Initial A64 / 9600 XT test results

[MrIcee]

Finally got my hands on a .13 based 9600 XT videocard last night, and have to say it's a pretty decent card with excellent components aboard. It appears to be a slower card out of the box compared to a Ti4200, but it has great overclocking potential with additional cooling.

The volt mods look like standard 9600 Pro fare, and the Memory aboard is the same 2.8ns Samsung being used on many cards today.

This Sapphire came clocked out of the box at 500/650, and w/ stock cooling wouldn't make it much past 580Mhz, memory 720Mhz, tho artifact free. Any further on the core and it just locks, higher on the mem and it reduces scores. Being based on .13 microns and with volt mods and chilled cooling, the core may surprise in its outer limits. Its only running at stock voltage of 1.39v. It's hard to speculate at this time on how far the memory may go with extra volts.

I installed the card on my bandwidth tweaked A64 system running 6.5 x 324Mhz FSB, the OCZ Platinum Limited Edition running 263Mhz 2-2-5-2, for total system Mhz of 2106. Tho not an optimum install of Win2000 as I have DX9 and the Cat 3.9s installed, performance was very respectable compared to others in the class, as I'm down a few hundred Mhz to the other AMD systems and big Mhz to the Intels and running 100% on air. Despite the handicap, the rig posted 4th in the 9600 class, which ain't a bad showing:)

Can't wait to see what she'll score when I turn up the wick:thumbsup:

Randi:D

[majormav]

excellent work .... looks like another No1 in class for xtremesystems when you start to push that system congrats :toast:

[GJ]

put 300-350mhz on the cpu and GO GO GO :)

[Poki]

I'm glad to see you got a card with good memory on it. I was hoping you would find one with atleast 2.8ns Sammy chips.
I too have been very curious to see what these .13 cores can do with some subambient cooling.
I can't wait to see what your baby is gonna do when you get it all setup...
GL Mr. Icee and hurry up with the proper cooling on that GPU, those little factory coolers make me nervous!!!

[zakelwe]

Nice comfortable position to be in , ie 4th with the AMD64 ticking away at 2100Mhz. Do you wish to give an indication on how much your present AMD64 overclocks to, or would you rather keep that to yourself for the moment? What cooling will you be using eventually , or is that under your hat also ?

You're lobby high is already up there due to the large FSB you're running I see :)

I wonder if the Bulgarians have spotted your arrival yet ? Keep us posted how you are going, looks like xtreme will not be going down after all ( I took the 5600U and 5700U records back this week as well :) )

Bon Voyage Captain.

Regards

Andy

[bowman1964]

OK MrIcee put down that service manual on the IH bus long enough to do a little benching....:D

good luck bud:D

[MrIcee]

LOL Adam:)

Actually I'm out of the service manual and working on the $6000 Mapping and Routing software the District bought for me to computerize our bus routes:D ( Being done on an AMD system they let me build for our department)

Anyways, I truly don't know the clockability of this chip yet as I'm still on stock AMD air cooling. It will run at low FSB(Low 200's) at 2400Mhz and 1.8v but lock up in benches. I have not been able, on air, to bench high FSB at 2200Mhz or more(Kicks me out of 3DMark)...I believe its a heat issue because the stock HSF is kicking out some gawd awful heat at those speeds. It's definitely not a volt issue on the chipset, LDT or Memory because theres plenty of that to go around:D

When I finish this adventure we'll see how high I can set the goal for everyone else;)

Randi:D

[Geforce4ti4200]

go, go, go! Its very nice to see some competition in the lightweight video cards! You are already stomping all over my ti4200 :) Do you think 18k is within reach with v mods and prometeia? also is running a lower fsb with 1:1 as good as higher at 5:4 if the ram clocks end up equal?

[MrIcee]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
Do you think 18k is within reach with v mods and prometeia? also is running a lower fsb with 1:1 as good as higher at 5:4 if the ram clocks end up equal?

