Sapphire X1800XL Results & Problems

Well I had a nicely writen up post til I tried posting then it locked IE up :( This is the third time this has done this with me grrr. So instead of my nice write up I had going combining all the posts, I'm going with the shortened version and lots of linking sorry.

Brings up my first posting results and great clocks
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=256

The issue begins with the oc
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=260

Large amount of test results
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=261


The stable settings
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=271
And continued with further tests
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=279

Another higher OC test @ XT speeds
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=289
But
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=292

Now with that last post forgot to add something. After the last test crashed I tried setting the core back up again with a higher Vcore. It would do a VPU Recovery right away using the 1.275V. But yet if I went back to the 1.25V and moved it up to 1.275V it wouldn't crash right away. I would of tried the test but ran out of time to do so. But for some reason I highly doubt it would run at that speed also proving a look at my other tests in the large list I had.

What really gets me is that I could run 641.25/801 with 1.25/1.95/1.9V at first in 03 and 05 with playing HL LC and doing 4 bench tests in F.E.A.R. at 1440x900 and 1920x1200. But now I can't even obtain those speeds even with higher voltage.

Questions/Commits/Suggestions are all welcome at this point to figure out what the deal is.

Edit: Forgot when I get home tonight I'm goign to reseat the heatsink to make sure the AS5 did cover the core good enough and reapply it to eliminate a core contact issue.

You do realize that the RAM is only rated for 750, right? Try easing the RAM down to 750 and just playing with the core speed. You have too many variables right now to figure out what's going on.

I think the scaling issue that ATi spoke of which caused them to revise the core again might be what the issue is. This was in part why Im waiting for the R580

This card seems to need a warm up period. I've seen the same thing where you can't just start-up and then set your best clocks from a previous session. You need to start at a lower clock and run a few tests working your way back up which is after all the way you got those clocks in the first place.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bar81

You do realize that the RAM is only rated for 750, right? Try easing the RAM down to 750 and just playing with the core speed. You have too many variables right now to figure out what's going on.

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Actually 1.4ns = 714MHz. I think the xl's problems can be attributed to the memory controller. With my xl I could only get 621mem to run stable. Turning up the memory voltage did nothing for me, but turning up GPU core voltage helps. For example gpu core 500@1.1 volts memory could only run at 600. Gpu core 500@1.15 mem could run 621. But gpu core 500@1.3 was still stuck at 621 mem. But at 1.3v I could run the core at 700 and mem 621.
Hope this makes sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by G H Z

This card seems to need a warm up period. I've seen the same thing where you can't just start-up and then set your best clocks from a previous session. You need to start at a lower clock and run a few tests working your way back up which is after all the way you got those clocks in the first place.

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Ya if thats the case thats not cool at all. But even then even if i stop testing for a few min which is what possibily happened in a few cases, it would cool down too much to test then or even run at that speed :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nunyabiz

Actually 1.4ns = 714MHz. I think the xl's problems can be attributed to the memory controller. With my xl I could only get 621mem to run stable. Turning up the memory voltage did nothing for me, but turning up GPU core voltage helps. For example gpu core 500@1.1 volts memory could only run at 600. Gpu core 500@1.15 mem could run 621. But gpu core 500@1.3 was still stuck at 621 mem. But at 1.3v I could run the core at 700 and mem 621.
Hope this makes sense.

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Ya my memory seems to need GPU voltage more the memory voltage. At thats why anything up and over 1.15V Vcore I can run 750+ My one unqiue case where I was able to run 820 mem was running rthdribl. Using 1.275/1.9/1.9 but thats behind me currently of getting that stable in tests.

But I'll try dropping the memory down to 600 and then try bumping the core up to speed. When I get home and see what happens. But it seems like the best bet is to have higher memory speed then core, seems to affect scores much more that way.

Ok I reset the heatsink and definatly so far I'm getting much lower heat output even in (05) where I was hitting 39C on my thermal sensor, now only 34C, which is roughly 44-45C or so on the core. Was 10C warmer with CCC then my thermal sensor so its a rough estimate at least currently. Very cool imo for air cooling and its decently comfortable in the room.

Anyways I started some testing new testing.

625/750 with 1.275/1.95/1.95V

(03) 16049 / 16115 / 16148
(05) 8561 / 8520 / 8534 / 8556

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27...3D-Mark051.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27...3D-Mark031.jpg

Followed by a powerdown of 1 hour and 20min sitting cold and then retesting

(05) 8605
(03) 16159

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27...D-Mark05a1.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27...D-Mark03a1.jpg

Worked flawlessly :) At least there was no cold boot issues what was worrying me.

