Post your x1950 PRO overclock.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

TonyStark

Distinguished
Feb 3, 2007
162
0
18,680
It is a well known fact that this graphics card sucks when it comes to overclocking, so I am curious as to how far other x1950 PRO owners have pushed their cards.


My results thus far:

GPU : 641MHz - up 8% and still pushing it
MEM : 722MHz - up 4% Boooo!! Even a 1MHz increase from here gives me a back screen.


3D Mark 06 Scores:

Stock:


Overclocked CPU and Vid-Card
 
Hi Tony

Blows my card away!!

X1950 Pro watercooled at (max. stable):
GPU : 614Mhz
MEM: 708Mhz

Nice 3D Mark 2006 Score. Mine is only 4888!!

Is that 512Mb model? You got a voltage mod. on that board? I take it is watercooled or something to get that high?

Nice work!!
Bob

 
Hi

Don't forget I've got my card watercooled. The stock cooler is pretty rubbish. Only gains me ~+30 3D marks over stock anyways 🙂 (1-2fps)

I can run the card at 621/715 but its not stable!!

Bob Wya
 
Tony,

I just noticed your base BIOS values are much higher than mine (575/693 versus 600/700)... So is your card pre-overclocked or did you re-write the card firmware??

Bob
 
Hi all,

I am sure I can more out of the beast...

My temps are 36/56 (idle/load) on my current OC so there must be more there!!

I am still using the Danger Den Tyee block but I don't have a cooler for the X1950 Pro VRMs as it was an emergency downgrade... (Ah the horror :cry: ) Perhaps you can get an addon somewhere to cool the VRMs - must look into that... I black screen if I go too high just now so I am sure thats the problem.

Perhaps also from...
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=25301&highlight=1950
with a new BIOS... to increase the volts..

I had a disaster with a X1900XTX which I still have flash-backs to... A badly installed waterblock - well actually the add-on MosFet cooler that went badly, badly wrong... Ah the horror. :cry: Now I have moved on... but I have to struggle from day to day with a 3D Mark (2006) mark of only 4888...

Never use an expensive card on your first watercooled build!! :non:

Bob
 
What temperatures should you try and stay within when ocing the card? I'm actually using an x1900GT, not a x1950 PRO with the stock fan and an E2160 (only running that at 2.4 ghz). The GPU is a sapphire, and I've got it at 560 and 711, but I didn't have time to run the 3DMark06 with it oced. Before the OC I got 4705.

I think that the load temp is currently around 60C.
 
Hi,

I am sure that 60C is fine as I hit >50C on load with an OC watercooled Pro (full coverage Danger Den block with 1/2" ID tubing). However I am sure I don't have good TIM contact or something. To keep that (60C) ceiling with aircooling is impressive!! :sol:

On the other hand I think I need to rejig my loop a bit ... :hello:

Bob
 
well i guess im not doing too bad
gpu = 594
mem =702
3dmark06 =6220 apparently not recommended drivers
sam
diamond viper x1950pro
 
Hmm, I got a 3DMark06 score of 5144 on an x1900GT at 573/845 (is that memory frequency even safe?) with an E2160 at 2.4 ghz. I guess that's not bad for a card I just paid $90 for last week.
 
I am overclocking my Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB card with great results!

<3DMark 06>

Score: 6228

SM2.0: 2312
HDR/SM3.0: 2808
CPU: 2161

GFX: Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2813MHz
MEM: 4GB
OS: Windows XP x64

Resolution: 1024x768
AA: None
Filtering: Optimal
VS: 3_0
PS: 3_0
Repeat: Off


Comments:
GPU overclocked from Core Speed: 570Mhz to 645Mhz
Mem Speed: 690Mhz to 715Mhz

Without the GPU overclock the score was: 5959
The card is still running on the stock cooler which are great on the sapphire cards. So no water cooling magic here.