I think 20,000 is a reasonable goal:)

At lower fsb(up to maybe 230-240) I'd say yes. But running at the nForce3's 200fsb/166Mem divider, anything over 300 FSB is going to smoke 1:1, especially in Car and Lobby. You just need ram that can hold out to 250-275Mhz with tight timings at those FSB speeds. The OCZ Platinum LE is certainly showing me it's stuff these last 4 days.:)

Randi:D

[Jupiler]

Very nice score for a first start. :toast:
I'm sure you'll crank it up and hope you'll reach N°1.
We won't be satisfied with less anyway. :D

[Iridium192_217]

the throne is yours to take:)

keep us posted

[MrIcee]

I just fired up old reliable "MrIcee", the -30c R-22 chiller fabricated in Jan. 2002. Just hooked to a CPUFX Copper G4 block, we'll see how high the core will go without volt mods.

Randi:D

[Geforce4ti4200]

twenty thousand on a 9600xt? oh wow that is a loafy goal, good luck in that too! It would be like 22-23k on a ti4200! How high do you exactly plan to crank the poor core up? 650? 700? youd also want to wind that ram of yours to around 800 for mad bandwith :D and that fx cpu needs over 2.5GHz to really shine. Is it true you need soft fsb to get much past 250fsb since the bios limits you?

[pik-ard v1.1]

does softfsb work with t-birds? and if so, where do i get it? i see a few on google, but whats the latest version? as most of them look quite old... :(

[MrIcee]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
twenty thousand on a 9600xt? oh wow that is a loafy goal, good luck in that too! It would be like 22-23k on a ti4200! How high do you exactly plan to crank the poor core up? 650? 700? youd also want to wind that ram of yours to around 800 for mad bandwith :D and that fx cpu needs over 2.5GHz to really shine. Is it true you need soft fsb to get much past 250fsb since the bios limits you?

I thought 20,000 was a nice round figure to shoot for. Is it doable?? Not really certain but it's a nice goal to strive for.

I'm not sure how high the GPU core will go with v-mod and phase change cooling, time will tell.

This is an A64 and not an FX51. But at over 300Mhz FSB it does make tremendous bandwidth. If you go check the A64 bandwidth thread you'll see the rig was making 4100/4100 at only 1653Mhz:D It's certainly not shining too bad at only 2100Mhz in this class. With Prommy cooling and upped to 2500Mhz + I'm getting a bit excited at the prospects indeed.

But this is a one step at a time project that illustrates how to progressively improve a systems performance. First and foremost is to dial in the highest bandwidth at any given speed. That contributes greatly to attaining superior Car and Lobby scores. Then improvement to the videocard via cooling, then w/ voltage modifications comes next.

I use the newest version of Clock Gen to adjust Multiplier and FSB. Interestingly, I have to set my FSB to it's highest setting in the bios FIRST before adjusting with clock gen. IE: If I try to go from 200 to 300+ in Clock Gen, it locks the system up, but if I'm already at 280Mhz FSB....it adjusts up fine with no problems.

You can find Clock Gen here (http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php)

Randi:D

[Soulburner]

20k should be easily reachable, look at what mikem is doing with the Ti4200.

[MrIcee]

Got another one of those to to play with after the 9600 XT testing. Procurred the same card he has utilized, the Asus Ti4800 SE 8x. I had a ball in the Ti4200 class previously with an Asus 8420S with 3.3ns Entrontech ram.

Randi:D

PS. The lower classes are alot of fun to play in. You can get cards refurb(ie NewEgg or other vendors) for not alot of $ and have a ball:)

[unrealneo]

hehe, how about my 9600Pro score with only 309 memory clock?:mad:

I cant believe I squeezed 14k out of it with a Tbred, MSI NF2 and single channel ADATA memory.:eek:

Hopefully 14.3k tomorrow with dual channel.:D

anyway, nice going there!:D

i'd say 700 core is doable, and i've said it before(not on this forum), a 9600XT in the right system with the right cooling and volts can do 20K.

[pik-ard v1.1]

well crap... i have a kt133a chipset... looks like clockgen is too new for that... :(

[kromosto]

nice score MrIcee as i loved to read what did you do with your ti4200 another good story is coming with 9600xt :)

[MrIcee]

Ok...this puppy is seriously undervolted by the looks of it. I initially had difficuly clamping the CPUFX block onto the card, but got excellent core contact after some adjustments.

