X700 - Worth Overclocking?

X700 128MB
Default: 357/300 - 1889 3DMARK05
Overclocked: 394/374 - 2078 3DMARK05

That is 189 3DMARKS difference (~10% increase)

Will this increase translate to anything in real world terms (eg, Tomb Raider Legend)?

I can't adjust my memory latencies unfortunately...

 

It might - I OC my 7800 Go when I play AoE III, BF2, and F.E.A.R. so I can turn on all of the eye candy.

Are you already OC the GPU to its max. though?

 

If you can play games fine with the stock clocks, then that's the way to go because it is the safest. Only overclock if you need to.

You also may want to search for some threads on overclocking, use the thread search function in the top right of your browser window.

Chaz

 

hmm.. i don't think overclocking is worthwile. It doesn't give much of a noticable increase in performance and also lowers the lifespan of ur card.


My X700 is kept at default clocks now.. There's no point in overclocking it really.. But I suppose if u want that tiny bit of increase, go for it!

 

Are you sure you benchmarked with lowest possible quality options set in control panel? You should be getting more than that with a x700. I read in another post ~2500 stock...

My poor slave of an x300 (highly overclocked) reaches 19xx in 3dmark05...

 

yeah you should probably be able to get more than that with an x700 and definately push it more than that. my x300 went from 1180 to 1790 in 3dmark05 when i OCed from 300/216 to like 420/320 with stock timings and because dell underclocks their laptop graphics by alot.

As to actual gains, i went from ~90-120 at medium high settings in COD1 to ~150-250 (peak) at the highest settings, and the extra fps does provide a noticable increase in accuracy of shots and it looks much better. i havnt turned the settings back down while OC yet but i'm sure i could average even better framerates.

You might also try the Omega drivers, i got 120 3dmark05 marks just from that

 

Do you mean an internal 3dmark05 control panel? If so, I have no options because I am using the trial version. Do you recommend I "obtain" the full version and try with the minimal options?

As to the omega drivers, are these better than the catalyst (6.1?6.2?) because I thought those drivers were pretty poor and did not mix well with ATITool.

Do you have a link to the best set of Omega drivers for me?

 

Umm no I mean like ati control panel settings like anti aliasing, anisotropic filtering, mipmap settings, etc. These should all be on their lowest possible settings. (Application controlled for AA and AF is the lowest setting)

Go to www.omegadrivers.net click on radeon, then click on xp and download the latest ones based on catalyst 6.3. I would also recommend using ATi Tray Tools which you can get sperately or just install it w/ the omegas (it's included). This allows more quality and tweaking settings and also for overclocking.

Good luck.

 

Excellent, I had left the ATI CP settings to application defined, so I will try that.

 

www.omegadrivers.net btw

 

lol OOPS! Sorry.

 

Okay, after installing the latest OMEGA drivers (3.8.231) my 3Dmark05 scores at regular clocking:

Standard Drivers: 1889
Omega Drivers: 2173

This is using the ATI CP settings as before for sake of comparison...

 

Hmm ok. Now put everything to max performance and try. I might be mistaken, but shouldn't an x700 get a bit higher than that even stock? Nice jump you got from omega's though

 

3Dmark05 score after changing profile to "Maximum performance":
2212.

So, only a slight difference to before, though every little helps as they say.
When I looked into custom options and changed everything to "maximum performance", it actually resulted in lower scores of around 1900 so it seems the generic "Maximum Performance" sliders under Direct3D & OPenGL are the way to go.

Any idea of why that is? Time to try overclocking...

 

Hmm I ca'nt say for sure but let me tell you my benchmark settings:

adaptive antialiasing: off
anti:aliasing: application controlled
anisotropic filtering: application controlled
enable high quality AF: off
texture preference: high performance
mipmap detail level: high performance
wait for vertical sync: always off
anisotropic filtering optimization: on
trilinear filtering optimization: on
geometry instancing: on
temporal aa: off
catalyst A.I. off

Some of the settings listed above you might not see if you're not using ATT but anyway most you should see, and the ones you don't won't make a big difference anyway.

Good luck.

 

i too have found that the higher scores happen when you give application preference. i havn't messed around too much with the texture settings, i'll go do that right now..

 

Wow your score for 3dmark05 seems incredibly low for an x700 128mb. At stock clocks you should be getting mid to high 2000's.

The thing about overclocking your GPU is that some games respond to overclocked videocards while others don't as much, so I would have to say that it IS worthwhile to use overclocked settings ONLY for gaming.

So of course turn down your clocks when you're not gaming, but overclocking videocards do not necessarily reduce their lifespan. It all depends on how high you overclock, ventilation and the videocard you have (as in, not all videocards are the same).

