3 Questions - Video Card OC'in + ATItool

[dz`]

I have eVGA 7900gs with Zalman VF900-cu. I am trying to find max stable clocks without any vmods.

-Is ATITool's max core and max mem option the best way to do this or does anyone care to share their method?

-Is it accepted that you must move the artifact detection slider all the way to the left (in the options) before you can call a certain clock "stable"

-How long should ATItool scan without artifacts before you can conclude "it's not gonna artifact"

-Is there a preferred version of ATITool to use? With NVIDIA cards or just in general. (I am on 0.25 b15 latest AFAIK)

Thanks!

[Fr3ak]

Well I always do it like this:
I take it you want it stable for everything, so the use of any 3D Marks aint the best program to use.
I use Ati Tool for setting clocks and Rivatuner to display spped and temp of the card using its osd. Then play several games. If it crashes,decrease clocks a bit.
Scanning for artifacts using ATi Tool gave me wrong results. For example Ati Tool detected artifacts at 550Mhz core and I didnt see a seingle artifact while gaming at 590Mhz.
Call of Duty 2 and CSS are the games I noticed are very harsh when it comes to video card stability.
And over:banana::banana::banana::banana: the card manually. The auto find max mode rarely finds the right clocks. At least for me.
I am using beta 14 for my 7300Gt. Works fine apart from memory speed being displayed 1/2.

[dz`]

I ran the max core without changing any of the atitool artifact scan settings and it was determined to be around 630mhz, now with the setting turned to more artifacts detected/lower overclock its only at 596mhz.

Also in atitool, sometimes when artifact scanning there are yellow dots that appear but atitool does not detect them (it just continues to scan) I assume that if I see anything yellow its an artifact correct?

Edit: Also has anyone done any sort of tests to determine whether or not the zalman ramsinks with the provided tape are better or worse than no ramsinks at all? Right now I'm running with no ramsinks becuase in my mind the airflow of the cooler over the ram chips seemed better than those crappy ramsinks with crappy tape. Not to mention if I do extensive tests with no ramsinks now I can add them later and do the same testing. If the ramsinks improve clocks then I can keep them on, if not, well, chuck 'em!

[dz`]

bump.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can keep my memory clock over the max in coolbits (800MHz)? I can set it in rivatuner, and it sticks for one reboot but after that everything goes haywire. I am considering flashing my vga BIOS with the clocks I want as a last resort but if anyone knows something I dont feel free to chime in