The yield?? NO improvement in core clocks cooled at -28c. Locks up/freezes soon(beginning of bench) at anything over 580Mhz, same as air.

Warming the soldering iron as I type this, will report back later.

Also switching water blocks for consistent core contact, to the MCW50-T. The holes are the same in the PCB as the 9700/9800.

Randi:D

[Stang_Man]

Originally posted by MrIcee
Ok...this puppy is seriously undervolted by the looks of it. I initially had difficuly clamping the CPUFX block onto the card, but got excellent core contact after some adjustments.

The yield?? NO improvement in core clocks cooled at -28c. Locks up/freezes soon(beginning of bench) at anything over 580Mhz, same as air.

Warming the soldering iron as I type this, will report back later.

Also switching water blocks for consistent core contact, to the MCW50-T. The holes are the same in the PCB as the 9700/9800.

Randi:D

i think you should be looking at 680mhz with TEC + vmods.

:)

[MrIcee]

:D :D :D :D :D :banana: :banana: :banana: :toast:

How about 720Mhz at 1.55v Vgpu:) Ran back to back to back Nature runs to confirm it wouldn't freeze. Slight artifacting but not enough to effect the bench. 1.6v caused errors when trying to open 3Dmark, repeatedly. It artifacted the dOS bios screens as well as the Windows GUI, similar looking to pushing your memory to far. Was a bit scary cause I thought I borfed the core with too much voltage. All is ok. Next step is a comparitive bench at 2100Mhz.

Randi:D

[Stang_Man]

Originally posted by MrIcee
:D :D :D :D :D :banana: :banana: :banana: :toast:

How about 720Mhz at 1.55v Vgpu:) Ran back to back to back Nature runs to confirm it wouldn't freeze. Slight artifacting but not enough to effect the bench. 1.6v caused errors when trying to open 3Dmark, repeatedly. It artifacted the dOS bios screens as well as the Windows GUI, similar looking to pushing your memory to far. Was a bit scary cause I thought I borfed the core with too much voltage. All is ok. Next step is a comparitive bench at 2100Mhz.

Randi:D

hurry!

then unleash hell! :flame:

[Poki]

If it can run 720 in '01 i bet 750 will be easy in '03. That's a totally amazing clock you have there!

[Stang_Man]

Originally posted by Poki
If it can run 720 in '01 i bet 750 will be easy in '03. That's a totally amazing clock you have there!

hmm, i dont know about that..

usually, max clock in 01' is a lot more than the max clocks in 03'

[Poki]

My gpu clocks alot higher in '03.. Number 1 infact.
(for a short time i suspect)

[pik-ard v1.1]

and what gpu clocks would those be? on what card?

[Poki]

9600 pro, 559 in '01 and 573 in '03. My ram can run 400+ though. ;)

[Poki]

2001 builds alot more heat than 2003 in my r350 core. Pretty sure it'll be the same story with Mricee's r360.

[Geforce4ti4200]

O my gawd! 720MHz core!!!!!!!!! those numbers make me drool. Man theres no telling how high the r420 could go since that things also .13 microns. 650-700 is probably my estimate, is that even a reasonable guess for an unreleased product? Hows your luck with the ram? yes its good to take it one step at a time, id max out your video card first than work on maxing your cpu next. Man I really need to v mod my ti4200(if its even worth doing that on a less than ideal) mine does 290/600 so would I be wasting my time with that when I should be buying one thatll do like 320/650+ then mod it to 350/720+ using just air? Good luck with your ti4800se, mikem's 21k score isnt gonna be easy to defeat, thats higher than what alot of guys get with radeon9800(pro)

[Pimpsho]

damn 720!! thats insane icee nice work! got ne pics of ur setup?

[Poki]

The suspense is killing me. I hope it's responding to the increased voltage well, mine didn't care for 1.5+ on the gpu.

[zakelwe]

That is a nice clock for the vpu, should put in a good score in 3cmark03 , to put it mildly.

What is the default voltage for the 9600XT anyone?

Have you run any 3dmark03 yet Randi ? I see Poki is top at the moment .. nice work Poki.

Regards

Andy

[JeffPH]

good luck randi!!!!

:)

[kommando]

20k go for it!!!!