Overclocking gives FREE performance so I say go for it, but please do read up on overclocking if you don't have any experience.

Cheers,
Mike

 

I've been reading up on overclocking & undervolting (for my cpu) for some time but never really considered the first option because I don't do much gaming.
However when playing TR:Legend I was unhappy with the performance so I started looking into it.

Using the Omega Drivers, with the Direct3D & OpenGL settings to "Benchmark" (using the trayicon rightclick) as well as disabling catalyst AI I get this result:

Before (Standard Drivers, unoptimized): 1889
After (Catalyst Drivers, optimized): 2283
394 increase (~20%)

This is without overclocking, at standard 358/331 settings.
I am a little concerned that you guys say I should be getting mid to high 2000's since I am still some way off from that. Any ideas why? Perhaps my 1.6Ghz CPU or 512MB RAM. I have a totally defragged harddrive and this is on a fresh windows install, with minimal background processes.

As usual, thanks for your insight - without your help I and many others would be drowning at sea.

 

The RAM has something to do with it - you would get better performance from 1GB. I would advise getting a single 1GB stick and adding it to one of the sticks in your laptop (if you have 2x 256, then you would replace one and have 1.25GB).

3DMark05 doesn't depend on the CPU nearly as much as 3DMark06 does. I don't think the CPU is the problem.

 

Hmm I didn't notice till now you only have 512 ram...that might be holding you back some.

 

I actually posted here last week about what kind of performance benefits I would see from it.

The RAM is PC2700 but Crucial recommends PC3200. I figured if I get 1 stick of 1gb I should get PC2700 since the other 256MB would cause it run at the lower speed? Wheras if I got 2x512 I could get PC3200 and enable the higher memory speed?

Or am I totally deluded?

On the overclocking side, I am currently trying 395/375 which has been stable for 20mins of artifact checking. The core temp is 80-84 degrees. How is this temp?

 

You should be able to use PC3200 with no problems - PC2700 is actually a bit more expensive. Yes, it will @ 333MHz, the slowest of the two sticks, but if you add another PC3200 stick at some time in the future, then they should run at 400MHz, or you can make them do so through a program (can't quite remember what it's called).

Just a word of caution - make sure your GPU isn't getting too hot, that's very bad for the notebook. I wouldn't overclock my notebook without a cooling pad. Consider picking up a cooler such as the Spire Pacific Breeze. I own it, and it cools your notebook better than any other cooler, thanks the large amount of air it expels.

 

SO, do you think 1GB@3200 or 1.25GB@2700 would be preferable (if prices were equal).

I have the back of my system raised about 3inches from the desk using some brackets i made, to increase airflow. Do you think ~80C is too hot?
I am reading in another post of yours you found playing with memory clock to have more results than the core, so I may try that technique...

 

Okay, I have decided to use this overclock to give me 2553marks.
Here are my final results.

All measurements were taken with minimal background processes & 3Dmark05.

Standard Drivers, unoptimized (358/331): 1889
Standard Drivers, unoptimized (394/374): 2078
Catalyst Drivers, optimized (358/331): 2283
Catalyst Drivers, optimized, overclocked (395/375): 2553

Performance boost using Omega, without overlocking: 394 3Dmarks (~20%)
Performance boost using Omega, with overclocking: 664 3Dmarks (~35%)

As we can see, on my particular card, just changing to the Omega Drivers and changing to max performance gives a much bigger performance boost than overclocking under the original drivers. This clearly shows how much performance can be obtained by using good drivers.

 

absolutely. omega hasn't let me down.

 

I just switched to them after using the stock drivers (6.4). Glad I installed them - nice performance boost and they work without issues. lukealexander, thanks for sharing your experience with overclocking!

Chaz

 

Well, some of you out there may like to know that increasing my main memory speed from 133Mhz to 166Mhz made no effect at all on my 3Dmark05 score.

 

Ok. I recently found out something very interesting. For a while I was unsure why my 3dmark score was coming up at ~1500 when it used to be close to 2000.

With the latest omega drivers, even if powerplay is disabled, 3dmark somehow miraculously thinks it's in powerplay or something... So what you have to do not to see this bug is make sure (even if powerplay is disabled) that your powerplay settings for AC (or battery if you're running on battery) are on max performance.

 

Hey Lukealexander,

I think it is very weird you got a score of 2200 while having an X700 with GDDR2...I have X700 128 MB DDR1 and I score the same (351:297 gives me 2280)
Or do you have 64 mb GDDR2?

Charlie-Peru

 

When I said my memory speed, I was referring to my system RAM, not the X700's memory. As far as I know, my X700 has 128MB DDR, not DDR2.

