9800Pro Low Overclock on Water Cooling

A

alphaone

Gawd
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Jun 27, 2004
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The title says it. I bought this Sapphire 9800 Pro from Newegg back in feb and didn't overclock it because it had sucky cooling. And now I have water cooling (Maze4 GPU specifically). The first time I got the water cooling all set up and running I could only get the thing up to 399MHz core using ATITool. I could get it up to 415 and have no visible artifacts in 3dmark2k3, but I'm sure they were there, just invisible.

So, I thought that maybe I should reseat the water block. I did and I also put on a fresh coat of AS5. Fire it back up and...402MHz max. :( So that wasn't the problem really. So I had another thought. I got a spare 80mm fan and pointed it at the top of the card. Didn't help at all. Oh yeah, btw it has an R350 core and samsung RAM. So I'm dissapointed as I was hoping for at least 420 w/out any artifacts. Is there anything that I missed that I could possibly do to help it go higher? Did I just get a card that sucks at ocing?

Full specs on water cooling:
DD RBX on 2400+ Mobile @ 2.5GHz (temps 33 idle/41 load)
DD Maze4 GPU on 9800P
DD Heatercore w/Evercool 120mm fan
Hydor L35 Pump 450gph
and a 5.25" bay res

Help me if you can :cool:
 
seems the card just sucks, unless theres something wrong with the waterblock or its making poor contact.
and is it by any chance the black PCB version?
 
No it's a red PCB and the block is making perfect contact judging by what I saw the first time I removed it to reseat it. Is it possible to raise the voltage for this thing like you do for a CPU? I saw something like AGP V..something in the bios. I'm a noob at overclocking video cards sorry. :) :(
 
Dont raise the AGP voltage, and dont do any volt mods unless you know ALOT about every type of overclocking, especially on videocards.
Id say your card just stinks at o/cing unforunately, because 400mhz core on water is more than lame.
Not to say its a lame card tho, your preformance should still be great.
Maybe sell/return it for a refund and get a 6800NU if you are really dissapointed with it.
 
voltage regulation is handled on the card. The agp voltage may or may not stabilize a crappy overclock, but most likely will not do ANYTHING for your video overclock. It may stabilize a CPU overclock due to the fact that the VDDQ and the VAGP are so closely related.

If you want to get a higher overclock, you'll need to raise the voltage. You can "safely" raise the voltage with the waterblock on since it can handle SO MUCH MORE of a heat load than your normal 9800 pro heatsink can. To raise the voltage you'll need to do a voltmod to your card. This requires a few things (if you're inexperienced i'd venture to say it's not worth the risk). My tool list (off the top of my head) would be a (digital) multimeter, soldering station, some thin solder/thin tipped soldering iron, steady hands, safety glasses (not necessary..unless you really have un-steady hands). A 10k pot(entiometer) or two and perhaps some wire. you can find detailed diagrams and explanations/guides off google, or xtremesystems.org has some pretty good guides. If you're not experienced with a soldering iron or do not have the money to spare do not try this. Hopefully this helps a bit!
 
its because its an r350 core. mine is also an r350 and doesnt go any higher than 412
 
i woudln't exactly say the r350's are inferior, they just have less voltage (in my experience) pumped to them than their younger (bigger?) brothers. A voltmod should get you up to speed (pun intended).
 
I might try the pencil volt mod as soon as I can find my multi-meter. Now where did I leave that darn thing...

I have one question though. I wasn't clear on wether you draw multiple lines or just keep making one line bigger :confused:
 
Just make the graphite line more pronounced. Just draw a firm line across that component and re-trace it 2 or 3 times to start out with. I personally prefer the resistor mod because it is [H]arder and more permanent. (and if you know what you're doing, i'd say less likely to give you grief). I've never tried a pencil mod before though, so i might be blowing hot air out of my ass.
 
That is a pretty low overclock. I would definitely consider a volt mod.
My R360 core did over 420 on stock cooling 24/7. These cards do run hot !
I've seen my card it 72C under load.
According to ViperJohn the famous ATI modder, R350 core is actually better for
overclocking than R360 if you are going all out. It can really take some volts.
Don't quote me but I think he gets them up to 500 !
Your water block should really help if you bump the voltage.
 
I have it running at 412 core now. I couldn't get the pencil mod to work and there's no way I'm doing the resister mod because I'm not good enough with a soldering iron yet.

ATITool says that there's errors at that speed, but I can't see any and it's still making it faster (not slower). And i'm getting some ramsinks soon so i'll probably have a card running like an XT and that's good enough for me right now :).

Thanks for your help guys.
 
Crappy 9800 Pro on water here too... only 380/420 core/mem on a Gigabyte R350 :(

Good thing my X800 Pro came in yesterday :D
 
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