[MrIcee]

I apologize for not getting back last evening. I was called away from my fun for a few jours and didn't get a full bench in to post. I can tell you that I had 217 Car low, 106 Car high, 276 Drago Low I forget Drago high....and Nature was 92. I had Lobby to finish and had to shut down and leave:(

Andy, as stated in the first post, stock volts on the GPU is 1.39v. I haven't run '03 yet but will after maxing '01.

Thank you all for the encouragment here, I'll be back at it later today and will post my results.

Randi:D

[Geforce4ti4200]

I can hardly wait for the end of the day and with those overclocks, you could get 105+ in nature!

[zakelwe]

I didn't see the voltage, I'm sure all these artifacts are causing me to go blind ;)

Looks like first place with those scores. Then building the gap :)

Regards

Andy

[Poki]

WTG Mricee! 17,493 so far with 2100MHz cpu speed http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7292319

[MrIcee]

:D Thank you

I couldn't resist, that was my top back up score. My car scores are off in that one by 5 FPS. I'll be working on finding that problem later on. I was headed for a possibly 100 point higher score when I had to stop last night. Will be doing the Vmem mod and try to get the memory up a bit more.

Stock memory voltage is 2.6v, way under the rams rating. A couple tenths additional may yield another 20-30Mhz.

Randi:D

[Poki]

I hope you can easily obtain more memory speed without having to bump up the vddq and vddr. I'll tell ya, your results sure are making me think about having another go at it to find my maximum limits on air. Even a dryice run may be justified. ;)

[TodB]

Damn man.... you make me wanna get the ASUS9600XT back in my hands and do a Volt mod... You're a good competitor and I'll do my best to run some power against ya :toast:

[zakelwe]

:toast:

Poor old Creep has now lost two records with a few days, mind you that happened to me last week as well :)

Nice work Randi and I think you are right for the vmem mod, should give good dividends. After that will you be concentrating on the cpu, or leaving that for a while and switching to the GF4 4200/4800 card you have ? That might be fun, doing half and half and knowing you have more out of the other one to come when the cpu gets going on "non-air" ? Lots of permuatations when you have two cards.

It's a shame Ati do not have better memory and better PCB's to put that faster memory into effect. TodB and I are running 1+Ghz on the memory in the 5700U class and although it is DDR2 the DDR nvidia cards can hit 900+. Very strange.

Here's my compare for the 5700U class,

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7273939

Can you spot the nVidia optimised 44.3 nature score ? Cough :D It goes back down to about 100+ with 52.16

Regards

Andy

[Geforce4ti4200]

wow nice score mr icee! I had estimated you could push 18k and your just over 500 marks away from that. Once you go water or prometeia for that cpu and get 2.5Ghz or so, you could easily break 18k! 20k on that ti4200 of yours is possible with really high overclocks on cpu and gpu :) does the 44.3 driver support the fx cards or do you need to do something special to get it to work? I notice many of the fx5700u scores have crappy natures of around 100! even some fx5900s too!

[MrIcee]

Thank you guys:) You are all great competitors indeed too :thumbsup: I look foward to competition with great benchers like yourselves:)

zakelwe.....I'm going to just progress and wring everything out of this CPU/videocard combination first. I have the Prommy awaiting the A64....I'm just having fun right now trying to best the best scores while having one hand tied behind my back in CPU Mhz:)

Geforce4ti4200....I have 19,306 up in Ti4200 score with a 4X AGP Asus 8420S riding a P4 at 4Ghz. With the bandwidth of this A64 system and the 8X AGP Asus Ti4800Se with volt mods and good cooling, I believe I can eclipse 20,000 easily and challenge mikem. Time will tell:)

Randi:D

[zakelwe]

Originally posted by MrIcee
I'm just having fun right now trying to best the best scores while having one hand tied behind my back in CPU Mhz:)


Randi:D

And you know that these new cards scale very well with an increase in cpu power :)

Have you done a max air cooled cpu run yet at 2200 ?

