OS cards

[RagingSpeedhorn]

I read the sticky on overclocking, great thread btw.

I have a Gigabyte Rad 9600 Pro and I have overclocked the memory from 297 to 306.

297 = AquaMark3 score 20,340

306 = AquaMark3 score 20,377

Couple of questions, because I'm a complete novice to this.

1. Is the increase likely to have much of an effect on performace / framerate?
2. I keep hearing about cooling. Is this OS likely to have a detrimental effect on the temperature of the card? I am not running any additional cooling.
3. How do I (easily) find out the temperature of the card?

[Rbstr]

over clocking the memory a little isn't likly to need cooling as you can see from my card its oced 60 mhz without any additional cooling, i would NOT howerver do that on your raddy its a good card as is, also do not expect my OC results as the 5600 is a very ocable card the 9600 is less so. If you overclock the Engine(the GPU speed) you may want to get somthing, but only if you are realy into it, your rady should be fine as is. Through my OCing of the card i picked up between .5 more FPS in HUGE battles (but .5 means alot if you can bottom out at 2) and 15 in sanc, alos picked up near 100 3dmarks. With my CPU oc i was able to get 2 FPS more ing the huge battle and 10 more in sanc, with another 50 3dmarks. That was untill the CC patch, it threw my FPS back into the toilet. I do not recomemd OCing your CPU much at all unless you have good CPU cooling.

Most importantly, at the first sing of trouble tone the OC down a bit, or, if you are realy into it, get some better cooling, unless you want to buy a new card because yours melted.

Well ATI doesn't have built in sensors like the Nvidias do (except the XT's) i sopose you could buy one somewere but i wouldn't know. A good indicator of Over heating is Major video glitches and spontaneous crashes

[RagingSpeedhorn]

Thanks feller, thats really useful, I was worried about overclocking, but from what you have said I think I'll just keep it as it is.

[NoSurrender]

well the 9600s run so cool that theyre great for overclocking. A Guy who i used to play renegade w/ runs one overclocked to hell and hes stable and doesnt get artifacts. As long as you have a decent fan you should be able to get some decent overclock.

[Rbstr]

well the XT runs very hot because it truely is an OCed card out of the box, the pro runs at a good temp and some ocing can be achieved but don't expect a whole lot because its a good card already. if you want an ocer get a 9600 SE or a FX 5600(non ultra)

[NoSurrender]

no The pro is a much better overclocker than the SE.

[TheRagingGerbil]

A good heatpipe wrapped around the 9600 will let you oc the hell out of it. It runs so cool anyways, you run into clocking errors before you get heat problems.

[Daleon]

Aye, when the 9600 Pro came out all sites the reviewed it were able to OC it through the roof. This was the only way it was able to barely edge out the 9500 Pro making it a good buy.