Puching my mobility x700 256Mb gfx clocks

Hello everyone,

I will start by giving my laptop specs:

Toshiba M70-148
Pentium M 2Ghz
100 Gb HD
1024 Mb RAM
Mobility Radeon X700 256Mb GDDR3 VRAM

I heard about overclocking a few years back, but since I had a ****ty gfx card in my previous laptop back then, I never got to overclock a gfx card.

Now that I have a pretty decent one, I'd like to get to work on it a little bit

So far I have been able to play NFS:MW, F.E.A.R and Oblivion (to name a few) at acceptably smooth framerates...

Yesterday I spend a few hours reading this site's forum and decided to run a
3DMark05 test and compare it to other people's results:

My gfx card with the latest Omega Driver obtained (with the default 3DMark settings) a score of 2860.

I honestly expected to receive a higher score than that. Now my question is, up to what score do you guys think I could push my gfx clocks safely without the risk of overheating it or killing it's lifespan a few years too early? Which is the best tool I could use to overclock it?

My card's default clocks are: 358core:331mem

Thanks a lot to you all in advance!

 

Thats a solid score for an x700. You shouldn't be disappointed at all. I would say it completely depends on your machine on whether overclocking is a good idea or not. For instance, I can't even run my compaq v4000t at stock clocks for long without over-heating, so I don't even consider over-clocking...then again, there are several others here who have been very successful at OC'ing the x700 and managing the heat. Personally, if you are running Oblivion and Fear at acceptable framerates at a decent resolution, I wouldn't bother...but thats just me.

As far as the best tools to use, most people use ATI tray tools that come with the Omega drivers, or ATITool...which you can find by googling for it. I recommend Tray Tools personally.

To give you a comparison on your 3dmark05 score, I think my machine scored about a 2430. My card only has 128mb of ram compared to your 256, but your 2860 seems about right to me.

-Wintery

 

Indeed a great score for a X700 256 MB GDDR3 at stock... I have a X700 128 MB GDDR1 (351:297), it gets 2280 3dmarks...

I am pushing it to 372/330...it makes Oblivion playable at 1280*800 everything medium...

I truelly advise you to ask it to Chazman, he is the master in X700 overclocking. I thought his record was 3200 by pushing the card to its limits.

Charlie-Peru

 

Hey, thanks a lot for your quick reply winterymix

This laptop I have now (compared to my previous one) has no overheating problems at all. It once got a little hot when I was playing civilization 4 for a couple of hours, but i think the cause of that was the warm room temperature (since i live in the south of Spain).

I know what you mean about being happy with my gfx card's standard performance,(because i think about it that way too) but when i read about people getting 3250+ overcklocked scores with the same card without it overheating... get's me drooling, if you know what I mean

 

I know exactly what you mean. The temptation to overclock is strong I'd love to be able to OC mine. In general, it's usually considered safe to start with a conservative overclock and see how your machine performs...in terms of heat and performance, and then keep pushing it from there until heat becomes an issue or you start seeing artifacts because you've found your video board's limit and then back it off a bit. Hitman is right though, I'd wait for Chazman's response. He usually has the best advice in terms of video-tweaking.

 

if the games you play all run fine with acceptable FPS, then why overclock? try tweaking your settings to squeeze out more performance before you overclock..

if/when you overclock, go slowly in 5-10mhz increments. this way if it does artifact, you only have to go back 5-10 mhz instead of jumping up/down 50-75mhz and not know where to go next.

and one last thing
DO NOT USE OTHER PEOPLES SETTINGS, JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN GET THOSE SPEEDS, DOES NOT MEAN YOU WILL HIT THOSE SPEEDS, AND IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU WILL BE LIMITED WITH THOSE SPEEDS.

pb,out.

 

pbcustom98, what kind of other settings could I tweak to gain more performance? What are artifacts? When you say pushing up 5-10 Mhz, do I have to apply it to the core and mem at the same time?

As you can see I'm pretty new to this, hehe.

winterymix, I'll wait for chazman's response (he sounds like the real deal at this).

 

Well I for one tweaked my card settings on my 6800Go. I changed the Frames to render ahead to 0 instead of 1 and that gave me about a 5-7 FPS jump in Oblivion. I don't know about the ATI cards, Chaz or PB should be able to help you on that.