Regards

Andy

[unrealneo]

good luck Icee!:)

love to see it hit 20k.

cant wait to see the results after prommied A64 + vmem mod.:slobber:

[dim3z]

lolz ice, way to go. and ure building the suspense so much LOL. its a nailbiter, cant wait for the next installment lol.;):P

[tr3x_bg]

Icee you are so mean :) Why did you out-perform the nice bulgarian dude..gosh you are so mean I swear! Heheheh just a joke...You`d see some X overclock in BG if we had the m0ney of course..Well jood job anywayz :)

[MrIcee]

Welp, has been a long day my friends. Came home sick from work this morning, slept then came to Xtreme, posted up the previous score.

Just got my tail up a couple hours ago and decided I wanted to get a couple benches in for ya's:)

The mem mod is done but only yielded +20 Mhz, for a total of 740Mhz. Any voltage over 2.82v or so and I get the 3DMark error message when opening the program....same as when too much voltage was applied to the core. I settled on 2.75v and its artifact free. Any more volts and the screen gets all fuzzy in 3D. Any more Mhz and it starts to go into artifact heaven.

The core is the same.....any more volts and it artifacts badly.I think I'm going to need a Baker 18 GPU cooler to go any farther up in Mhz. It will do 720Mhz but after a full bench tends to freeze. I settled on a " safe " 700Mhz for repeatable benches.

I think this 9600 XT needs additional voltage ala the 9800 Pro/ XT. Looking at several mods on the net, I saw that there was a mod for 9600 Pro's to add the additional power to the card, but unfortunately my card has the missing components that are necessary for adding the +5 and +12v. If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

Enough of the tech talk:)

What you've been waiting for has arrived. I ran a low FSB bench tonight to see how this rig would run at 2300 Mhz on air, playing it safe and taking high FSB complications/ tweaking out of the equation. I was mildly surprised at the end result
18,049

UPDATE: Did a high FSB bench at the same speed, 2367Mhz and gained 93 points overall @18,142 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7294634) . This is 295FSB/236Mhz Mem vs 236Mhz FSB 1:1.

Not too shabby indeed :)

Randi:D[

[wimpie007]

very promising...
With a couple of adjustments, this will get even more insane :D

[Hallowed]

Icee why not look into the 256-bit mem-bus 9600XT's?

Last I heard Visiontek has them as well as some other company... I'll have to recheck.

I'm sure with that particular example you wouldn't have much trouble handing 20K its own arse. ;)

[Geforce4ti4200]

I never heard of a "budget" card sporting a 256 bit bus, but if those did, itll be worth another 2k easy!

[MrIcee]

Hallowed:)

Please check...I've scoured Price Watch and haven't found an etailer with them at all. I think I can hand 20,000 it's arse with this combination, but the Visiontek would be a nice step up.

I'd need to sell this card first in order to finance the Visiontek if their 9600 XT does truly exist in retail.:)

Randi:D

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
I never heard of a "budget" card sporting a 256 bit bus, but if those did, itll be worth another 2k easy!
I haven't either, sounds like a rumour to me. ATI makes the chips with 128bit busses and sells them to the individual card makers, I don't think its up to them to re-engineer it.

[zakelwe]

I'm not totally convinced that the Visiontek has a 256 bit memory bus as the only place that says it is in the press release from Visiontek and maybe it's just a mistake ? Maybe it has though, will have to see when the first reviews come out.

Nice score again Randi, I was mildly surpised myself when I saw you had got past 2200Mhz air cooled and was up in the high 2.3's

:)

Off topic just for a minute

I blew my PS2 port last night and need a USB keyboard, i just hope when you default the BIOS it enables USB for keyboards so I can get this motherboard running again when I get the keyboard. Is that likely anyone ?


Regards

Andy

[Geforce4ti4200]

is it true the red L pcb 9500s are 256 bit ram even when not modded? that explains why they own the 9600xt!

[unrealneo]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
is it true the red L pcb 9500s are 256 bit ram even when not modded? that explains why they own the 9600xt!

yep, L shape mem 9500np's are 256bit.

my grandad has one.:p: :D

they still dont beat the 9600XT unless it's overclocked tho. AFAIK.

the XT is about equal to a 9500Pro in all situations apart from 1600x1200, where the 8x1 design showed.

[TodB]

Originally posted by MrIcee


UPDATE: Did a high FSB bench at the same speed, 2367Mhz and gained 93 points overall @18,142 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7294634) . This is 295FSB/236Mhz Mem vs 236Mhz FSB 1:1.

