explain this, I have a very weird ti4200!

[Thunderbird1GHz]

I dont think any of you have heard of this........

If I clock the core at 250MHz and the ram at 600MHz I get lots of artifacts. Raising the core to 300MHz greatly reduces the artifacts from the ram overclock.

I can run 300/590 on my Triplex ti4200 millenium silver edition(yes the pcb is silver) with 3.3ns ram. Not supprised since around 600MHz is a limit for tsop ram, even at 3.3ns However if I underclock the core to 210MHz, I get lots of artifacts with the ram at 590MHz. I get less artifacts at 300/610 than 210/590 which is very weird!

If I run the core at 310MHz, sometimes in dragothic high details it would lock up for a few seconds than resume. at 320 core it locks, I pressed esc and that exited 3dmark. 300/590 is the best I can do problem free.

at 190fsb on my Tbred and 5:2:1 divisor, agp is 76MHz and no problems but at 150fsb with my Pally I tried 4:2:1 so the agp would be 75MHz and 3dmark either crashed to the desktop or I got a reboot.

I lose or gain 50 marks per 10MHz ram clock, but each 10MHz core clock changes my score by 100 marks! This is baffling too!

I get 12k marks at 145fsb and 1/2 agp but 11900 marks at 150fsb and 2/5 agp? running the agp bus overclocked actually helps!


I will attempt to explain my own phenomenons then read your explanations and see.


1. Maybe a slow core does not utilize all of the ram bandwith but a fast core uses the bandwith much more, leaving less room for errors to occur, thus less artifacts?

2. Could need watercooling to do past 300MHz even though there already is a thermaltake fan and copper heatsink attached to the core. 300MHz is a very, very high clock speed and youll need serious cooling and perhaps a V mod to get higher overclocks. a3 steppings overclock better as you guys told me, but they still all get hot reguardless of stepping. at 310MHz its borderline locking. some cores might do 310 fine on air, others need water *and* a v mod.

3. The Tbred cpu is more advanced and assuming there is a connection between cpu, gpu and agp bus, this might explain why with the pally my card cant handle 75MHz agp but it can with the Tbred


are my explanations good or do you have explanations of your own? This is something interesting we can all learn and observe too

[lonewolfroger]

T-Bird what PSU do you have, I was getting a lot of lockups because I had a generic PSU, Also what are your ambiant temps, I don`t get any kind of artifacts unless I try to overclock mine on a real hot day.

[hwmicre]

Originally posted by lonewolfroger
T-Bird what PSU do you have, I was getting a lot of lockups because I had a generic PSU, Also what are your ambiant temps, I don`t get any kind of artifacts unless I try to overclock mine on a real hot day.

Just curious: What would consider to be more, I guess, useful for vid overclocking: Good cooling on the card (HSF/ramsinks), or good, cool ambients. I know it may be a judgement call, but....

[lonewolfroger]

I think the cooler ambiants would keep the VC cooler then the HSF and ram sinks. The only thing I want to get and put on mine is some decent ram sinks and some of that new AS ceramic on my stock HSF, the reason for that is because I get real high ambiant temps during the summer and it was a hot spring for me this year also.

[hwmicre]

Originally posted by lonewolfroger
I think the cooler ambiants would keep the VC cooler then the HSF and ram sinks. The only thing I want to get and put on mine is some decent ram sinks and some of that new AS ceramic on my stock HSF, the reason for that is because I get real high ambiant temps during the summer and it was a hot spring for me this year also.

OK, thanks....reason I'd asked was that I saw some o/c's listed 'before and after' (ramsinks, etc.) and the results, in general, weren't particularly dramatic. Made me feel like the BBiiiigggg gains I thought DcDDR would bring. Not quite.

Thx again.....

[Sprout]

I bet it's drivers.

Have you tried reformatting and working with a fresh windows install?

[Thunderbird1GHz]

Originally posted by lonewolfroger
T-Bird what PSU do you have, I was getting a lot of lockups because I had a generic PSU, Also what are your ambiant temps, I don`t get any kind of artifacts unless I try to overclock mine on a real hot day.

an archieve 400w its a little worse than enermax but both the 12v and 5v rails are above! also there is a giant thermaltake fan on the ti4200. *update........I think its not the ti4200 that cant handle high agp speeds, it seems to be the pally cpu cant handle high pci/agp speeds(are they connected) cause when I put in my ti500 as soon as I booted to windows I got an error message then the comp rebooted before I could read the message. this still doesnt explain why the ram artifacts at 590MHz if I underclock the core to 210 but at 300MHz core its fine at 590 and slight artifacts at 610

[lonewolfroger]

The reason, I mentioned that it might be your power supply is because my Turbolink 420w, when I had both my cpu and 4200 overclocked it`s +12v rail would be at +12.5v at idle, but if I did anything stressful like run 3D Mark it would shoot up to +13v. Do you have a friend that has a good PSU you can try and see how it does.

[Thade]

Is this the new ti4200 from ebay or the old ti4200 from ebay or is it the ti4200 from ebay that you swapped with some other guy on ebay or is it the ti4600 or the fx5200that sucks or the new fx5200 128 bit that EATS(tm) the sucky fx5200?

J

j/k

[Iceball_AARF]

It must have to do with the generation of small magnetic fields inside the card, maybe it generates some kind of E.M. noise, if you only overclock one thing you will hit a ceiling at the max ammount of *noise*, but maybe, only maybe, if you overclock both items there can be created a *counter-noise* that maybe eliminates a good bunch of your artifacts, all in all i think that this thread will be a guess game and nothing more :P