Even though the A9800XT/TVD/256 is already one of the fastest videocards in the world,
that doesn't mean we're going to spare it from our overclocking tests.
;-)
It's
pretty amazing to see how well the R300 core has scaled in the last year and a
half, especially considering it's built on a larger 0.15 micron manufacturing.
Originally clocked at 325 MHz (Radeon 9700 Pro), it has now scaled to 412 MHz
(9800XT) thanks to a more refined manufacturing process, and a modest voltage
increase.
As usual, we started to raise the core clock speed first, and inched
up from stock 412 MHz. Things were pretty uneventful until we hit 452 MHz, where unfortunately
the core would start to artifact when running 3DMark2001. When we eased
down to 449 MHz core speed things improved. It's not the highest 9800XT overclock
we have seen, but it's certainly nothing to scoff at either.
The A9800XT/TVD/256 uses 2.5ns Hynix BGA DDR RAM, so we anticipated that the memory
should be good up to about 400 MHz. Starting at its default speed of 365
MHz we increased the memory frequency a few MHz at a time, but unfortunately our
overclocking didn't go past the 380 MHz mark. I'm not really sure what was
holding us back, as the memory even under load was only running around 40 degrees
Celsius.
We were
pleased to see that
the core and memory played nicely together, it seems ATi cards do not have
the same problem nVIDIA cards do when overclocked. Now for some benchmarks!
|
PCStats Test System Specs: |
processor: |
intel pentium 4 3.0c |
clock
speed: |
15 x 200 mhz = 3.0
ghz |
motherboards: |
gigabyte 8knxp, i875p |
videocard: |
ati radeon 9800xt ati radeon 9800 pro ati
radeon 9700 pro asus radeon 9600xt msi fx5950 ultra-vtd256 msi fx5900u-vtd256 msi
fx5900xt-vtd128 gigabyte gv-nv57u128d asus a9800xt/tvd/256 |
memory: |
2x 256mb corsair twinx
3200ll |
hard drive: |
40gb wd special
ed |
cdrom: |
nec 52x cd-rom |
powersupply: |
vantec stealth 470w |
software setup |
windowsxp build 2600 intel inf 5.02.1012 catalyst 3.9 detonator
53.03 |
workstation benchmarks |
3dmark2001se codecreatures aquamark aquamark3 gun metal 2 x2 the
threat ut2003
aa test, af and
aa+af test 3dmark2001se x2 the threat ut2003 | |