Not too shabby indeed :)

Randi:D[

To be honest I was xpecting more... but a 1k more over my result with that setup..... I'll check that these days :D

[Poki]

Well done Mricee, you were the first to beat my drago low. I didn't think anyone would beat it. I ran my memory at 828ddr on that test!
Can't wait to see how your 4800 is gonna do. :toast:

[Geforce4ti4200]

crazy nice score mr icee! I noticed you backed your core down to 700 from 720, did it lose some overclockability? I knew you could do 18k. Do you think theres much left in her for 19k or even 20k? :D

[MrIcee]

Thanks gentleman:)

I backed the core down because I started benching before my chiller had cooled the coolant to it's max. I woke up early last night, gathered my druthers and decided to bench a few before going back to bed. It was locking on me due to the bench freezing at the end when I was at 720Mhz.

Someday I'm going to have a dedicated direct die GPU cooler put together so I can enjoy consistent temps without the flucuations you can encounter with coolant chiller systems.

As far as clockability, with more consistent, lower temps of direct die I believe this puppy might do upwards of 750Mhz.

But as stated before, this card could stand supplemental power.
It starts to do funky screen artifacting with Vgpu over 1.55v and/or mem over 2.8v...even not overclocked. There is still more potential within the 9600 XT...just will take a little doing:)

Randi:D

EDIT: The A64 on air is with stock AMD cooler...nothing aftermarket.

[QuadDamage]

good job MrIcee:)

but let me know once you're done with XT cos i'm hoping to see what you can do with GF4 card. i have a Gainward Ti4600 (first rev agp 4x) so we can have a nice competition in GF4 class.
I'm able to bench at 325fsb using stock heatsing and no v-mods so far.

[koensa]

is this (http://tech.163.com/tm/031020/031020_112703.html) a good card? (2.5ns)

[Pimpsho]

Originally posted by MickeyMouse
quad are we back on the ti4600's Im picking one up tonight online somewhere.. the 8x agp ti4600's are nice but no way am I paying $200 for an MSI ti4600 wiht 8x agp when I can get a 5900np for that or a 9800np ;)..

Im picking up a $129 dollar PNY ti4600 whitebox me thinks.. I just sold my r404 cooler so i ahve nothing for GOPU cooling ATM back to the days of slk-600's at 380 core hu my man ;) :)
sounds like a battle comin up in the low budget cards;) i got a 5200ulta:rolleyes: in my server and i wana know if thers ne volt mods i can do for it...?
ne way back on track! thats an awesome score for a 9600 my best on my 9700 with my 3.0c is like 20k or so no v-mods... great work icee!!! ne pics yet?:toast:

[Creative]

Sounds like those 9600 card oc like nothing else :D

Nice going MrIcee, and good luck with getting some higher scores :thumbsup:

YOU CAN DO IT!!! :banana:

[Geforce4ti4200]

ti4600s are worth $130 max. anyone tried ebay for bargins or buy a used one off someone else? MickeyMouse, good luck overclocking that pny card, it might not clock as high as the msi, especially on the ram. depends on what ram chips they use and what quality. someone needs to break 20/21k on a ti4600 though LOL its even been done on a darn ti4800se

[QuadDamage]

ok jason:) I would have to drill new holes in my r404a prometeia's cooling block since it fits on ATI cards, but of course i will bench it on air first to see what i can get. It won't be easy though cos i once went to high with vgpu to like 4.0V by mistake and since then that card runs very hot even w/o v-mod and stock speeds using big Alpha PAL hetsink and no so quiet fan:)
22k+ should be our goal me thinks :)

[zakelwe]

Originally posted by Pimpsho
sounds like a battle comin up in the low budget cards;) i got a 5200ulta:rolleyes: in my server and i wana know if thers ne volt mods i can do for it...?


Bring it on .... :D

Regards

Andy ( master of the 5200U .. heh heh LOL )

[Pimpsho]

Originally posted by zakelwe
Bring it on .... :D

Regards

Andy ( master of the 5200U .. heh heh LOL )
lol well im gona see if i can find ne v-mods for it... u guys got any ideas where i could start?