9800M Overclocking results

After a couple of days of torturing my video card I came up with some interesting results in regard to overclocking a 9800M GTX. I think these results may come in handy for other people who want to a chieve a good, stable clock on which they can play games without overheating problems.

Here is the system used:

Clevo M570TU
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
P8600 @ 2.4 Ghz
3 GB Ram @ 1066
200 GB @ 7200 rpm
9800M GTX 1 GB DDR3 – driver: 185.20

Tools used:
Furmark – for measuring heating time – Stability test - 1920x1200, Xtreme mode, 4X AA
Ati Tools – for finding artifacts
Vantage – for performance on default settings
Nibitor, nvflash etc.

I also tested both 9800M GTX BIOS, the 0608 and the 0617. I also ran tests several times usually after a clean restart making sure there is very little CPU activity (below 10%) and the video card has a temperature below 55C / 131F .
I used Furmark to stress the card until it reached 88C, remember that at 90C the card automatically downclocks itself.

In Vantage I left physicsX enabled because generally, you will leave them enabled in games.

Also I tried to keep the Core/Shader ratio to 2.75 for the 0608 BIOS and to 2.5 for the 0617, later I found with atitools that not respecting this ratio can quickly lead to artifacting. So when overclocking just try to find the core frequency because the shader frequency will probably just be the ratio of the core.

All in all, here are the results.





Conclusion, in my case regardless of the BIOS, the card doesn’t want to go beyond 620/1550/870. The heating time of the card on stock BIOS settings was in average 290 sec. which I think shows the thermal tolerance expected from this video card. Using the 0617 BIOS with the higher voltage doesn’t seem to help performance in anyway, but it does heat up the video card. The only disadvantage of the 0617 is in my case the lack of HDMI support because I actually use the HDMI port. I finally settled for 610/1550/865 (0617) – no artifacts even at 88C and it takes it a solid 360 sec. to reach 88C

 

Wow, man can I do this on my qosmio 13o-130, or must I wait until the mvktech.net bios driver?
As writen here;
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=299286

 

You seem to also get the best scores with those settings that seems to be your max for your card, with higher settings you get lower scores if you didn't see that? As it doesn't seem to overheat with the higher settings according to your list?

 

I have no idea tuηay, if you are talking about nibitor, from version 4.6 it supports 9800M gtx cards as well.

Michel: Well, with higher clocks there was enough artifacting that I did not even bother to benchmark because those clocks would have been useless anyway - completely unstable, but would probably give higher scores.

And about overheating: on the stock BIOS that is 0608, this is a major issue. I played CoD 5 - World at War for 3 hours with the 600/1500 clocks and the core reached temps. as high as 86C - remember that at 90 it automatically downclocks so I find that very dangerous.

With the other BIOS 0617 - which is for 9800M GTX SLI cards, there are no overheating issues - none , the max temp I have ever seen is 80C, but generally World in Conflict all maxed out will run no hoter than 78C.

I think the main thing that changes the heating behaviour is the voltage and that is why I tried to see different voltage and heating time at the same clocks.

0608 has stock voltage of 1.03V, 0617 has of 1V but can also support 1.05V.

 

Update :

After a week of using the above settings 610/1520/865 on the 0617 BIOS with 1V ... well it seemed that from time to time games would crash on these settings especially at very intensive scenes.

I ran all sorts of stress and diagnostic tests and all seemed fine, so I figured that maybe the lower voltage is to blame, so I incresed it to 1.05V. No problems so far, seems that in order to overclock 1V will not be enough however the card runs too hot now - with a max of 85C vs 79/80C before.

My guess is that the next generation of cards, the 1800M will probably be able to run to higher clocks very stable given that they will be on 55nm not 65nm. Heat does seem to be an issue.

Or maybe someone can figure a way of runing the 0617 with 1.03 V - I mean somewhere in between 1.05 and 1 V. .

By the way, I also think that you could possibly flash any 9800M or 8800M series with any of the 9800M BIOSes - like flash a 9800M GT with a GTS or GTX bios. - reason I am saying this is ... if for example I choose in Nibitor to treat the 0617 BIOS as a 8800M Bios, Nibitor will have no problem in reading it.

 

Hi bro!
I have downloaded NVIDIA System Tools v6.03 but I have a qestion, what do you suggest as stable vaules for NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GTX ? And it says I must eneble somthing in bios what is that?
I use my system in another language so can't directly translate...
I mostly play GTA IV but, Im downloading games now... Want a stable overlock, plays all games in full... And don't play old games...
Likes example CrySis, I played at full but it was lagging some times maybe with overclock I can fix that... Thanks for reading bro waiting for answers

 

There is no easy answer to what you want... best answer is to go storm the forums.

What I can tell you is... download the latest patches for GTA 4, they really make a difference when it comes to performence.

Also go to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ and download the latest either DOX optimzed drivers (181.22) or the latest certified notebook drivers (179.32).

About OC, well ntune is good for OC especially when you want to find out when your video card becomes unstable, yout max. stable OC in other words.

You should download atitools and http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test.htm . Run the stability test to heat up your the video card and than run in paralel atitools (atitools will tell you if you have artifacts - deltas). It seems to me that atitools just doesn't drain enough power to simulate actual game performence so that's why you have to run the 2 in paralel.

So the idea is simple, usually you should be able to run your video card without problems at 600/1500/900 you can than increamently increase the frequencies, let's say 10 at a time and see when the card starts to artifact, once you know when... that's the limit. When you want to overclock, just set the frequencies below your artifact limit let's say 5 mhz under to make sure everything will work fine. Oh, and keep in mind that your core/shader frequencies are linked at 10 mhz increse on the core usually means 25 increase on the shaders. I personnaly do not recommend overclocking the memories too much, from my experience I have yet to see a defective video card because of its core, it's almost always the memories.

And one more thing, always monitor the temperatures, use HWmonitor, remember that the core automatically reduces its power to avoid damage once it hits 90C so try to stay as much as possible away from that 90C - best to be below 85C at max.

Be careful when you overclock. Overclocking can make your card unusable unless you do not know what you are doing.

Edit: Oh, and if you want to permanently OC your video card, you need to look into nvflash and nibitor, but I won't get into that.