Also, I did not overclock the CPU. It can be pushed to 3.0Ghz with no problems. I just wanted to show the results you can get by OC'ing the GPU alone.
 
My x1950 fried my old PSU. PSU was trying too hard, only had a single 12v rail and a bit short on amps. A bit inadequate really but it took it for 3 months before dying!

Now with a much better PSU and further testing it seems stable at:-

GPU: 621
Mem: 816

(Think its a Sapphire card. Has 512 memory)

After market cooler (Accelero). Whole system air cooled. Standard volts.

Card is unstable with higher clocks. A higher GPU overclock (went to 644) only gave a very nominal further gain anyway. Possibly bottlenecked by my old single core Athlon 64? (Dont laugh! I can still run Stalker, Oblivion & MTW2 just fine. Am avoiding Crysis tho!)
 


Well it will be a new psu then. One can get lucky and get a used 500~700 psu that isn't crap if they know ware to look for around $40~$70.
 
Best to have at least two 12v rails for this GPU. I quite liked the Antec Basiq 550w which has three 12v rails with plenty of amps on each rail and good connectivity. Dont let the word Basiq put you off, its a quality PSU. I could have gone for a cheaper PSU but I wouldnt risk it especially after my last PSU died.

Forgot to mention that my X1950 was on AGP.

Also I believe that the latest catalyst driver which officially supports the X1950 is the 9.3. After that it aint supported and is classed as "legacy".
 
In fact since my last post the ccc 9.3 driver was supposed to be the last driver supporting this card but it appears that the 9.8 also supports it although some peeps have said they have had problems with it under Vista and W7. X1950 may not work under W7 since it is legacy and not recognised so I have read on some forums. One person has also reported that Crysis ran better under the 9.3 driver than under 9.8. I havent tried the 9.8 yet but will no doubt try it some point. (I am using XP64)

Forgive me for taking the thread a small ways from the original intended purpose but its all useful to know.
 


Give 9.8 a try it is what I use and is very stable all though it is vista x64. :??:
 



Tried to install 9.8 but it simply wouldnt install. I have a feeling it doesnt like my setup. Well some people have said there isnt a lot of difference between 9.3 and 9.8 anyways. I think the main benefits of 9.8 are in multi GPU setups anyway with reports of up to 70% (!) increase in some games using multi GPUS's.

Been doing a little more research on adding voltage to the card but there isnt alot of info around on that beyond trying upping the voltage via ATITool (which I think I may try out soon) or tampering with the bios voltage settings (which I dont fancy doing). Apparently some people have reported getting a core GPU speed of up to 700 (but I think that was on x1950 xtx rather than on a pro - both are quite different cards hardware wise so cannot be compared). Stangely some X1950 pro's on PCI-express cannot seem to get their memory much beyond 700 but can get up to 635 stable on the GPU.
 


Good luck with the voltage. I have not been able to raise the volts with my x1900xt but that really doesn't bother me much and the last driver before 9.8 was 9.3.
 
I could have sworn I read some posts by some people with pro’s saying 9.8 was working for them, maybe they were on PCI-e or were running the xt or xtx cards. I am on AGP. The x1950xt has a physically different core and better rated memory so that appears to still be driver supported (but for how long?).

After researching some more I have found out the following:

X1950 pro is about 3 times faster than an X850 pro. Similar in speed to an Nvidia 8600GT, actually a bit faster in the games that were tested but seems very slightly slower (by 5%) in benchmarks for some reason.

Sapphire’s X1950pro’s appear to be the only ones fitted with GDDR3 1.2ns memory which is rated to run at 800mhz (ddr 1600 mhz) with some people being able to get a little more out of it.

The Sapphire “x1950pro ultimate” apparently had GDDR4 fitted to it or so I read. Wonder if it was typo since that memory according to the reviewer was also rated at 800mhz. According to the single review that I saw the guy couldnt overclock the mem at all but did claim a GPU overclock of 648. One guy posted that he couldnt get over 600 on his ultimate GPU but got 823 on his mem.