So going to try some games, and such otherwise I'd call this stable. but still 400 points shy in 05 and 850ish shy in 03 for my goal of 9k and 17k :)

Those X2 Clocks are quite low, deathman. What cooling do you have ?

Perkam

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Originally Posted by perkam

Those X2 Clocks are quite low, deathman. What cooling do you have ?

Perkam

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XP-120 with a thermaltake 120mm @ 7V Its only running about 39C load under both cores, 1 core under load is around 36C. I have a similar core to someone else including build date, and we can get core 2 up to 2.7+ but core one is rocky :(

I'm new to the AMD ring so theres probley some settings I didn't set properly or I could change to squeeze more out. I was aiming for 2.5, I got it, I wouldn't mind 2.7 though ;)

Now 2 hours later after benches. I've been running F.E.A.R. on the menu, and well thats nice and stressful on the GPU giving it a nice steady test. Its definatly heating up the temp a little bit more but stabilized after 30min into it.

About 48C on the GPU and ran a few benches (of course the temps are still guess work and not 100% accurate), well more like 8 bench mark runs since there so quick. This is at 1920x1200. min 21/avg 37/max 63 Below 25: 1% / 25-40: 60% / above 40: 35% I gotta say thats nice.

damnit my card is taking forever to get here! I wanna play too guys!

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Originally Posted by cantankerous

damnit my card is taking forever to get here! I wanna play too guys!

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Well at least when you get it you'll know where to aim for in clocks right off the bat.

So when do you get your card?

ETA is suppose to be Thursday according to the tracking number. This is the last time I ever take a special discounted shipping price. There is a reason it is so cheap, they ship manually with one of their CSR carrying the game on their back to your house.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perkam

Those X2 Clocks are quite low, deathman. What cooling do you have ?

Perkam

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My x2 also stops at 2.5GHz. I went to water thinking it would help, but temps dont seem to be the problem. Even more voltage doesnt help, just some of us get a bad second core. :confused:

2.5 dual core is still better than my single core only doing 2.48 and that is really pushing it with lots of voltage too. Mem cant go above 225 either as the controller craps out after that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cantankerous

2.5 dual core is still better than my single core only doing 2.48 and that is really pushing it with lots of voltage too. Mem cant go above 225 either as the controller craps out after that.

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Its really about the same. Unless applications and games are written to be multithreaded, or even drivers in nvidia's case, the performance is about the same. Although the 1 meg cache in my x2 my be a slight advantage.
I also have a x800xl that with my same system i got about 5500 in 05, wich is probably around the same your getting with your x800xl

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nunyabiz

Its really about the same. Unless applications and games are written to be multithreaded, or even drivers in nvidia's case, the performance is about the same. Although the 1 meg cache in my x2 my be a slight advantage.
I also have a x800xl that with my same system i got about 5500 in 05, wich is probably around the same your getting with your x800xl

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Hmm well I had a X800Pro modded to 16 pipes and 510/560 clock before on a 2.4C @ 3.24Ghz. It got about 5800 in 05.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cantankerous

ETA is suppose to be Thursday according to the tracking number. This is the last time I ever take a special discounted shipping price. There is a reason it is so cheap, they ship manually with one of their CSR carrying the game on their back to your house.

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sheesh i got today card for 400$ and today later, price drops like by 70$ :(

yea tellme about it. I ordered my card for $555 canadian. The same card is now $480. :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty deal.

When I bought mine it only went down $10 :)

guys, did you checked in CCC panel Avivo colors, finally we got more vibrant colors just like nvidia have with digital resonance! yes! :-)

EDIT.: i got some random green dot anywhere on my LCD, its like when you overclock gfx card a little, but i didnt even started .. :rolleyes:
In game though i dont see any artefacts or exploding polygons, weirdo :slapass:

can avivo be used internally on your comptuer screen like in games and movies or is it only for outputting to a tv? to be honest I have no clue what avivo is lol.

can be used for games and movies for sure, probably also on TV, didnt tried yet.
Just testing world of warcraft and boy, what a green grass! :D

lol, will have to look into this as I never looked into the feature before and how to enable/use it.

Green sprites on your lcd? Do they look like stuck pixels? argh, stress with the new cards.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by spajdr

guys, did you checked in CCC panel Avivo colors, finally we got more vibrant colors just like nvidia have with digital resonance! yes! :-)

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Don't have CCC installed currently it was messing with my OC (evil unlocked feature). Otherwise I'd probley of seen/messed with it by now.