Returned to ATI after 5 years with NVIDIA or more ...

I think the x1900gt is a great card for the price. I've scored 11,000 in 3dmark05 with mine with a decent o/c.

 

Hell yeah, after the debacle with my 7900 GT I had kinda of forgotten that bugless operation was even possible. Lesson learned: if a card looks flimsy it probably is. The 7900 GT looked flimsy, the 1900 XT does not.

 

what are your highest clocks for GPU and mem ?

I scored around 8500-8700 I don't remember exactly ...

In 3dmark2006 I scored around 4200-4300 points ...

All this was with a 50 MHz OC for the GPU and the mem at 780-790 MHz ..
GPU wag 560-570 MHz

Any voltmods for this card that really work ? How high can it be taken ?

I'm not used to ATI high temperatures and for overclocking I use ati tools and ati tray tools ...

You think the memory needs active cooling if I will use WC on the GPU ? I might leave them running at 1400 MHz from default 1300 or so ...

What about the GPUs ? they artifact from heat ??? it was 75 degrees Celsius when ati tool show first artifact at 570+ MHz ...

I bet it's the voltage that is not enough ... I'm not a lazy bastard but I just can't find time and that's why I ask you these questions...

Do you flash the card ? What is used for flashing ?

If you are going to reply to this post tell me about VMODS and highest OC reached (I will put the card on water) and about some flashing and bios editing software ...

Thanks

 

Here you go

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/voltmods/143

http://bildez.lv/bildes/kasparz/x1900gt/orig/1163277706.jpg

http://www.alcoholic.dk/view.php?id=279&thumb=false/

 

Maybe not active cooling but passive heatsinks should be used. My take is that since none of the 1900 series cards leave their vram chips exposed then it must be for a good reason.

 

"My take is that since none of the 1900 series cards leave their vram chips exposed then it must be for a good reason."

If you look at the way the heatsink connects to the VRAM on the X1950XT... you'll notice that it ususe foam pads... Those actually look like insulating and seems to be there only keep the heatsink level and snug...

I suspect that the heatsinks are large because they need the fins, not because they really need to cover the memory modules.

In any case, fins on the modules are a good idea and probably sufficient for most applications.

 

I wouldn't bother with voltmods as you can overvolt the GPU with Tray Tools and I've got the VRAM up to 855 with stock volts. I do have the original version of the X1900GT though.

Tray Tools should be all you'll need for overclocking. I'm assuming that ATT can overclock the new version of the X1900GT.

Don't know what your stock cooling is like but mine sucked so I slapped a Zalman VF900 on my X1900GT and had temp drops between 35-40C depending on the game/app. Yeah, the stock cooling was that bad and the Zalman was that good. The VF900 comes with ramsinks. Even running the stock cooling fan at 100% didn't help that much.

I just put a San Diego 4000+ @ 3.0Ghz into my rig and got my 3DMark05 score up to 10,750. That's with a 682/855 oc on the card. At stock speeds I got about 8900 in '05.

I was considering getting an 8800GTS but I game on an LCD with a 12x10 resolution so I really don't need to upgrade yet. But with an 8800GTS going for only $400 after MIR, it's a big temptation. At some point, I might sell my X1900GT with Zalman on ebay but only to someone who promises to overclock it!

My first foray into ATI territory was with the original Radeon. For me it was a total POS - probably not the card's fault but the drivers. BSODs all over the place in games that worked fine with Nvidia. When my Kyro 2 started to run out of juice, I knew that choosing the ATI 9500/9700 line over Nvidia's FX crap was a no-brainer. My 9500Pro turned out to be the longest-running card I've owned. Then I did a stint with a 6800GT. That didn't last too long as I got the X1900GT which crushed the 6800GT in performance. So I go back and forth. If I get an 8800GTS you can definitely call me a fence-jumper.

 

Which one was it? If I recall well there were more than one "original" Radeons...

 

funny, i was also an nvidia guy myself, and i had a graphic card from each generation since geforce 2 all the way to geforce 6, then i got this laptop and started using ATi, and it is very good for a notebook videocard

 

The name of the card was simply Radeon 32MBDDR IIRC.

Regardless of my bad experience with that card, I prefer to use ATI. I think they place a greater emphasis on IQ rather than raw performance and by concentrating on that, they move the industry forward.

 

ATT doesn't allow me to play with voltages ... hmmm I think it will suport maybe in the future ... I've heard some stuff about locked cards ATI but I don't really understand it ... was an nvidia fan sorry

The voltage is locked by bios ??? the clocks can be changed ...

If I flash a new bios I can solve the voltage settings issue ?

I will look into vmods and water cause it allways been a pasion for me

 

"I will look into vmods and water cause it allways been a pasion for me"

Same here, but after building a somewhat overclocked computer silent on 8dB fans and passive heatsinks, I'm not sure I'll worry about it anymore. Sure, I could get it faster by spending a few hundred bucks on great waterblocks, pumps, non conductive liquid... But I'll just save the money to upgrade my CPU and GPU faster Which won't be required for a little while, I get 12500 3dMark05, and 6400 3dMarko6. Not the fastest, but fast enough, especially for a computer with such an unintrusive cooling method.

Talking of fence jumping, I think I'd done with water for a while...

 

For voltages you need AtiTool. And ATT sucks big time, for me image quality is horrible on ATT. I prefer to run thing with the software they were made to run to.

 

"For voltages you need AtiTool. And ATT sucks big time, for me image quality is horrible on ATT. I prefer to run thing with the software they were made to run to."

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Image Quality is a driver setting, whether you use ATT or CCC to change it shouldn't impact the quality.

 

Hey what about this ?

http://sg.vr-zone.com/?i=4151

The volt mod for x1900gt rev.2 from vr-zone does this work anybody tried it ?

I don't understand the AtiTool and ATT difference ? They are only tweakers ... maybe he wanted to say about tweaks included in them that cause image quality to degrade ... tweak that are activated automatic after install of tool ...

Anyway today the card will be on water cooling with COOPER ram heatsinks and still I'm not sure about the VR-ZONE volt mod ...

Anyone had the data sheet of this Volterra VT1165 ??????

TY

 

It's a shame that you have to resort to hard mods to boost voltages. I think the current "wisdom" on the street is that you can't tweak the voltages on a rev.2 GT because of the different voltage regulator used.

I think you could easily find a few thousand people to disagree with that - including myself. ATT is da bomb! At the time it was the ONLY app that let me overclock my X1900GT and actually have the settings stick. I would think by now that ATI Tool would have that figured out as well.

 

I've been an Nvidia fan ever since I've been playing Final Fantasy XI, but since I don't play it anymore I have once again moved back to ATI. Just today I just purchased a X1650 Pro AGP. The VPU core speed alone is 140Mhz faster than the VPU on my Asus Card, and the DDR speed is nearly doubled at about 1400Mhz! Another thing I always liked about ATI cards was the clearity of the graphics. I've had 4 Nvidia cards, all of them were choppy in some form or fashion, even on the pricey BFG cards, But Nv cards are very good for Open GL graphics though.

 

Yep, got my new ATi card comin' in the mail. :bounce: I'll keep the 7800GT around for a different build. My 7800 is not a bad card at all...I just miss ATi's image quality.

 

I prefer ATI over Nvidia, but with the 8800 already out, it will be a cheaper buy over ATI's r600, and I want a DX10 based card for Crysis so..... we'll see what happens.

 

I hope ATT will be able to control voltages on 1900GT rev.2 ... the voltmods are not 100% working and I haven't seen anyone that can say that ... (I refer to x1900gt rev.2 voltmods)

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