OC'ing eVGA GeForce 7900GS KO, Tips Please

[slim142]

Hi

I decided to overclock my 7900GS KO HDCP. The default clock speeds are 500mhz for Core Clock and 690 for Memory Clock speed.
Using NVIDIA Tuner, I got this numbers up to 570/785mhz and I pass the test of the NVIDIA Tuner. I can get them up to 575/790 and pass the test too, but Call Of Duty 2 will crash after 15 minutes.

My temps at 570/785 are 56c idle and they go up to 62c while gaming. My question is, Is the OC of my card good enough? I mean, I know many people get different scores but I just want to know if I did a good OC and if the numbers look pretty well for my card.

Also, how can I test my card to see if it is 100% stable?

Thanks

[slim142]

bump

[TopherTony]

If you want to test for ultimate stability run 3dmark06, if you cards can make it through the deep freeze benchmark, then they are rock solid. And if that doesnt do it for ya, run your favorite 3d game for a coupla hrs. Preferrably a game with lots of explosion, dynamic lighting, multitudes of characters, etc. I recommend Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, Black and White 2.

[Idaho]

Well keep in mind I believe the "KO" is already overclocked some from EVGA so whatever gains you are making, count them plus the EVGA overclock compared to a regular 7900

[Omastar]

Your temps are ridiculously high, for one. You're gonna be well advised to use an aftermarket cooler like the Zalman VF-900, Accelero, Thermalright HR-03, etc. And I think the soft voltmods on 7900GS are the same as on 7900GTs, so if you're feeling up to the task, you can pick up a conductive ink pen and do a vMod (for core voltage, vMem mods require penciling or soldering). I got my 7900GT KO to about 760/840 with a simple vCore mod, but you're not gonna be doing this on stock cooling.

[WRC]

try to turn down the numbers a few and see if cod 2 still crashes

[ziddey]

your temps are more than fine for the stock cooler and you've achieved good numbers on stock voltages.

get atitool and use the artifact scanner. stock, I was able to get 580/800. However, it sounds like your's is a little less.

Definitely, the vf900 brought temps incredibly low, rivaling watercooling for the g71gs, at the expense of some noise (vf900 is still kind of loud at max speed)

however, it allowed me to do voltmods from stock 1.2v/2.0v to 1.5v/2.1v.

It helped me bring clocks up to 650/840.

Now that I'm on water, I tried 1.55v/2.2v.
I'm getting 720/860 now.

Even at your current clocks, it should be able to outpace a stock 7900gt.

Keep load temps under 80'c and you should be fine. thermal threshold is a lot higher on the graphics chips. However, there's no throttling on ram, so you need to be careful of them overheating or they'll degrade.

[slim142]

Thanks for the answers

How good is that ATITOOL for geforce cards? is it like an orthos but vga edition?

I want 2 things out of my overclock, 1) make sure my card doesnt go over 65c and 2) that it is ROCK solid.

[ziddey]

it's pretty good. the artifact scanner is quite decent. the detection doesn't always work that well though sometimes. I have found artifacts when it didn't pick them up.

There's also rthdribl that a lot of people use to load gpu's and manual look for artifact.

[slim142]

OK, will try that ATI TOOL soon.

Thanks everybody

[slim142]

Hey guys

I have one more question. Remember I said on my first post that I had my Geforce on 570/785mhz, well I downclocked it to 570/770mhz and guess what? My system restarted on Cod 2.
At first I thought it was the CPU, then the RAM (because they are overclocked) but I have been running orthos for like 1 hour already and its fine so I think what caused the system to restart was the VGA card. Probably the temps? With the ATI Tool Artifact-test the temps went up to 72c, well they probably went higher with such a heavy-load game and made the system to restart.

I dont know, is this possible? can the videocard make the system restart for any problem? shouldnt the pc freeze or something?

[balewolf]

usualy you will see artifacts and freezes but it might restart to lower use atitool to test then try to game. My evga 7900gs ko on stock cooler never passed 70c or so but now i got my nvsilencer 5 on it and it never goes past 55c and idles 35-40c. My 7900gs ko does 655mhz on core and 855mhz on memory for benchmarks gaming i run it at 615mhz on core and 830mhz on memory. Thats with no volt mods yet i plan to do one in near future. If you arent having problems testing with ati tool id put it on your ram or cpu run cpu and ram stock and video overclocked and see if you get restarts then.

[slim142]

One more question (im a noob sorry)

I have seen people overclocking their memory clock higher than the core clock. I mean, they overclock the core clock like 50mhz but the memory clock by 100mhz or more.

Is the memory clock easier to overclock? can it be usually overclocked more than the core clock?

[serialk11r]

Hmmmm... it failed at only 570MHz?

[ziddey]

One more question (im a noob sorry)

I have seen people overclocking their memory clock higher than the core clock. I mean, they overclock the core clock like 50mhz but the memory clock by 100mhz or more.

Is the memory clock easier to overclock? can it be usually overclocked more than the core clock?

generally, the ram is rated at 1.4ns iirc, which is 714mhz. Reference spec for ram is only 660. Reference core is 450.

On stock volts, you should be seeing around 800 on ram, and usually a little under 600 for core. evga ko stock comes at 500/690. So if you want to compare delta to that, then yes, ram overclocks way more.

That said, with a gpu voltmod, you should be able to get up near 700. It closes down the delta gap

[slim142]

failed maybe because IDK temps? with ATI TOOL at 570/770 the artifact tool increased the temps up to 72c after 25 mins, I wonder how hot the card was when playing call of duty 2 at 1280x1024.

Anyways Ill see if the memory clock can be overclocked higher :)

[tbone8ty]

i jsut got the evga 7900gs and im getting very annoying high ptuchd noises coming from it.

its not the fan

it only happens when i run games.

anybody have a similar problem?

ive heard it could be do to the voltage regualtor?

is there anything i cna do or should i rma it

[slim142]

brand new, no overclock, no wires in the way of the fan?

RMA then, it might be defective, dont wanna deal with it later since eVGA might get rid of them soon.

[tbone8ty]

exactly its brand new, no wires, havent overclocked.

its seeks when i use the scroll wheel and when i do 3d apps and gaming mad annoying.

should i just replace it or go with something else.

[ziddey]

is it coming from the psu by any chance? I have the same issue. related to grounding problems. what motherboard are you using? p5b by any chance?

[slim142]

Well it happened to me once, but it went away in minutes.

I also had the problem that the videocard wouldnt show anything on the screen, I just adjusted the pci power connector and that fixed it.

[tbone8ty]

no its definitly coming from the video card.

i have an asus a8n32-sli motherboard with the latest bios 1405

im not running sli

could it be my power supply?

im using a thermaltake 430w, which should be enough since im not running alot of stuff,

1 dvdrw drive, 2 hardrives, the mobo, 165 opteron, and the 7900gs video card.

but anyways its not like i can fix it, and its really annoying so im gonna return it.

i was jsut curios, thanks

[ziddey]

what you can try doing is taking qtips and paper towels and rubbing alcohol and washing the board

[tbone8ty]

its definily coming from the capacitator area at the end of the card.