I was just a bit surprised because the X700 has hypermemory enabled, so the speed of system RAM should have made a difference, but it did not. Not a big issue, just something interesting.

As for the Powerplay issue, I noticed that too...the first time I ran it after changing my memory speed I got 700! Indeed the solution (for now) is to change to "optimal performance" in the Powerplay controls.

 

It took me forever to figure it out.

 

Interesting thread!

So you guys recommend the newest Omegas? It has been a long time since I've had one of those.


BTW:
350/300 2270 is for me on my x700 128MB. And yes it can go over 3000 3dmark05. I recommend cooling pad and undervolting when you do it.

Cheers,

 

They're great - I was using the desktop 6.4's for a few days, then they gave me problems. Now I use the 6.3 Omegas, they are excellent.

Chaz

 

I was really surprised that changing drivers could have so much impact. I am a little frustrated I have to overclock my X700 to get in the "normal" 2500 range though.

I use the Radeon Omega 3.8's (mobile - not desktop). How come you use the desktop drivers Chaz?

 

I had problems with overclocking with the Mobility Catalyst 6.4's installed, it wouldn't keep my settings and there were a few other issues. Installing the desktop 6.4's fixed that problem. However, after a few days, none of my games would even run. I got rid of them, installed the Omega 6.3's, and haven't had a problem since.

 

Hm.. that's a bit low even for over clocked x700. Mine get around 2544 @ stock. Not sure if this would be the same with your machine but on mine there's a "Game" Mode and "High Performance" Mode. The game mode give better score than the high performance because it gives more power to the GPU while high performance give the CPU priority for the juice.
-Aphirat

 

I believe several of us have seen my record with the x700. Slightly psychotic, but it works They're worth overlcocking. I'm using the latest omegas, they're awesome drivers.

 

That is amazing Vampire.

But you have 256 MB version. 128 will never reach that. 3200 maybe. With some good drivers.

My top speed is 415/435 or 415/870 as you write. So I cannot overclock my GPU so much, but memory can be overclocked with latencies. I might try overclocking GPU a bit more, and lower the memory.

I agree - x700 is a great card and can be overclocked quite easily.

Chaz and Vampir - both on omegas? Omega, here I come!

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Ikovac is right. Remember the 128mb version probably wont hit the 3300 mark.

What program are you using to tweek your latencies?

 

Omega is delicious!

I cannot change my latencies using ATT (as far as i an see) which is probably a good thing since I haven't got a clue. Still, I'm willing to learn...

I don't understand how your guys cores and memory can go up so high...mine is nowhere near yours!

 

Hi Vampire,

ATT - Ati tray tools. Works perfectly with Ati drivers up to 6.3 version. I still didn't find 6.4 version that works well with ATT.

I overclock and set latencies in ATT and get max 3100 with my x700 128MB DDR(you also have DDR2). Check my sig up above somewhere. I also have a bit lower settings (around 2950) for gaming.

ATT is great for:
Overclocking profiles
Latencies
On screen display of the speed/mem, allocation
Auto profiles for 3d
Quick Bench (the new version has the real fullscreen bench, but sometimes it shows results divided by 2????)
Monitoring graphs

So quite nice piece of software.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Hey Ikovac,

Yes I agree ATT is very nice... I especially like the feature to see how much memory you have left...
You are truelly clocking that thing to crazy speeds, I would never dare that...

My X700 128 MB DDR1 had 2605 05 points at 372:330... I was very happy with that score... At those speeds Oblivion is very playable at native resolution....

Charlie-Peru

 

I'm using try tools too but the memory latencies are locked

 

Thats weird, you have the same laptop as Chazman...I thought he could do that too...

Charlie-Peru

 

Interesting - I can tweak all the latencies on my X700. If you just installed ATT, reinstall your drivers (6.3 or earlier) and see if it works then.

Chaz

 

Vampire:
Try using the newest ATT too! I think I have had some problems with some old versions.

Charlie - yes - it works fine so far. I don't actually play too much with it anymore. Nice info about oblivion - cause I will get it soon.

Cheers,
Ivan

 

I have an x700 with 64MB DDR1, it scores a very crappy 1200 on the 3dmark but a very respectable 40000 on the aquamark. Sometimes it artifacts at stock speeds, which is another concern. I find that it clocks to 358/331 sometimes and 358/298 other times. I'm not sure if this is why it artifacts or what the deal is. Any input would be appreciated.

 

Whats this ATT you guys keep talking about?

 

ATI Tray Tools. Its used to overclock ATI video cards.

 

drivers play a big role in your 3dmark scores (makes me think that what if the manu