Overclocking 7600GTs Thread

Darg · 19 Sep 2006 at 16:19

Ok I just bought myself a 7600GT (EDIT: AGP) and I plan on overclocking it as my new Titan case with the 2 extra fans as well as the PCI slot fan that I place beside the GFX card should keep it all nice and cool.

Has anyone tried overclocking this card yet and if so what kind of performance upgrade did you get and what final specs were you able to push it too?

I've only overclocked my Radeon 9800Pro before with ATi Tray Tools so what would be the equivalent tool to overclock an nVidia card or is there one?

Any advice that you pros would like to give would be greatly appreciated. I'd probably be erring on the side of caution as I don't want to burn out my brand new card straight away

sunlitsix · 19 Sep 2006 at 16:35

coolbits + volt mod
PCI-E XFX 7600GT
720/1800

7.5k in 3d mark 05 and 3794 in 06

600Mhz is common for the core, memory im not sure on

Darg · 19 Sep 2006 at 17:33

Well I'll be using a AGP version myself which I forgot to mention in the original post. The default core and memory speeds are:

Core: 560MHz
Mem: 1400MHz

I'm hoping for atleast 600/1500 if not more.

sunlitsix · 19 Sep 2006 at 17:36

could you take a pic of the back of the PCB for me please?
im wondering if you can volt mod the cards the same way

Cyber-Mav · 19 Sep 2006 at 18:06

mins is inno3d 7600gt clocks to 615 core and 865 ram, but max coolbits slider goes to on the ram is 840 so i stick it to that.

all at stock volts. vooler = vf900cu, although it did the same clocks on its stock cooler.

Mitch007 · 19 Sep 2006 at 18:37

Darg said:
Well I'll be using a AGP version myself which I forgot to mention in the original post. The default core and memory speeds are:

Core: 560MHz
Mem: 1400MHz

I'm hoping for atleast 600/1500 if not more.

my agp running 600/1540, want to know how to volt mod this card to take it higher....anyone?

Mitch007 · 19 Sep 2006 at 18:39

Cyber-Mav said:
mins is inno3d 7600gt clocks to 615 core and 865 ram, but max coolbits slider goes to on the ram is 840 so i stick it to that.

all at stock volts. vooler = vf900cu, although it did the same clocks on its stock cooler.

I'm guessing my spare zalman flower will only help a volt modded card to get the higher clocks... (this was the case for my 6600GT at least).

Cyber-Mav · 19 Sep 2006 at 18:51

yes, the card does not pull out enough heat at stock volts to be hindered in overclocking. voltmod needs to be done but after the experience voltmodding my last card, im not gonna take the risk this time.

Darg · 19 Sep 2006 at 18:58

I don't have the card myself yet but there are a few people here with them so maybe one of you can post a pic of it?

If not then I'll post a picture as soon as I get it.

What is involved in volt modding it and what benefits can be gained from it? Also what are the risks involved assuming that you don't fry the board while actually performing the mod?

sunlitsix · 19 Sep 2006 at 19:04

it can be done with a pencil, only if the pcb layout is the same
with a pic of the agp version i can compare it

a multimeter is also needed to check the voltage, if its too high then the pencil mark can just be wiped straight off

btw Darg, your sig is too big. 4 lines of text max or a 400 x 75 image with a 20kb max filesize

Darg · 19 Sep 2006 at 19:25

Multimeter may be a problem, sounds like some random thing I might find in the garage though. I'll post a pic of the backside of the PCB if no one else does.

Thanks for informing me about the sig. Down to 3 small lines now

neil27 · 19 Sep 2006 at 20:39

Leadtech 7600GT AGP (Water Cooled) (no Ramsinks)

Currently @ 615/1544

Will update when each clock has been proven to be stable.

Its strange I find using 3dmark06 to test for stability is no good as it is fine in the benchmark but will crash out in games after a very short time...anyone else get this?

Mitch007 · 19 Sep 2006 at 21:33

neil27 said:
Leadtech 7600GT AGP (Water Cooled) (no Ramsinks)

Currently @ 615/1544

Will update when each clock has been proven to be stable.

Its strange I find using 3dmark06 to test for stability is no good as it is fine in the benchmark but will crash out in games after a very short time...anyone else get this?

Nice, just about the same, card is looking for volt mod i feel, need help with this as i do not have a circuit diagram and am unable to split GPU supply from the Memory supply.

I think PCI-E is not the same PCB....regarding volt mod....

