Overclocking an ATI SVGA card - Page 2

- First Step

First of all, you will need an ATI SVGA card. In this guide we will be using an ATI 9600Pro card. In order to overclock ATI cards, you need some extra software that can raise the core and memory frequencies. While there is a range of software for overclocking ATI cards (RivaTuner , Rage3DTweak, RadLinker/RadClocker, and PowerStrip), for this guide we will use the ATI Tool v0.0.19. Download and install the software on your system. When you run the application, you may see a dialog box similar to the following:

Hmm…Interesting! As the ATI Tool reports, the Radeon 9000/9200/9600 cards are locked from overclocking by software drivers. This means that you may have overclocked your card, but when starting a 3D application, the drivers will return the card to its default values (GPU, Video Card Memory). For this reason you must install “modified” drivers from http://softmod.ocfaq.com that bypass this particular problem.

After pressing “OK”, the main application screen appears, displaying the Core/Memory frequencies and several other options. By selecting the “Settings” button, you can access the software menus, and further tweak the scanning engine:

As we mentioned earlier, the methodology “imposes” us to first find the maximum Core limits and thereafter the maximum Video Memory frequencies. The ATI Tool reports that our 9600Pro card works at 398.25/202.50 frequencies. When pressing the “Find Max Core” button, an additional window will appear, displaying a 3D cube. You will also notice that the Core/Memory slide controls are disabled (grayed out) and in our case at least, the Core frequency rose to 399.94.

After several seconds, the software locked the Core speed at 403.07 MHz and started up the “Heat-Up Phase”, where it began to rotate the 3D Cube in order to stretch the GPU/Memory to its limits while at the same time looking for the so called “artifacts”. If the test passes without any artifacts, the Core frequencies will rise, etc…