finally a small upgrade to my system

[Maggi]

/me pads Al on his back for saving my day(s)

[Marshmallowman]

If you want a good Overclocking tool for radeons (all flavours) try Radlinker @

http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/

Just right click on a link to a game and create a "radlink", then go properties in the radlink and you can change the clock rate or tweak opengl/dx/filtering stuff on a per game basis VERY handy

[Maggi]

Thanx for the hint MMM, but RadLink is already built into those awesome Omega drivers that I'm using now ...

As I said earlier, the Radeon is only passively cooled and unfortunately the Artic VGA Silencer I bought, does not fit onto the card, due to one capacitor being in its way ...

So all I could think of was slapping a small CPU fan on top of the Radeon's HS and here are some results to look at:

Athlon XP 2400+ (unlocked Thorton @ 13x166 - 2167MHz)

Sapphire Atlantis 9600 non pro 256MB
clock setting core/memory		324/189 (default)	405/225			gain

3DMark 2001 SE build 330 Score		8320			9642			+ 15.9 %
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail		93.2 fps		115.2 fps		+ 23.6 %
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail	51.9 fps		58.5 fps		+ 12.7 %
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail		134.2 fps		162.1 fps		+ 20.8 %
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail	79.2 fps		97.2 fps		+ 22.7 %
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail		128.6 fps		139.3 fps		+  8.3 %
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail		64.1 fps		65.9 fps		+  2.8 %
Game 4 - Nature				42.9 fps		52.1 fps		+ 21.4 %
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing)		643.9 MTexels/s		776.6 MTexels/s		+ 20.6 %
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing)		1280.3 MTexels/s	1596.6 MTexels/s	+ 24.7 %
High Polygon Count (1 Light)		36.1 MTriangles/s	43.3 MTriangles/s	+ 19.9 %
High Polygon Count (8 Lights)		8.2 MTriangles/s	10.2 MTriangles/s	+ 24.4 %
Environment Bump Mapping		137.8 fps		152.9 fps		+ 11.0 %
DOT3 Bump Mapping			90.4 fps		109.4 fps		+ 21.0 %
Vertex Shader				107.8 fps		132.3 fps		+ 22.7 %
Pixel Shader				144.2 fps		175.1 fps		+ 21.4 %
Advanced Pixel Shader			73.3 fps		89.2 fps		+ 21.7 %
Point Sprites				10.6 MSprites/s		12.9 MSprites/s		+ 21.7 %

After upping the Thorton a little more and tuning its fan from inaudible 2000rpm to still very silent 3000rpm, I had to lower the Sapphire core one notch and as a result, the overall performance in 3D Mark 2001 SE was pretty much identical, ie. within one or two percent, but I noticed a tiny little boost in the high detail game tests.

I verified that observation with UT2004, where in high action scenes the low framerate drops benefitted most and therefore, the card didn't tank as much as it did before.

Not that it would make that much of a difference, but still, I thankfully take evry ounce of performance that comes for free ...

Athlon XP 2400+ (unlocked Thorton)	13.5x166 (2250MHz)	13x166 (2167MHz)

Sapphire Atlantis 256MB 9600 non pro
clock setting core/memory		402/225			405/225

3DMark 2001 SE build 330 Score		9678			9642
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail		114.5 fps		115.2 fps
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail	59.3 fps		58.5 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail		162.2 fps		162.1 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail	97.7 fps		97.2 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail		140.3 fps		139.3 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail		66.4 fps		65.9 fps
Game 4 - Nature				52.0 fps		52.1 fps
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing)		776.0 MTexels/s		776.6 MTexels/s	
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing)		1584.7 MTexels/s	1596.6 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light)		43.1 MTriangles/s	43.3 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights)		10.1 MTriangles/s	10.2 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping		152.8 fps		152.9 fps
DOT3 Bump Mapping			109.4 fps		109.4 fps
Vertex Shader				131.8 fps		132.3 fps
Pixel Shader				174.7 fps		175.1 fps
Advanced Pixel Shader			89.0 fps		89.2 fps
Point Sprites				12.8 MSprites/s		12.9 MSprites/s

As you can see, the difference is quite obvious and I feel pretty comfortable, since the machine ran UT2004's Invasion in Spectator mode over night, without a glitch.

