X1400 Users - Catalyst Mobility 6.11 & PowerStrip 3.73!

After receiving my new E1505, and subsequently deleting all the factory pre-installed bloatware, I wanted to try and safely maximize the X1400’s graphic abilities for playing Call of Duty 2 (I purchased this particular model for it’s dedicated GPU…seems everything these days in this price range comes equipped with a low level integrated GPU solution.)

Reading through all the information out there on the subject, I decided to download and, after completely uninstalling the O.E.M. drivers, install the latest Omega drivers (Catalyst 6.9 - 3.8.291) in their place and utilize ATI Tray Tools for COD2 overclocking.

After restarting, installing, and rebooting, the new Omega drivers appeared to function perfectly, so I went ahead and launched ATT to raise the MEM & CPU clocks. The aforementioned reading indicated the best overclock would be somewhere around 580/450, versus 432/396 stock.

Scanning for artifacts revealed no issues, and testing with 3DMark05 showed a nice improvement of around 18.3% compared to the standard clock speeds when running the Omega drivers (no 3DMark05 testing was performed on the factory-shipped drivers as this was before I knew about the benchmarking program).

After setting up automatic overclocking via ATT, I figured everything was good to go, but after just the first time playing COD2, the graphics system starting acting real…”funny”…

1. Screen would just go black when trying to boot into game.
2. Screen would turn multiple colors (red, then green, then blue) when trying to boot into game.
3. If boot into game was successful, upon exiting (back at Windows desktop), screen would start to render improperly (almost like static on a TV), and lock up soon afterward, occasionally resulting in a blue screen that stated, IIRC, a “memory parity error” had occurred.
4. After the forced reboot, upon launching back into Windows, the same “static” effect & eventual lock-up would occur, once again making a forced reboot necessary.
5. While the mystery issue would sometimes resolve itself after one restart, several restarts were needed on many different occasions.

While I certainly enjoy playing COD2, it was quickly getting to the point where I just grimaced at exiting the program due to the great possibility the system was going to, for lack of a better description, “de-stabilize” itself…

Thinking that maybe one or the other was at fault here, I quickly deleted both & installed the standard ATI Catalyst 6.10 drivers in their place…no overclocking, so no speed boost, but now the system was operating correctly.
The FPS increase in COD2 was certainly nice though, so I once again set out to do some more thorough reading and see if there was anything out there that could give me that nice speed boost, but not completely crash the computer when I tried to launch or close the game I often play…

Long story short, I finally chose to install the just released Catalyst Mobility 6.11 drivers (via the link here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910) in combination with PowerStrip 3.73 build 579, and I can definitely say that my goal has been accomplished!

Once again employing 3DMark05, testing revealed that with just the standard ATI drivers, my score was virtually identical to the one achieved when running the Omega drivers, and when overclocking via PowerStrip to 580/450 (actually, it’s at 575/450, but it’s running so good that I’m not changing anything!), the score is once again virtually identical to before (when running Omega & ATT).

As alluded to though, I’ve been able to retain the stock settings during normal usage while overclocking during COD2 play (via “application profiles”) with absolutely no problems at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While each computer is unique, I figured I’d share this brief story just in case another one of you out there comes across some of the same issues I’ve had…it’s certainly been an frustrating, interesting, and joyful (albeit at different times) experience!

 

I hope you didnt use the "Find Max Mem" and "Find Max Core" buttons in ATI Tools or ATI Tray Tools.

The best way is to do it manually and increase both by 5-10mhz then check for stability.

Those auto overclockers usually push your card way beyond what it should be.

 

That's a nice overclock; watch your temperatures. How much of an improvement did you see in Call of Duty 2's framerates?

Don't forget to install the latest patch for CoD2; it includes support for dual-core processors:
http://callofduty.com/patch/

Thanks for sharing your experience too. Feel free to join our ATI NBR Overclocking Team
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=87492

 

I got 1 of these laptops (6400) on its way, and normally use Omega drivers, but thanks for the heads up!

 

I didn't do this (utilize automatic feature), instead choosing to follow the gradual increase procedure mentioned by yourself...

I was able to slowly increase both MEM and CPU clocks until hitting the 580/450 level before encountering artifacts during testing. System stability was perfect (except when loading and exiting from the game)...

Thanks...after long periods of continuous COD2 play, my GPU (at overclocked speeds) peaks at 67°C, so I believe I'm doing just fine (?) according to what I've read so far...

While I don't know if any actual correlation exists between the two, I've found my FPS gain in COD2 to mimic the percentage increase obtained in 3DMark05 testing...

After installing the game, I immediately downloaded & installed the latest update (v1.3, IIRC) and dual-core patches...

