ability.

Finally, on to power consumption. First of all, if you don't believe me, watch the power load with a measuring tool between your power supply and the wall. There is a big difference between overclocked and not overclocked.

Here is some quick logic for you... the X1600 clocks down to SAVE POWER. Obviously, lowering clock speeds lowers power consumption. This means that power consumption will go UP when clock speeds go up.

What you suggested about desktops is correct. A faster processor running at the same voltage will consume more power. True, increasing voltage will increase power consumption even more. But both are factors in power consumption.

Why do you think that laptop processors scale not only voltage but speed in order to save power? You could come back at me with the explanation that lower speeds means lower stable voltages and therefore lower power consumption, which is true, however it is not the answer to my question. Lowering the clock speeds saves power as well. Just try seeing how long your battery lasts at 1.66ghz and full voltage and 998mhz and full voltage. There will be a difference.

One last thing to convince you. Do you agree that overclocked parts produce more heat? Well then, tell me where that heat comes from. MORE POWER. Overclocked parts naturally draw more power, thus reasulting in more heat.

And Zedr0n, try running Oblivion. See what happens with a 1.66ghz processor. Framerates will be half of what an identical system with a 2.33ghz merom will put out.

I do however believe in saving money by not buying top of the line processors.

 

OK =) I was wrong about power consumption I just feel it's not that much of an issue ocing GPU.

Still, if ASUS did it for a reason, do you imply that the official ATI clock speeds are unstable or maybe ASUS bought not-so-good samples? As is the case with desktop parts overclocking is safe most of the time.

I've tried Oblivion, you know =) And, in this you might be wrong, modern games are much more GPU-intensive than CPU-wise. I'm not sure about Merom, though
Still, I was talking about difference between 1.66 and 1.84, not 2.33

If you wanted to try smth CPU-intensive, try PCSX2(PS2 emulator). Well, that thing really shows the difference. And, still, while games even don't utilise dual core, the difference between merom and general dual core at the same speed will be laughable.

 

how do you guys find out the temperature from the x1600...
i have the z96js and when i go over the CCC icon in the tray it shows 0C... could it be that there is no thermometer?

is there any other tool to check out the temperature? cause id like to OC my card and still keep track of the temperature.

z96js
T2500 yonah
x1600 425/375...
1GB DDR2
WSXGA Glossy

 

Try using
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=893
Works for me.

 

cool, tnx.
btw, does this check the temp of the gpu as well?
are there any other ones that are recommended?

X1600
T2500
1GB DDR2