 

Oblivion: draw distance, grass, distand lands, shadows, water reflections, etc..all settings that can cripple performance.

in F.E.A.R. shadows are a HUGE hit in performance.

artifacts are something like this:
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/gffx/aa8xs-artifacts.jpg

i would personally test out each core/mem one at a time.

you also might find out, that going too high on either side may may it artifact, so bump it down to a good setting, and then try to bump the other one up. when that arifacts, take it down to a good setting, and then you can see if you can take the other higher.

one thing that is good practice, make a log of the settings that you try, and the result. after each setting, you MUST MUST MUST play games and/or run 3DMark0x for awhile to make sure there are no artifacts..i will also recommend running this:

rthdribl
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

****NOTE****
make sure your notebook has either a cooling pad, or very well ventilated..dont want anything to overheat.

pb,out.

 

Thanks for al the info Pb! P.S: the screenshot you posted doesn't work...

 

the artifacts screenshot works for me...? try copy+paste into the browser, or even just google "gpu artifacts" and go to images.

pb,out.

 

Actually, no MR X700 has GDDR3. Most programs read it incorrectly. A core clock of 331MHz designates that it is GDDR2. I have a Mobility Radeon X700 256MB in my notebook - 2,860 is a great score on stock clocks, you should not be disappointed.

You can overclock if you want, but it will result in increased heat. I recommend getting a cooling pad if you plan on doing any sort of overclocking.

The card(s) put into different notebooks will vary in terms of what they can do, regardless of whether or not they are the same model. My X700 might not have the same overclocking abilities as yours, and so on.

For my particular X700 (which is different than every other X700 I have seen in terms of overclocking - it's a special AXIOM module), I can push the clocks quite a bit. I use 400 core: 392 mem with optimized memory latencies and have been getting about 3,300 in 3DMark05. I can go higher than that without problems, but I don't want to push it too far.

The rule of thumb is only overclock if you need to. Don't base it on benchmarks, those mean nothing. Play your games, and if you need more performance, then consider overclocking.

 

I agree with pbcustom,

Don't even start overclocking if you dont have a cooling pad or good ventilation. I think that is a golden rule in overclocking notebooks

Charlie-Peru

 

Why does everyone keep saying that? I overclocked my card about 50% on both gpu and memory and the temps have gone up 2C if that...

Today I put on some cooling paste (AS3) and temps dropped about 3 degrees.

 

It depends on the notebook and also the cooling system implimented. The i9300 happens to have an excellent system where the GPU and CPU are split up and use different fans and heatsinks, so the heat is not bad at all. Some cooling systems are only designed to deal with a certain amount of heat. When overclocked, I can notice my notebook getting hotter by a few degrees on the surface, which means that it is getting hotter on the inside by more than that. If the internal components heat up beyond their intended levels, it's not good for the hardware's life at all.

Check out this by Ivan:
http://www.thegamebooks.com/heat-(ati,-pentium-m)-t170.html#950

 

pbcustom and chaz have it right on for you guys, but one correction on the chaz.

I would have thought the same thing about default clocks suggesting what type of x700 you have, but recently I had my motherboard replaced and along with it the gpu. My default clocks changed from what everyone else has 350/300 ish core/mem, and now I have 344/330 ish core/mem. My memory won't go higher than 366mhz when it used to hit 370. My core is also kind of sketchy because I get artifacts in Ati Tools artifact tester even at default clocks after running it for a long time. The artifacts I get are core artifacts, the snow effect, or Delta something or other in the artifact tester.

I can run the core at same speeds and actually higher than before, but I dont' know how stable things are. My temperature for the GPU using SpeedFan is now 92degrees celsius MAX. This temperature was read while running the artifact tester. As soon as I stop it, the temps drop back down to where they should be, so I still don't know if I'm actually overheating or not.

I tried running the graph feature in SpeedFan while running a Doom 3 timedemo twice. It never reached 90 degrees but touched and kinda stayed in the 80's. I think I'm doing okay, but the artifacts kinda bug me. I never really liked or trusted the Ati Tools Artifact tester, anyone else have thoughts on this?