You're certainly welcome...this is exactly why I wrote-up and posted my experience. On the other hand though, you may have no problems whatsoever...the Omega drivers are spoke highly of and most appear to have no problems/issues at all.

 

67* is fine for your GPU, so you are A-OK on that front.

That's a considerable improvement in game performance; it was well worth it to overclock it seems.

 

Yeah, the 6400 chassis/X1400 seems to be really good at dissipating the heat, When at max OC on mine, it never bumps 70C.

Congrats to the OP on his overclocking success, I would try, but I don't see the point on a Linux machine. Until ATi improve their drivers, I'm not bothering anymore.

 

How are you guys watching your temps?

 

I updated mine to the Catalyst 6.10 Drivers and It worked well. But I didn't uninstall the old drivers....Will that be an issue as I didn't??

 

Thanks again for the reply. So far, I'm very happy with the way things have turned out...if the performance gain was low, I wouldn't have bothered with going through all of this overclocking stuff!

This particular model must be pretty good at dissipating the heat...I've seen some other notebooks (varying models) out there that sound like a leaf blower when just being used to browse the net!

Unless you're gaming and trying to obtain the best performance (safely) possible, I don't see any reason at all why you'd want or need to overclock...

I'm using I8kfanGUI.

If everything is working good...then I presume not. This thread ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910) goes over proper driver installation procedure...

 

I have the x1400, and i cant seem to get any program to moniter my gpu temp? Im using omega drivers, i8kfangui nor nhc will pick up the temps for the gpu. they will pick up the temp for my hd and cpu tho.

edit: i got i8kfangui to read my gpu temp, will it also read chipset and memory temps on a e1505 dell?

 

Ok, this overclock isnt working very well for me. I've got a Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705 with 2.00ghz intel core 2 duo 4m cache, 2 gig ram, and the ATI x1400 radeon mobility with hypermemory. I've followed your intructions and installed the mobility 6.11 drivers with powerstrip 3.73. I've created a Battlefield 2 profile that ups the clock speeds from 432/391.5 to 575/450. However, when i run battlefield 2 all is good untill it comes to the logon screen, where the screen freezes and scrambles. Luckly no damage seems to be done and i have restored the original Gpu speeds through powerstrip. Any suggestions?
what am i dooing wrong???

 

If you get artifacting immediately when a 3D application starts up (or even before), then you most likely went too far with the clocks. Try going in 5-10MHz intervals and fire up a game after you apply it each time.

Also try a game other than BF2; that game is not the most reliable benchmark in my opinion. There are a lot of users that have graphical issues with it.

 

Try a core clock at around 500, play for a few hours, then go to 520. Up it slowly from there on. Max my X1400 can get is 540/920

 

What should the driver version be if you sucessfully made the upgrade? I haven't done it yet on mine but my friend has and he's wondering, so am I actually...lol

 

Hmm, I'm not quite sure what to say here Overnet...I've never played BF2 before.

Since posting the original message though, I've changed my settings around a bit: I found that when I minimized the game to do something in Windows, the clocks would automatically go back to their respective default settings & wouldn't return to the overclock speeds when I entered back into CoD2.

In response, I deleted the automatic "application profiles" and instead just manually switch settings via the "performance profiles" (I have a "performance default" & "overclock"), which I access through the little icon in the taskbar.

According to PowerStrip, my overclock settings are 573/450, with default settings of 432/391.

 

Ok, i've taken the overclocked speeds down from 575 to about 540 for the core and the memory i've taken down to 440. Bf2 now works perfectly with a much better framerate, which is great, however, my computer is now continueally freezing and games on the source engine (cs: source, dod: source) show alot of artifacts, even when running at normal speeds, not overclocked. So i've gone back to the original drivers i got with my laptop and all the problems have gone. Which raises this question, will powerstrip not work with the drivers i get with my laptop? Because if they would that would be fantastic, i would have overclocked speeds, without the bugs that seem to be cause by these new drivers. The default drivers seem to be normal catalyst mobility ones so i would think powerstrip would work fine, what do you all think, would powerstrip work with these drivers or is there some special reason why i have to get the ones that you've linked me too??

I just dont want to use powerstrip with my normal drivers incase something terrible will happen that i dont know about

 

I don't see why PowerStrip would not work; if you are having overclocking problems with the drivers you are currently using, you might as well give them a try.

Does ATI Tray Tools not work with your card? Try the latest version of ATI Tray Tools & the latest Omega ATI drivers and see if that combo works for you

 

Brill, turns out that powerstrip works with the drivers i got with my pc, thanks for the review, i can go at 575/450 with no artifacts whatso ever. Fantastic, thanks a load, i can run BF2142 on full spec, sweet framerate, thanks for the help love you all

 

Wow those are ridiculous numbers. I'd clock it down a bit or risk burning out your machine.