Did I kill my baby? :'(

Hi,

As you may be aware I had a 450/360 overclock from 297/229.5. Everything was working great, and like an idiot, I decided to get the ATi Tray Tools which come w/ the timing settings. I messed around w/ those at stock clocks, and when I applied my overclock back, garbling!

I thought, no big deal, I'll just reset timings, and put back my overclock. Upon resetion of the timings (which should've happend at restart anyway), I noticed, my new overclock wouldn't even get close w/o producing errors. The GPU overclock stayed the same, but the mem gets to ~300 only! I am inclined to think some memory timings are still not as they used to be because when benchmarking w/ ATT at stock clocks, it gets ~1510 and it should get ~1487 (as it did bfr w/ stock clocks bfr I messed w/ the timings).

I uninstalled ATT, uninstalled drivers, driver cleaner pro'ed, reinstalleld omega drivers + ATT (the one that comes w/ omega's doesn't have the timing option.)

I then system restored and redid the above paragraph.

I believe I may have screwed it when I applied overclocking settings at those timings. I did 450/460 instead of 450/360!!!! Is my former overclocking ability lost forever or can I have some hope?

I would've thought that when you overclock to much it just burns out and stops working, not that you loose some overclock ability

Pease help!

 

Yeah, you must have done some sort of damage. . .although, your system is still up and running. Can you play any sort of games without problems?

In ATT, see if you can reset the card back to default.

 

Yea well I ahven't tried games but ATT benching still works fine... (up to around 300 when it used to be 360). I have reset the stupid memory timings long ago...

 

If you can find and locate the BIOS for the X300 in your notebook, you should be able to reflash it. That should help you.

 

That's a no-go. I already reflashed to a newer bios from the dell site...BTW thanks for the fast replies man, I appreciate it. I just really wish I could get it's overclocking potential back....It seems so hard to me to believe that the damage just reduced that potential, but didn't completely bust it. Has anyone heard of this before?

 

Nothing unthinkable. The higher the frequencies, the more stress is put on the card. It's not impossible that the card suffers some damage that reduces the overall amount of stress it can take.

 

I experinced one weird thing yesterday. I saw some black squares in games, and I overclocked like nothing I mean 350/350 would show it! I found that ATT did messed it up. I restarted and that was it. Now it works fine even on 410/430 and all latencies set.
I'm sorry that I hear that too much overclocking can produce this sort of the problem. I am still optimistic though. I find it a bit weird that on normal speed it works as usual, but you cannot overclock. A new dell bios? I still think it has something to do with driver- ATT combo. Don't forget that when the screen gets screwed, VPU recover kicks in and restores many hardware settings! Maybe ATT holds some weird info somewhere. Try another overclocking tool.

Cheers,

 

Yes I find it very weird too that it works normally up to a certain point. I tried overclocking w/ NHC and it produces the same effect. WTF could ATT store those **** timings. I don't know how many times I uninstalled the drivers, used driver cleaner and reinstalled drivers. I even did a windows restore. What other overclocking utility let's me change timings so I can check they're alright? I opend RAbit or w/e and I read the info section and I saw the timings were good I think, but I don't have a list of all the default timings, just the ones I changed. (which are the same ones from your post Ikovac!, that's how I found out about this lol)

EDIT: Ok I'm optimistic again, when overclocking w/ NHC, it seems I was wrong...it can go much higher!

EDIT2: Ok ...no it can't...

EDIT3: Where can I talk to someone that's really hardcore about stuff like this? Like the creator of ATi Tools Tray? or RAbiT or something

EDIT4: Ok I private messaged Ray Adams over at driverheaven.net with a detailed account of what happened. Let's see what he says. (Crosses fingers). I'm now thinking of moving the stuff I have on one partition to C, and then using that D partition to install another Windows XP SP2, and trying it there. Will it work to have the same operating system on 2 partitions? How do I go about this?

 

Holy smokes!! Why didn't you just buy a computer with a faster graphics card to begin with?

 

I'm using this comp more for school and to connect to my HDTV...but now I'm just pissed that I can't get the performance out of it that I used to be able to...it's a psychological thing, even if I don't need it, I always want the best possible out of my hardware.

 

your clocks for an X300 are really really high, i can't believe you even got them up that high without VPU recover taking over.

you definitely could have hurt your card, no card is going to last forever, not even on stock clocks, I say make Dell give you a new one because they didn't directly tell you that overclocking the hell out of your card would damage it, make them cave!

 

Yea I know the clocks were high and that's why I was so proud of it.

LOL...you must be joking about the second part...

 

Hi flav_cool,

Did you have the same timings like my x700? That is strange (edit I mean strange that it could have worked). Anyway timings are along with the GPU/MEM clock written in the BIOS. You can set whatever you like, but if you didn't write it into BIOS, on next reset they should be on default. Did you try completely shutdown the notebook and remove battery and power. Press On/off button just to be sure that all capacitors went dry. Turn on again. Check the timings and freqs. Are they like before? CAS is one of the most tricky. Default 2 is on my x700, and in my settings it is 1.
And yes you can have a dualboot.