If you guys are interested, I could also post some scores from the card running on the edge, ie. I had it running as high as 414/234 core/mem, but I started noticing some visual artifacts from memory being clocked too high and in the long run, it would always crash away, but ...

... mighty Kudos to ATI for giving us VPU Recover ...

[Dilitante1]

grats Maggi sweet numbers there

have you tested all your games with it yet tho? I have a rig I am trying to tweak that i am seeing clipping in BF1942 and even the CAT 4.3 dont take care of it. The card in question is only a Radeon 9200, but it shouldnt be doing it. I will try the Omegas if you dont notice anything in your other games. Let me know?

[Maggi]

Yo Dil,

3D Fart 2001 & 2003 run without a glitch, so does UT2004 ...

I'll check out other titles and let you know.

Those Omega driver look pretty solid to me and offer all you get from CATs, minus that stupid OCing restriction, of course ...


Make sure you d/l the latest version, since it got reposted as subversion "a", due to some OpenGL bug.

Isn't BF1942 an OGL game ?

What kind of clipping are you talking about anyways ?


Btw, did you read this one:

(11/09/03)

The Omega Drivers have been recognized by ATI as the best moddeed drivers in the internet!!!

Here is a quote from Terry Makedon when he was interviewed by a German Magazine:

"ATI supports the enthusiast community wholly. Omega Drivers are in fact a good example of ATI’s user community at its best. What they are in principle are CATALYST drivers with different settings enabled via registry keys and other such methods. This provides users an alternative to ATI’s CATALYST default settings. While there are a few different modification drivers out in the community our relationship with the creator of the Omega Drivers is of the highest working standard. The author of these drivers is part of the CATALYST beta driver testing team, and also in direct contact with ATI. In fact we would go so far as to say that if a user chooses to go the mod driver route, they go with the Omega Drivers."

Many thanks to ATI and their support team for this honor!

I guess that makes them Omega drivers "partly" official ...

[2Whyzzi]

I've been using the Omega on the 8500/7200/LE I had for longest time. Before I switched to the OmegaDrivers (and thus RadLinker), I used Rage3D Tweak . The startup logo was kinda anoying, but I think I supressed it once and it did the job beautifully (overclocking the card, setting Hyper-Z, etc). Just letting you know of other options should you discover that RadLinker is not for you.

Still waiting patiently for the $ upgrade my core system to a Barton 2500+ *sigh*.

Glad to hear your upgrade was a good success. I just bought a Sapphire 9800SE (128Meg, 128Bit OEM, anti-staticpak) just this past weekend, and I can push the card to 350/700 via RadLinker, and that was only one night's testing. It is just too bad that most of the games I play are CPU limited I tried 1024x768 on Neverwinter Nights, and it was quite choppy - but then I had forgot to overclock the gfx card

I'm starting to get a heat issue with my Athlon C and Volcano 6. Time for some compressed air I guess.

[Marshmallowman]

@Maggi did you manage to unlock the extra cache on the thorton or just the multi?

Also I know radclocker has been included with omega drivers, I did not realise that omega now includes the full radlinker/radclocker kit....very handy

[Maggi]

Originally posted by 2Whyzzi
Glad to hear your upgrade was a good success. I just bought a Sapphire 9800SE (128Meg, 128Bit OEM, anti-staticpak) just this past weekend, and I can push the card to 350/700 via RadLinker, and that was only one night's testing. It is just too bad that most of the games I play are CPU limited I tried 1024x768 on Neverwinter Nights, and it was quite choppy - but then I had forgot to overclock the gfx card

any plans to try the SoftMod that comes with Omega drivers ?

on their forums, I read about quite a few successful "conversions" ...

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
@Maggi did you manage to unlock the extra cache on the thorton or just the multi?

didn't have any time to tinker with those bridges just yet and also, I wanted to avoid having to deal with two potential sources of failure, but now I'm pretty confident that my OC is safe and therefore, I'll be tinkering with the L2 cache issue pretty soonâ„¢ ...

[DukeP]

My ati9500nonpro is softmodded and clocked to perfom like a 9700pro.
No hassles, no problems either.

~~DukeP~~