Anyone tried to overclock G550??

[Vincent Ng]

Hi all, I am a new user of G550...(My english is not very good)

i played many 3d games before, so i didnt consider Matrox's card.
maybe coz i was grew up, play less 3D games,so i dont care much 3D and so i care more on 2D now

Recently i bought a new G550, i would like to know more about the driver setting of it and it oc ability. i installed the newest driver already.

thanks

(My system: WinXP, 1600+,........)

[Chrono_Wanderer]

try to put a fan on it, i think that will give u more head room for OCing.

I'd assume you can get the G550 to a lot higher speed. The G400 MAX was an older core, used 0.25 micron process etc. And the default was at 166MHz.

THe G550 is 133MHz if i remember correctly. Its a business chip so I'd guess they clocked it conservatively. So I'd guess u can get it to at least 166, and probably a lot higher because of the 0.18 micron proccess. But then they also added the vertex shaders on G550, so the die size of the G550 should be a bit bigger...

Anyways, good luck OCing the thing. Remember to OC by 2% increment during each attampt.

Cheers,

Ron

P.S.: finally a person from Hong Kong hehehe

[Vincent Ng]

Thanks for ur reply

i acknowledge that the ram is ~5ns, but its default fre. is 166mhz

do u think it can gain a higher efficiency for oc ing ram??
or oc the core is much more efficiency??
would the 2d quality drop due to the oc?

as i know, the default core fre. is 125, not 166

[Vincent Ng]

me again...

its core is really 133....
sorry !

[gpremec]

I didn't had many luck with OCing my G550. From 133MHz it went up to 140-142MHz.
On the ather hand, my G450 with 125MHz worked stabile on 160MHz (memory at 200MHz!).

[Chrono_Wanderer]

when you OC, OC both. It won't do much if you OC the core only. Besides, IIRC the ram is Samsung 5ns (was it? I thought it was 5.5) so that should give you a lot of head room.

The memory is a huge bottleneck for G550. It uses a 64bit memory interface, offering half the bandwidth than most cards today which uses a 128bit memory interface.

Again, try to put a fan on the G550 just to play safe. I use the Titan Copper VGA Orb, works ok, there is one capacitor right beside the fan though... so that was a close call...

I think i posed a picture of mine modded G550 but I'll have to search for it first...

Cheers

Ron

[Chrono_Wanderer]

AAHH... here it is

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38734&highlight=G550+modded

[Vincent Ng]

O
i saw ur card, apart from changing the whole fan, any modification
u did on the card??

also u said "modded" G550, is there any hided functions inside the chip??

[Vincent Ng]

me again...

someone in that post said Matrox only "disabled' the T&L engine..

it means G550 can be modded to enable it again??

[Chrono_Wanderer]

sorry for the late reply, been having tests lately.

anyways. i didn't do much. just a fan mod so that the G550 can run happily. (i want my stuff cooled and i found the heatsink is not enough)

Apparently you cannot enable hardware TnL on G550. Supposedly G550 is rumored to be a cut down of the famous G800 (which was said to be cancelled). G800 was supposed to have Hardware TnL and Vertex Shaders, but because the project was abandoned, G550 came into play. G550 should have functions developed for G800, but because Matrox don't want to market the card as a gaming card, they probably decided to disable it in drivers and only use it in HeadCasting (or A$$Casting haha).

There is no way to enable TnL and Vertex Shaders on G550, even after all these years. I'd guess nobody got it to work for 2 possible reasons:

1) No specifications for G550 so nobody know where to start
2) These two functions are actually not Direct3D competible, meaning they probably disable them at the Integrated Circuit level.

Just some guesses. We will never know the answers anyways because Matrox would probably never comment on this.

[Vincent Ng]

^^|

thanks a lot

which software are u using to oc it?
now i still feel satisfied with its 2d performance...it is perfect.

But i saw some aritcles said G400 and G450 are even better in 2d.
I guess the difference wont be large even if so.

I am using its DVI port with my Philips 150P3,
it is very good to me.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Under DVI, because its fully digital, the signal quality does not matter anyways. Generally speaking DVI has the same quality across all brands of boards, including ATI and nVIDIA supposedly. (OK, some nVIDIA DVI ports may be "out of complience" i.e. some defects at high resolutions because the DTMS is not fast enoguh, but in terms of color and stuff, because DVI is digital, color should not be washed out even on nVIDIA cards. That's as far as I know about DVI anyways, I am not an expert so if I am wrong about the defect part point it out!). What Matrox is famous in its is the analog output quality, the convertion from digital to analog information on the DAC of the graphics card so that info can be sent to monitor in analog mode. Under DVI the transfer is fully digital, i.e. no information pass through the DAC, so the brand of graphics board should not matter.

Now that is a different case for 2D performance. Maybe overlay is faster on Matrox cards, which I think is the case. This is good when you do huge images... when u drag the image in photoshop... acceleration maybe faster.

As for comparing "analog output quality" with ATI/nVIDIA cards, Matrox is hand down winner. But if you compare G550 with G400/G450, this maybe a different story. Some say G400 is better, thoguh there was an analysis ~1/2 year back analyzing analog quality from G550, Parhelia, G450 and many other brands. G550 is the best in the test, even superior to Parhelia. (and of course superior to all ATI/nV cards). But remember, we're talking about DAC. Every card is then different. one G550 card maybe better than another, because in no way all cards are completely identical, though they maybe very close.

Anyways, if you used DVI... personally I think you should have went for an ATI card for the MUCH BETTER 2D and VALUE. As for nVIDIA, I am using the DualDVI Asus GeForce FX 5200 Video Suite. I like it, not the most powerful gaming card, but VIVO is great, DualDVI, lightwight DCC stuff with PS2.0/VS2.0 etc...

[gangster]

Re: Anyone tried to overclock G550??

Originally posted by Vincent Ng
Hi all, I am a new user of G550...(My english is not very good)

i played many 3d games before, so i didnt consider Matrox's card.
maybe coz i was grew up, play less 3D games,so i dont care much 3D and so i care more on 2D now

Recently i bought a new G550, i would like to know more about the driver setting of it and it oc ability. i installed the newest driver already.

thanks

(My system: WinXP, 1600+,........)

I have a G400 (non-Max) that oc'd from about 125/166 to 157/215. I tried a fan and it made no difference, it already ran cool to the touch so I shouldn't have been surprised. I ended up just replacing the thermal tape with with artic silver 3 and reattaching the stock heatsink after sanding it smoother than stock.

While I have no experience with the G550, this is an easy way to start for little $$$.

Your english is plenty good to.

[Vincent Ng]

?!
2d performance is not related to the chip?
only related to the DAC??

But in fact, my system cannot use ATI'card...
Since before i had a RadeonLE, once if i installed the catalyst driver, it crashed iwth my system...

before buying the G550, i asked my fd and tried his R9000 on my system again....unfortunately crashed again>.<
So i can only consider nVidia at that time.

Actually i bought G550, there is still another 'strange' reason behind:
I am a student who addicted to playing pc games...
later after needforspeed 7, Dom3 and many many good games released, i will totally 'cannot be controlled'...
...
nowadays those games are too good, make a lot of student in hongkong confused, miss their objectives...addicted to playing games...wasting time, totally not productive.

>.<

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Vincent Ng
?!
2d performance is not related to the chip?
only related to the DAC??

2D performance (speed) is related to the chip, but he was talking about image quality in analog mode being related to the DAC.