Oh and my '06 bench is stable as is all latest games.. card rocks

neil27 · 19 Sep 2006 at 23:13

My card will bench at 630 fine but failed at 640 on 06 but when i try to play with it at 630 it just crashes. So now im testing it under gaming conditions instead

Darg · 20 Sep 2006 at 00:00

I find that the FEAR benchmark is quite good at testing in game. I just overclocked my gf's 6200LE (disgusting piece of crap that it is) to about 150% of what it was getting. It can still only just about run it on low settings on 800x600 though whereas my 9800Pro can run on medium 1024x768 settings. Atleast the overclock got it off the 640x480 pixelfest it was running on. Temp went over 95 though the last time I played so I toned down the OC a bit. Default clocks idle temp was 63 and it's now around 70 going up to 85 after a pretty intense rocket scene in FEAR.

It did give me some experience with nVidias overclock utility which I quite like. Not as good as ATi Tools but still it comes with the drivers

Neil or Mitch could you post a picture of the back side of your PCB to see if sunlit could help us out? If not I'll post one whenever my order arrives. I'm hoping that the 2 day euro delivery thing on the frontpage is actually true :rolleyes:

Darg · 24 Sep 2006 at 18:36

Ok so I got my gear from OCUK without a hitch and quite quickly too.

Problem was with my dell. They don't use standard everything. The Motherboard isn't any kind of standard. It's like a hybrid of Micro ATX and standard ATX without any of the standard pins.

All the wires from the front of my titan case have nowhere to go and the motherboard doesn't even fit the screw holes. So I wasn't too happy.

I just ordered myself an Asrock 775Dual - VSTA Mobo that has both AGP and PCI-e slots which is perfect for me as I did not want to try and send back my brand new AGP 7600 I just bought to replace it for a PCI-e and I'll still be able to upgrade to DX 10 cards next year so yay at that when it does arrive.

Right now though I had to put my Dell back together. I had removed everything and in the process destroyed some little plastic clippy things that had been holding the heatsink clip onto the motherboard. I tried superglue to get it to stick and that was working until half way through bootup when the heatsink fell off. Thank god for safeguards. My CPU didn't fry. Now I have the box lying on its side so the heatsink doesnt fall off. :rolleyes:

But I do have the 7600GT attached and have been playing around with overclocking. I don't want to push it too far yet until I get it in the titan with it's much better cooling. I bought 2 zalman 92mm fans for the front output.

I've been using FEAR to test the overclocking and stability of the card. So far I am very impressed with its performance. With my old 9800Pro I could just about manage medium settings and that with some slowdowns. Now I have everything on Maximum settings but with soft shadows turned off (Not enough difference to justify the performance loss).

You can see my setup in my sig. Resolution is 1280x1024. Tests start at the default 560/700. I just took the lowest FPS and the average. The highest FPS were hit pretty bad by the vSync I noticed dropping from 75~ to 55~ but that's to be expected.

Here are my test results with speed settings:

560mhz GPU, 700mhz RAM - No vSync

Low : 14
Avg : 30

560mhz GPU, 700mhz RAM - vSync

Low : 13
Avg : 24

601mhz GPU, 700mhz RAM - No vSync

Low : 14
Avg : 31

601mhz GPU, 700mhz RAM - vSync

Low : 14
Avg : 24

601mhz GPU, 751mhz RAM - No vSync

Low : 15
Avg : 32

601mhz GPU, 751mhz RAM - vSync

Low : 14
Avg : 25

645mhz GPU, 751mhz RAM - No vSync

Low : 16
Avg : 34

645mhz GPU, 751mhz RAM - vSync

Low : 14
Avg : 25

Cyber-Mav · 24 Sep 2006 at 18:45

pic of my card.

Darg · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:18

Nice looking cooler. I'm still using stock on mine but that looks like it's pretty damn good. Idle temps haven't gone over 45c.

Mine is the AGP version. I'll take a pic of it when I'm switching over to the new Mobo when it arrives. Was too ****** off to do it on saturday.

I have a dinky little PCI slot output fan just below the card that I think helps quite a bit with the cooling but it's an inch or two away from the cards fan itself so it's not perfect.

Cyber-Mav · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:39

huh? the cooler in the pic i posted earlier is the stock cooler i got on my card. overclocked to its current settings i get a max load temp of 67c in ati tool.

now i have a vf-900cu and max load temp does not exceed 55c. however the overclocks remained the same. have also got memory heatsinks on the card wich came with the zalman cooler. they make no difference to the memory overclocks too which is odd. atleast there is no worry of overheating memory then

. the card is prepared to go into a crapply cooled case.

Darg · 24 Sep 2006 at 23:41

ah my bad. it looked pretty fancy for a stock cooler. Mine has yet to go over 45c and thats with my crappy dell case. I noticed some pretty severe stuttering in FEAR when I went to play the actual game though resulting in slowdowns and stalls for almost half a minute once or twice. I've reduced the OCing to the "Optimal" settings. That seems to have fixed the worst of it though still some very bad stuttering when I load a new map in the game.

Hopefully the extra cooling and better mobo in the Titan case will fix that.