Highly-Annoyed

Hi All,

As you may or may not know, I have recently acquired an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro. I’m still using stock cooling on it at the moment, but I just wanted to let you all know about my overclock achievements with this card so far and what appears to be responsible for them.

When I first got the card (after I replaced my PSU) I tried some overclocking and I got the following stable maximum overclocks.
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Core: 393MHz - ( up 13MHz from a stock of 380MHz )
Mem: 351MHz - ( up 11MHz from a stock of 340MHz )
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Now these overclocks are pretty meagre compared to some others I have seen, but keep in mind they are still with stock cooling, which consists of nothing at all on the Mem and ATi’s stock 9800 Pro cooler on the Core.

I decided one day to replace my computers side intake fan (that feeds my CPU cooler with air) with a 92mm one @ 36CFM / 14dBa from an 80mm one @ 28CFM / 14dBa. Whilst doing this, I thought I may as well use the old 80mm Fan as another side intake fan, but this time put it lower down in the side of the case, just under and to the side of my graphics card. I did this and when I tired overclocking my graphics card again, the results were interesting.
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Core: 399MHz - ( up 19MHz from a stock of 380MHz )
Mem: 359MHz - ( up 19MHz from a stock of 340MHz )
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What makes this interesting, at least for me, is that I was still using stock cooling. OK, my total overclock isn’t that impressive, but the change in o/c from having no side intake fan next to the graphics card, to having one next to the graphics card made me think.

The changes are as follows:
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Core: Up 6MHz ( 46% increase ) on previous o/c.
Mem: Up 8MHz ( 73% increase ) on previous o/c.
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All of this increase, which in percentage terms is quite impressive, due to one, 80mm, 28CFM fan with a filter on it, being used as an intake fan on the side of the case, quite close to the graphics card.

I just thought I’d mention it, as although it seems pretty obvious to put a side intake fan next to your graphics card to improve it’s cooling and it’s probably common practice amongst overclockers, I didn’t think doing so would make any real difference, until, by chance rather than design, I tried it. There may be some guys out there who want to squeeze an extra few MHz out of their graphics cards, but want to do it cheaply and who (like me) may not have thought that an extra side intake fan could be the way to do it. It seems to help achieve a slightly higher stable o/c with stock cooling and will probably be equally beneficial with after-market cooling, so might be worth a try, if you currenly don't have a side intake fan next to your graphics card.

Thanks for reading this thread!

Highly-Annoyed

xie67

Good to see no more hassles since upgrading the PSU. ( from your old thread)

Sometimes the simple things provide the best solutions..

cheers