Overclocking a leadtek a400

[visibleman]

Just started to overclock a leadtek A400 LE, currently have it at 372.6/742.5 (3DMark 05 - 3837) but from what i have seen, people are getting 400/900 out of them. Tried pushing it further, but im starting to get artifacts under 2D especially if i push the mem further than 742 3D seems to be alright though

System isn't brilliant (2Gig AMD XP, 1 Gb DDR, 350w PSU), but im thinking i should be able to squeeze a bit more out of it especially with temps being average - 55 idle, 65 load.

Any ideas on why it won't go further? Only thing i can think of is maybe lack of power?

cheers for any help

p.s - i've yet to unlock the extra pipes as from reading about it seems to only marginally increases performance (few fps here and there etc), but is it worth doing?

 

[phatboy]

your best way to extra power is through those pipes and shaders mate

a jump to 12 pipes makes a V good difference. you cooling could be the other thing holding you back as the fan is not running full as standard, depending how daring you are, you could reflash the BIOS on the card like i did, and set the cooler to 90% speed. this helps a lot as the memories heat will make a difference to its clocking capacity in the same way that the GPU suffers.

The Accellero X1 cooler is a great option for the £13 asking price

Ben

 

[visibleman]

cheers for the speedy reply

I've had a look at rivatuner to unlock the extra pipes, i take it it's just a case of enabling (placing a tick next to) the two 'disabled' pipes?

(just that the image differs to the one on the tuning guide > here <)

I have set the fans to be on at 90%, which seems to have kept the temps down quite a bit - but they didn't really increase much when i was increasing the core/mem.

Will look into the Accellero, but is it better than the Artic NV5?

cheers again

 

[phatboy]

yeah the pipelines are just a matter of unlocking those 2 unselected ones as you said, remember to stress test the card each time you unlock one with something like 3dmark, i always found that the lift on the "proxycon" benchmark showed up all the problems and artifacts if there were any.

Dont forget, if you do start to see artifacts, cancel the benchmark straight away as you may risk damaging the card.

the accellero cooler is the successor to the NV series coolers and its SUPERB!

Just remember to just take your time doing all the clocking and unlocking as you dont want to kill the card. It took me about 2 months of reading threads, flashing BIOS's and slowly adjusting clocks to getting my stable spec.

GOOD LUCK

Ben

P.S let me know what scores you get in 3dmark. my current machine is identical spec (mine runs at 2.17ghz...that only diff) and im seeing 10600+ ints

 

[visibleman]

Well i've managed to unlock it to 16pp, 6vp and it seems to be going well. Last overclock was 375/760 (couldn't push the mem further than 761 ), didn't show any artifcats under 3dmark 05 (4227) or aqua mark (46.34 @ 1280x1024x32, 4x Anti, V High Detail), but it did seem to be "ripping" when playing DoD (not sure if thats the card or not). So it's been notched down to 365/760.

Also noticed when i was pushing it to 375, under heavy load the core would drop quite badly (320-350) and then jumps back to 375 (well 373.2 or something) and then repeats every 10 minutes or so. Just wondering if this has to do with my psu? It's certainly far off being brilliant and voltages are a little low (+5 = 4.8v etc) (is on the cards to update to a corsair hx series psu anyways).

Anyways, will download 3dmark 06 and see how i get on and try the "proxycon" test

Btw, what's your current overclock of your A400? And what bios did you flash it to?

 

[phatboy]

4227 in 3dmark '05 seems pretty much on par with mine, im unlocked to 12 pipes and 8 shaders, so its seems the extra pipes you have got open are defo helping to push the power up. im currently running a 375/875 on day to day settings and my max was 404/909 stable whilst benching.

I used a program called Nibitor, which allows you create new BIOS files and then used the WINFOX bundled software that you get with the card to flash the new BIOS to the card ( Remember! read the Winfox manual and ANY threads you can find about flashing the 6800 cards before doing the flash, as if it all goes pear shaped, the card is TOAST!, i ran the risk and it paid off, but please dont do it off my back, do loadsa research and then decide )

if you want to save yourself some downloading time, the proxycon test in 3dm '03 will show up the errors too, but the '05 DEFINATLY does

when you say your power supply is a 350w, is it just a "generic" unit that came with your case? or something better, im running an Enermax coolergiant 350w unit that gives a "stable 350w" at all times and has a seperate GFX card molex that feeds direct from the psu itself (so no sharing the powr feed with cd-roms, HDs etc), where the cheap units fluctuate and never give there full power at all, my generic unit i was using before hand only allowed me to get to an overclock of 380/870ish i think as it just couldnt hold enough current for prolonged periods (e.g games, benchmarks etc)

Not sure when the new PSU is on your shopping list for, but i have just invested in new PCI-E based parts (as you can see from the sig ). so im gonna need a BEASTY PSU for my crossfire setup so my PSU may be up for sale soon and does a great job on a setup like yours still got box etc for it and is as new condition......let me know if you are interested, and you can have first dibs when i sell it bud.

results are damn good so far mate

Ben