Oh yeah, so my point is that you can't go by videocard core/mem clocks to see what kind they are.

 

If it artifacts at stock speeds, get them to replace it (if it's still under warranty)!

I got my 9600 pro replaced that way for my desktop...

 

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

great program for testing artifacts

pb,out.

 

Ok, i overclocked my card last night to 400.50:360 with ATItool and got a 3130 score. The heat didn't change at all.

I changed it back to the standard clocks for two reasons though:

-1st- the performance stayed exactly the same while playing games
-2nd- for some reason, some artifacts showed up only while I was playing NFS:MW

I learned a lot though by giving it a try thanks to you guys!

OFF TOPIC:
I noticed on my 3dmark05 results that my cpu scores better with the authentic ATI driver than it does with the Omega one...

For some reason, when i download the latest original ATI drivers, they don't allow me to install it,as it says: "driver not found".

Would anyone know why that happens?

 

As I said, the models of the X700 implimented into each notebook is different across manufacturers, so yours could be an exception to the rule - Asus might clock the DDR higher to save money rather than just using GDDR2.

Your temps seem exceptionally high to me - 80*C sounds dangerous.

Chaz

 

PB, you've come through again~!!!!

Awesome man~! I've been looking for another load testing/benchmarking tool and you've come through~!

Chazman, I know it does seem high and it still does to me, but I noticed that I checked temperatures AFTER stopping whatever benchmarking/stress testing tool before, but now that I'm measuring the temps while running the tests, I noticed that it does go up to 80.

When I stop the tests the temp goes down to the usual I used to get with my old GPU, which is high 60's and touching on 70's.

So this leads me to believe my old GPU reached 80's as well.

Because these GPUs have on die temperature sensors, temperatures can drop 10-15 degrees as soon as you stop the test, so you HAVE to measure temps while running the tests.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Whoa, just ran that program you gave us a link to pb, and holy ****, I was running it in a window then in full screen then in window and opened up SpeedFan to check my GPU temps and I already had NHC running.

My CPU hit 77 degrees celsius and my GPU hit 82 degrees celsius.

YOWCH. I'm not undervolting my CPU.

As soon as I closed the program my CPU temp dipped 10 degrees down to 66ish and my GPU temps dropped to the low 70's.

Okay, I believe the guys that installed my new motherboard did not install the heatsink properly and will have a word with them when I get the chance.

Holy crud this is annoying because I have had my unit in the shop 3 times already totalling about just over a month of downtime. I would like to go to the service shop and have them observe ME applying the thermal paste/pad and installing everything, since I pay attention to details and they don't have time to.


Dang~!!!!!!!! Rawr~!!!!!

 

I also want to apply thermal paste but I think I am too noobish to do that I am so afraid I will brake something.

Charlie-Peru

 

Mike, that still seems high for your CPU . .is it always like that? Mine is in the 44-50 range normally (undervolted) at idle, and now with the Pacific Breeze cooler, the temps are about 37-39* at idle. It tops out at about 58*-60 under full load.

As for the X700 - I have never measured my temps because I can't . . .there is no way to enable the settings. From what I can tell, they're not hot at all, the surface of the notebook is just warm above where it is and below (cooler helps there a ton). My GPU is different than any other X700 - it's a special AXIOM module, and has a lot of copper around it, which helps keep it cool. It's actually quite big.

This is where my X700 sits in my notebook - the CPU is on the right:


And here is the modular GPU removed from the notebook:


Just to show you.

 

Chaz! Also a proud user of the Pacific Breeze cooler?

I think it is a good cooling solution and looks great. But now my internal fan isnt running while games, so it gets hot on surface above. Do you also have this?

Charlie-Peru

 

I picked up the Breeze about two weeks ago - loud, but it works awesome. At least 6-7* less than any other cooler.

Yeah, my fan sometimes does not run when I start the computer and even when playing games - I found out that if you unplug the USB stuff you have plugged in before you start, the fans will work. But even if you do have stuff plugged in, it works sometimes. It's odd, just have to play it as it goes. Also, a way to find out if your fans are working is to open up Notebook Hardware Control if you have it installed - my CPU temp reads 0*C when the fans aren't working. At least, that's with my Sager.

Chaz