Overclocking Mobility X1600?

Hi, I made a search and I found quite a few discussions on overclocking Mobility X1600s, but sadly I could find the appropriate answers that I needed from those posts. I have a Acre Aspire 5112WLMi with AMD Turion 64 x2 TL50, 2GB RAM, ATI Mobility X1600 512MB (128MB dedicated + 384MB shared), and 160GB 5400RPM HDD.
Now before I had formatted and Installed Windows Vista Premium 32Bit, I use to be able to play graphically demanding games like Battlefield 2 with all high settings on Windows XP MCE and get about 60+FPS, but now on Vista my performance has dropped in games. I have tryed the newest drivers and I even tried to change the theme to classic for when playing games, but still the performance is not the same. SO my question is; Can I overclock the Mobility X1600 from default 472/369Mhz to something higher? Would it improve performance? And can my laptop even handle it?
I've seen a lot of people on these forums using the same laptop as me, so I was wondering if any of you have over clocked the X1600.
By the way, I don’t plan to push my luck, so overclocking to 475/400Mhz is alright with me (if even possible) .

Any comments would be appreciated.

 

one problem-----------VisTA!!!!,
if i were u, i would wait for some good vista drivers, because overclocking can only take you so far, not to mention that it can stresss your video card to get the frame rates u should have gotten with stock settings.......but if u still want to Overclock, then i would suggest trying ATI Tray Tools

 

Before posting I actually attempted to overclock with ATI Tools, but I don't think I did it right. After overclocking I restarted my laptop and ended up with the blue screen of death. So I had to go to safe mode and change the settings back. This is why I'm afraid to try it again.

I don't know what I did wrong, but since I don't know the risks I don't think I’m brave enough to attempt it a second time.

Hers how ATI Tool looks like for me right after installation:
http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/250/atijy3.jpg
Is it normal to show 1574.13/1214.32?

 

1574 for core frequency??????/ something is definately wrong here

 

ati tool is reading the frequencies wrong obviously

if it was at 1.5 ghz core and 1.2 ghz mem, the gpu would melt right through your notebook

 

Will I'm guessing ATI Tools 0.26 Beta doesn't work well with Vista, so I installed another program called "PowerStrip". I was able to overclock from the defaults 473/369Mhz to 475/400Mhz as I had planned. Right away I noticed quite an increase in performance with these small changes, although I'm still worried if these changes will cause my graphics card to fry up. Should I be worried about anything like that happening?

 

ive used clocks around that for multiple hours of gaming, and without any long term problems (3 months later). Should be safe

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Those changes wont harm anything.

Just remember Vista drivers are not fully matured and probably wont be for several months more.

 

As posted, use PowerStrip to overclock under Vista. It's the only program that has worked for me. ATT is a failure under Vista so far, at least in my experience.

You will get reduced performance under Vista; drivers will get better over time so the performance gap between XP and Vista will get less and less. The latest ATI Mobility Radeon drivers are 7.2 from www.ati.amd.com. Download and install those if you haven't already.

 

Actually 7.3 are already out.

 

not for notebooks with vista

 

Yep, I had already installed ATI Catalyst Mobility 7.2 drivers prior to overclocking, but I found that there wasn't much of a difference between the Catalyst Mobility 7.2 driver and Windows Vistas (WDDM) driver. In fact I did a few driver comparison tests on Battlefield 2 mod "Project Reality" which really pushes the BF2 engine to its fullest and I concluded that the (WDDM) driver works better for me. Although for configuration purposes I decided to keep the Catalyst 7.2.
Also I was wondering; If I were to uninstalled PowerStrip, would my overclocked Mobility X1600 settings change back to the factory default 473/369Mhz? If so, does this mean I need to have the PowerStrip program running at all times to be able to have my X1600 overclocked at 475/400Mhz?

PS. Thanks for the comments guys.

 

Actually I successfully used Ati tray tools beta. It is stable. You can download and try it - http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/ATI-Tray-Tools.shtml

download from the BETA link when offered.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

No need for powerstrip or ATI Tray tools. ATI Tool 0.25 Beta 14 works fine with Vista Ultimate 32bit, Cat 7.2 and Mobility X1600 http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Tweaking/ATITool

 

It must be something with my card then; I'm using the Catalyst Mobility 7.2's and PowerStrip with no issues, but whenever I try ATT I am never abel to overclock a second time after restarting it.

 

Same here, I can only seem to overclock with PowerStrip. Neither ATITool or ATI Try Tools works for me on Vista. Also I wanted to know, if I deleted PowerStrip (which I used to overclock my X1600) would my new clock settings at 475/400Mhz change back to Acer defaults? And if so, is there any other way to change the clock permanently?

 

You tried the Beta 14? Because it is the only one working for me.

 

The new ATI Tool works perfectly in Vista. I'm running my Mobility X1600 256MB at 567 core and 513 memory with it in Vista Ultimate.

3DMark 2005 score: 4945

 

thanks for the update, how is it? Is it worth getting?

I like powerstrip except for the popup you get when you turn on your machine

 

I really like ATI Tool, no pop ups or anything, simple to use and does what it's supposed to... Great tool!