Hope it helps,

 

If it's of any comfort to you, my Radeon 9600, which is stocked at 320/210 cannot even go to 400/250 without producing some artifacts and downright dies at 450/280. If you can get up to 300MHz in RAM without ATT even complaining about artifacts, it's very good.

 

No I tested for my own stable timings, one by one, (but only the ones you said caused no trouble). Again, though the problem I believe arises from my sheer stupidity of setting the mem clocks to 460 instead of 360 by mistake :'(

I am now installing another XP on the second partition...I doubt it'll help since you're right, they're stored in bios, and yea they have been reset...

Well it never even reports artifacts...just freezes up...something which overclocking memory never did before...it would just produce some visible artifacts past 360 and it would report artifacts (non-visible) within ATT at around 336.

UPDATE: Ok it's official It just crapped out in the new partition too at ~300)

 

Man I understand your situation. I really don't know what happened. Maybe if there was some kind of the damage to the card - it would behave like this. But somehow I really doubt it. I mean it is a machine. All those thingies are still inside and work on a default frequency like a charm. Now you overclock a bit and it freezes. Maybe a new flashed dell bios changed something?

And what - shutdown (hard reset) didn't help either? ****.

 

This was happening with the old bios too. I only flashed to the new one after the problem in hopes of solving it.

It doesn't overclock just "a little" though...it still goes from 229.50 to ~300. I just can't stand how it goes not even half as much as it used to though. Before, I never even took it to where memory would cause whole screen artifacts and lock up. At >360 it would merely rarely cause some visual artifact on the little ship in ATT.

I did not try the shutdown and hard reset (Thte taking out battery, holding power button) yet. How long should I hold the power button?

 

You just turn it off. take out the batt. unplug. press the button like you are gonna turn it on. It will drain the remaining electricity from all circuits. Hopefully it sets everything back to the default.

 

Yea I'm gonna do it in a sec. I'm just reformatting D right now since I'm finished w/ that dual boot.

UPDATE: It didn't help... but for once I noticed something new. ATi Tray tools was now reporting artifacts before the crash occured.

 

Since you have a Dell i9300, the GPU in there is removable - I would see how to take it out and reseat it.

Never know, might help.

 

Well i guess I could look inside but I just doubt it's going to help a memory issue. At best I'll see scorch marks confirming an irreversible problem. I'm just going crazy right now thinking this might still be recoverable.

...I don't think I have the necessary tools...

 

Have you looked to see how much an X300 for an i9300 would cost? I bet you can get them for cheap on eBay, probably a lot of people replacing them with a Go7800.

Also try Dell's refurbished parts section.

 

yes i was joking about the second part ^_^

chazman's idea sounds good. my roomates X800XL just went crazy so he is sending it in again to ATI we think it got zapped when he installed it, possibly static but that is pretty unlikely.

it was displaying crazy red "text" all over the place.

and again what chazman said about getting another or possibly just trying to upgrade to 6800 or 7800 if that is possible

 

Sidicas, very silly thing to say. Reason why people overclock is to get FREE performance from what they have.

If they could've bought a faster videocard don't you think they would have?

That wasn't very helpful so I suggest you refrain from posts like that from now on.

Or feel my wrath. RAwwwwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr~!!!!!!

Flav_cool, try setting the ATT settings to defaults, even though you have already done so, and try to find the original bios online and reflash it with some tool if you can.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Well those are good suggestions but I can't spend more money on this...

There's a new thing I noticed though!!

My power adapter's light no longer turns on! (I only saw it on for a little bit but now it's back off). It used to always work so it's not like the little led didn't work from the beginning or something.

Is it POSSIBLE that I broke the power adapter last night w/ these insane overclocks? Possibly sucked too much juice for the 90W adapter?

 

Well, GPU stability is influenced by the power. Can you measure the voltage on your adapter?

 

No...I can't measure it, don't have the tools.

 

Get on Dell chat and tell them to ship you another one. You should get it in three days

 

Sounds to me like there is some kind of an issue with the power, and not the card itself. You are right - overclocking "pulls" more power from the adapter, but I have never heard that it can damage the power circuits in the notebook or the adapter itself . I mean - your power LED is off or blinking - that looks to me like a much more important issue than x300 card having artifacts when OC?
Maybe if you get to the reason why it doesn't work well, things might look different in connection to the x300 OC?
I mean maybe it is just the consequence to the power problem?

 

So this is for sure a bad thing? (the light?) also, can I go to the dell chat, which only the US has, if I bought from dell canada? [The light is back on...for now]

I'm hoping that's what it is.

UPDATE: I also just noticed the recharge light is not on and my battery is at 93. The battery recharing light flashes maybe once a minute but that's it.

In NHC, it was reporting a charge rate of 0.011W lowest to about ~35W highest.

 

OOOOOOO MMMMMMMM GGGGGGGGG. MY BABY IS BACK!!!

I have it at 330 right now, reporting no artifacts, no crashes. I think I might know the source of the problem... On battery it crashed at 307 last time. Now it's on AC w/ battery charging. I believe if the battery gets to 100% it will crash again since it might try to partly use the battery?

Could all of this be a faulty battery?

Perhaps it was the crash on battery that fixed it since it recovered, and reset some settings which hadn't been reset and wouldn't reset w/ crashes on AC.

 

I wouldn't recommend overclocking on battery . . when PowerPlay kicks in, the overclocking and the PP wanting to turn down the clocks conflict with one another.

It might have been a battery problem, can't be sure. Maybe you were on battery and it couldn't handle the power draw, and just shut off.

 

I had powerplay disabled. And actuallly ALL the times it crashed EXCEPT for the last crash happened on AC. I think that final crash on battery finally reset w/e was still messed from the timings (I can't imagine what after a fresh install, and new bios!)

I couldn't be happier right now. THanks for all of the help guys!

 

Glad it works now.

As a followup:

What are your current stable settings? How much do you get in the ATT bench? Does ATT report any artifacts?

 

I put the GPU at 450.00 (from 297.00) b/c once before it locked up at 454.50 and 450 is the next lowest setting. I decided to leave the memory where it would not artifact at all (report no artifacts), which is 333.00 or 666.00 (that's from 459)

This is at 450/720 where ati tray tools reports artifacts but non e are actually seen:

 

I'm so glad! Phew. I took it so personally, because of my OC posts and suggestions. Last night before I went to sleep I was thinking of your problem and latencies and overclocking and power etc....

Man, I am really glad... And you have got some -pretty nice results!

Cheers,

 

how come my x700 at stock settings ony gets the same as the overclocked x300 in the ati tray tools bench?
should i be worried?

 

I wouldn't worry about it. The ATT tray benchmark is not that accurate. I put much more faith in 3DMark.

Cheers

 

Also when useing Ati tray tools does it matter when the renderer finds artifacts, i can only get to 385 core and 358 mem without any artifacts and sometimes when at these setting when i 'find the max' it does detect artifacts.
soo i dont realy know what to make of it all, this is realy the first time ive had a good go at changeing the settings and then testing them with TT.

 

I find that instead of letting it test for the max gpu for you, you do it yourself. I've foudn that if you let it do it, it will go back to a number it already found artifacts at. What I do is I go up one by one, then just click scan for artifacts, let it go for like a minute, then if no artifacts, go up again, etc. Once you get to see even 1 artifact back down one step, and let the scan run for like 10 min...if no artifacts you're good to go

I'll try and get a 3Dmark06 result too

For the person who was worried about their x700, this X300 does ~1500 in ATi tool not overclocked, and about ~2300 OC'ed to max with no artifacts reported. It will go up to ~2470 if I take the mem to 720ddr (360non-ddr), but then ATT reports artifacts although none are seen.

 

Cool thanks very much.

 

3Dmark 06 SM2.0 score is 212 w/ ATT profile set to "benchmarks" and "disable block write" UNTICKED in the standard tweaks section (this actually has a very small effect.)

I didn't get the whole 3Dmark score as it would be irrelevant cause it would depend on your CPU too but I just realized that you may need the whole score if you dont' have the registered version and can't just run the graphics tests.

 

What about 3DMark05?

 

I don't have that installed...and don't plan on installing it. One benchmark is enough.

 

It's just that 3DMark06 is still new, and there aren't so many scores available yet. Not as much as for 3DMark05.

 

WEll I thought you just wanted a comparison between my x300 and ur x700, wat do u get on the sm2.0 result?

EDIT: lol, nm that was someone else who wanted the comparison.

 

Well, since you've only got 06 result and I only got 05 result, I can only base the comparison on ATT. If its results are any accurate, I can conclude that the 9600 is faster at stock settings and faster clock-for-clock (I got ~1750 at the default clocks of the X300, where it gets ~1510, as you said), but I couldn't reproduce the insane overclock you did, so the highest I could get without getting massive artifacts was ~2050.

Now, if you think about, X300 is a downclocked X600. Many of the X300 chips are X600s that didn't pass the quality tests of the X600, but can often run just below the X600 stock settings or run with minimal artifacts. Thus some of the X300s (and yours among them) have very high overclocking potential.

 

You got ~1750 on stock settings w/ an 128MB X300 Mobility Radeon??? SHouldn't we have the same? Are your stock clocks the same? (297/229.5)?

EDIT: Ok nm...I just realized now you have a 9600 and you put it at the clocks of the X300? Well you can't exactly compare it just like that by putting the clocks at the same since the whole architecture differs. I have a 9600 pro in my desktop but I haven't benched it w/ ATi tool

 

The X300 and the 9600 are very similar in architecture; they are based on the same core.

The main difference is the PCI-express bus on the X300 vs. the AGP bus on the 9600.