 |
|
|
|
In the Forums... |
Posted: August 15, 2000 Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy Clock Speed Adjustment As I clicked the speed up a few MHz at a time, I would start up Quake 3 and run the 1600x1200 timedemo. I had a feeling it would crash sometimes but it seemed stable. At 260 Mhz core / 480 MHz memory I decided to run the demo twice just to make sure it wasn't going to crash. The temperature on the probe still read only 90.9ºF. After the second demo completed without problems I looked down at the probe -- 94ºF. So, the chip was heating up. No problem there -- I figured another 10ºF or so shouldn't be a problem. I kept the memory at 480 because I knew it was safe for now. I cranked the core to 270 MHz. Quake 3 ran horribly sluggish -- 23 FPS. What the hell?  That doesn't look good! I set the clock speed back to default, and I achieved 20 FPS on the test. I was worried, so I shut the PC down for 30 minutes. When I rebooted, all was fine. So I decided the core would remain at 265 MHz regardless of the memory clock. At 490 MHz memory clock, the card managed 60.1 FPS in the 1600x1200x32bpp test -- my mission was complete. But I decided I shouldn't stop -- in the name of tweaking, and that I could reach higher speeds than ever imagined! Maybe I was delirious, but anyway, I decided to bump the speed up a bit more. It's often somewhat difficult to tell when the core clock speed is set too high, but figuring out the memory is set too high is usually easy. You'll notice visual artifacts almost immediately. Using this logic, I pushed the memory speed higher. At 500 MHz everything seemed fine. However, I noticed artifacts at 505 MHz and the PC froze at 510 MHz. So it looks like 500 MHz is the most you can get out of this ram (or so).  This is the maximum clock speed that my GeForce 2 Ultra likes... Benchmarks I had to run a few tests just to see what this bad boy could do. So, without further ado... Test System Celeron 566 CPU @ 850 MHz (100 MHz FSB) 128 MB PC133 RAM @ true CAS2 Abit BF6 motherboard (BX) Sound Blaster Live! Retail Adaptec 29160 UWSCSI card Windows 98 Quake3 fresh install/Creature demo fresh install. Quake3 Timedemo 1 / Demo 1 was used for testing. 6.18 Detonator 3 drivers were used in all testing unless otherwise noted. Vertical Sync (VSYNC) was disabled. See the benchmarks and conclusion on page 4... |
||
|
| |||
|---|---|---|---|