So far as I can tell ALL other X1950pro’s from other manufacturers were fitted with GDDR3 1.4ns memory which was rated to run at 700 mhz hence why some cannot overclock their memory significantly (if at all) beyond 700 mhz.

The drawback of the Sapphire card is that it has digital voltage regulators i.e. you cannot up the voltage. Even editing/flashing the BIOS has no affect in upping the volts

Some Asus models can be physically volt modded if you are into electronics or you can try a BIOS mod on those. There were a few people claiming 641 on the GPU and up to 780 on the mem (which I presume was from extra voltage).

Shame I cannot give my card more juice because I am pretty sure you could get a little more out of it but having said that I found further gains were relatively small.

BIOS volt mod should work on other manufacturers cards although there is never a guarantee of a higher overclock. Do so at your own risk. Watch out for heat problems, get an after market cooler (unless you are using the Sapphire Ultimate – which has a good cooler) and increase the fan speeds. Good case cooling may help since the Accelero cooler doesnt blow hot air out of the case like earlier arctic coolers.

A couple of people with the same (Sapphire) card as mine, one on AGP and one on PCI-E both report their top stable GPU clock was 621 which is the same as my top stable oc so perhaps that is the tops for my card (although I note from an earlier post one lucky chap said he was getting 645 on his Sapphire GPU, but was it tested as stable?! )

I did read a post where one guy was claiming to be able to get 665 stable on his watercooled Sapphire pro but there were two or three discrepancies in his post which made me doubt the truth of what he was saying. There are very few posts that I have seen of people claiming to have gotten over 641 stable on the GPU. One review suggested that the ATI reference board has an engineering limit of 648 on the GPU and I had suspected it was around 650 anyway after my card blacked out when I experimented with a 651 overclock.

There is no over clocking software which fully supports the x1950pro (I’m not sure if its the same with the xt or xtx since they have a different/better core and memory) but I am using ATI Tray Tools since I like the extra options (overdrive isnt particularly good, has limitations and in fact seems to be disabled on a number of X1950pro’s anyway). I have to keep the AI option on high for my chosen D3D and OGL options to “stick” in Tray Tools. I miss not having support for tweaking memory timings (I spent much time tweaking the mem timings on my X850. In fact I still have it and will throw in 1gig of DDR400 mem and an overclocking sheet if anyone out there is interested, it has an arctic cooler fitted – I dont want much for it – offers anyone?).

Apparently ATI Tool (not to be confused with ATI Tray Tools) can be patched to allow tweaking of memory timings so I am gonna try getting that to work.

My overclock (from 580/702 to 621/816) has given me a 12.5% increase under the ATI Tray Tools benchmark. I have had to extensively test (playing games basically) to ensure those settings were stable since the artifact scanning option doesnt work in Tray Tools (having said that I did get it to work once but only once). Higher clocked settings on the face of it seem stable for a while but it usually crashes back into windows after a bit.

Took me some time to research all this. Probably would have been quicker to upgrade my PC lol. This appears to be the only X1950pro thread still going although I dont anticipate being able to add much else to it apart from perhaps reporting back on my memory timings success or failure. Hope someone finds this info useful particularly since it is likely more overclocking info than you will find in any other single thread about this card.
 
In a nutshell, spent much time over the weekend tweaking and testing the memory timings using ATITool 0.26 with the memory patch installed.

The original timings are quite lax and I am pleased to report that I got an extra 10% just out of tightening the memory timings.

So my total benchmark is 22.5% higher than my standard clocks/mem timings. I think that is a worthy result. :bounce:
 
AMD Athlon x2 5200+ MSI K9a Platinum Overclocked to 2815 Mhz by ---> MSI Dualcore Center
4gb ram
Windows 7 Ultimate (64 Bits)
ATI Radeon X1950pro 512MB
Overclocked to
614 GPU
749 Graphic Memory
Running Gr8
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom