How to overclock 4870 x2 with Rivatuner without loosing powerplay

[ribbell]

You know that if you are going to overclock with rivatuner, powerplay will be disabled, right?
This is not a limit of Rivatuner, any software able to overclock last generation's Ati cards will do that. Only way to overclock without loosing powerpaly is by using overdrive, but by using this method maximum clocks available are limited unless you modify the bios.
However by using Rivatuner superscheduling feature we are able to reactivate powerplay automatically after we're done with our daily gaming session.
Let's begin:

Create a CCC overdrive profile
1) Open catalyst control center.
2) Browse to the overdrive tab and be sure that Overdrive is enabled. Please note that the first time you open the overdrive tab, the overdrive feature is locked. It is enough to click on the little gold key on the upper left of the overdrive tab to unlock overdrive.
3) Open the profiles manager by clicking on the profiles button in the CCC window and then selecting profiles manager.
4) In the upper field of the profiles manager window enter the name of your choice for the profile. This name will be used by CCC for the file that will store your CCC profile.
5) In the composition tab of the profiles manager window expand the first adapter settings by clicking on the "+" sign and be sure that Ati Overdrive is selected.
6) In the activation tab select desktop shortcut.
7) Click on the Save button.
CCC will create a link to the profile (with the name of the profile and extension .lnk) on the desktop and the profile itself (a .xml file) in the directory (you need to enable show hidden files and folders in explorer to see it):
C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profile s (for Vista)
C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Local Settings\Application Data\ATI\ACE\Profiles\ (for XP)
You can edit the profile to change the 2d frequencies and voltages for both GPUs. In 2d i have memory/gpu/voltage at 300 Mhz/400 Mhz/1V for both GPUs. Here's my profile for your reference:



8) After you edited and saved the profile activate it from CCC.

Setup Rivatuner
1) In the Hardware monitor enable at least memory clock frequency and hardware acceleration data sources. Moreover be sure that background monitoring is enabled.
2) In the settings tab of rivatuner check the option run at windows startup
3) In the power user tab set to 1 the entry enableclockcontrolcloning which can be found under the group Riva\overclocking\global. You need to restart rivatuner in order for this setting to take effect. In this way rivatuner will overclock both GPUs to the same clocks.

Create overclocking profiles
1) In the overclocking tab of rivatuner in the low level system tweaks window enable low level hardware overclocking and move the clocks sildes of memory and gpu to the desired values. Click apply and save the overclocking profile:



I named the profile "overclock". As you can see i changed only the clock of the GPU to 813 Mhz (higher than the maximum clock allowed by overdrive).
2) Now create an overclock profile with the default frequencies in 2d:



I named the profile "Default".

Create launcher items
1) In the launcher tab of rivatuner create a regular item and associate it to the overclocking profile that overclocks the GPUs:



2) Cretate another item associated to the overclocking profile that set the default 2d clocks frequencies.


Create scheduler tasks
1) Create a task that automatically lauches the statistics server when the memory clock becomes higher than 850 mhz:



You can select the server between the predifinied application list that become available by clicking on the browse button.
In this way, upon entering fullscreen 3d, the statistics server is activated and the harware acceleration data source becomes available.
2) Create a task that automatically overclocks the GPUs to the desired levels when the memory clock becomes higher than 850 Mhz:



In this way, the overclock is automatically applied when our game session starts.
3) Create a task that automatically set the default clocks when hardware acceleration data source becomes lower than 0.5:



In this way Rivatuner set the default clocks when leaving the 3d application.
Step 3) is needed in order for step 4) to work properly.
4) Create a task that restores powerplay when memory clock becomes lower than 850 Mhz:



In this way, after Rivatuner restored default 2d cloks by calling the default overclocking profile, the link to the CCC profile is called, which in turn restores powerplay. You have to enter manually in the application field the path and the name of the link file: in my case the path is C:\Users\astaris\Desktop (i leaved the link on the desktop) and the name of the link is UO.lnk (UO is the name of CCC profile and .lnk is the extension of a link file).
5) Create a task that closes rivatuner statistics server when memory clock becomes lower than 850 Mhz:



The server unload action can be quicly called by selecting "server unload" in the list of rivatuner predifinied applications.
In this way we close automatically the server when we quit the game.
If you like to have the server in memory even in 2d, steps 1) and 5) are not needed.

Let's see how the scheduler tab appears when we finished:



Results



As you can see, before launching 3d game, clocks and voltage are the ones definied in the modified CCC profile, i.e. powerplay is enabled -> the voltage is lower than 3d voltage.
In the game session, the clocks are the one relative to the rivatuner profile and powerplay is disabled.
When the 3d application is closed, the clocks and voltages return to the ones definied in CCC profile, i.e. powerplay is restored.

Take note that i used a "closed" alpha version of rivatuner to make the screenshots (too lazy to re-install 2.11...) , so some options you can see in some windows are not available in 2.11. Anyway this guide can be used without problems with Rivatuner 2.11.

[lenne]

Thanks Ribbell !

Ive got one question, what lowest core / mem clocks/volts did u find stable to use ?
I think the default 507 500 mhz @ 1.06Vcore is still quite high ?!

[ribbell]

Originally Posted by lenne

Thanks Ribbell !

Ive got one question, what lowest core / mem clocks/volts did u find stable to use ?
I think the default 507 500 mhz @ 1.06Vcore is still quite high ?!

I'm currently at 300Mhz/400Mhz/1 V memory/gpu/voltage in idle, i.e. the settings you see in the CCC profile i posted. I got no problems with these settings, maybe it's possible to reduce further the clocks.

[Optimist]

Hi

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I came upon this, and it has me very much interested.

Would it be possible to use this on a 4870 512mb (minus the enableclockcontrolcloning setting)??

I presume that this method would still be applicable with the recent Catalyst 8.12 drivers and with Rivatuner 2.22. If not, what changes to the above method would be required?

Thanks

[Messerschmitt]

Interesting but I can't really do that.
All my RivaTuner sees is 200 to 300MHz in Low level hardware overclocking. So I can pretty much OC my card from Rivatuner to a whoaping 300MHz core clock

[Fizzer]

Thought i'd better add this. Link to image not working. Only found this when I was going to quote and ask for help.. and saw image link was img408.imageshack.us/img408/6163/38103195og7.th.jpg

Should Be:

img408.imageshack.us/img408/6163/38103195og7.jpg

Usure if original poster is around to edit or Admin could. This is a great guide.

Originally Posted by ribbell

3) Create a task that automatically set the default clocks when hardware acceleration data source becomes lower than 0.5:



In this way Rivatuner set the default clocks when leaving the 3d application.
Step 3) is needed in order for step 4) to work properly.

GREAT!! Guide was pulling my hair out trying to get the card with Powerplay and 3D clocks, was stuck at 507 / 500 2D and 3D.

Thanks