Basic FX59xxx bios changes

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by fazi1985

They are 2.5ns Hynix so hopefully there will be no problem with ram OCing. (however no heatsinks yet)

2.5ns memory chips are rated at 800MHz, and so your card should overclock a good bit higher than this ! However as I said, with no heatsinking on memory, the chips will run hotter as you overclock higher ! Just keep testing with your finger as you overclock ? And wouldn't do any harm to have a fan blowing air directly a memory chips !!

[fazi1985]

I flashed your Aopen RL XT bios (480/800). I OCed rams till 960 and no artifacts (Artifact Tester 5.0). I do not dare to go farther, since the lack of heatsinks. But what's your opinion about my gpu? It doesn't seem to OC well, to tell the truth, at all!!! Simply 405MHz is way too lot for her. While benchmarking, after about 30secs of measuring, it stops for approx. 30secs - I think sits back to throttle speeds - and goes on. I achieved higher scores with 380/700 setting, than with stock 400/700.

What can be done? Buying a better cooler? Raising voltages a bit?

(Purchasing a case-cooler, and ramsinks for a small case-mod is in progress.)

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by fazi1985

I flashed your Aopen RL XT bios (480/800). I OCed rams till 960 and no artifacts (Artifact Tester 5.0). I do not dare to go farther, since the lack of heatsinks. But what's your opinion about my gpu? It doesn't seem to OC well, to tell the truth, at all!!! Simply 405MHz is way too lot for her. While benchmarking, after about 30secs of measuring, it stops for approx. 30secs - I think sits back to throttle speeds - and goes on. I achieved higher scores with 380/700 setting, than with stock 400/700.

What can be done? Buying a better cooler? Raising voltages a bit?

(Purchasing a case-cooler, and ramsinks for a small case-mod is in progress.)

the Aopen XT bios you are trying has throttling at stock 375MHz, so obviously if you are overclocking too high, it will likely throttle back during games testing !

memory speed of 960 is way too high for a card with no ramsinks ! Untill satisfied with memory temps during stress testing, limit memory to max of 900 ! And if GPU overclocks are poor with Aopen bios, try another, but this time with throttling mod, like the POV or Leadtek XT's at 300/450/850 ! Or just try as many XT bios's as you like, noting any overclocking problems as they occur !!! Even limited with normal 1.4v on your GPU core, it should overclock to at least 450MHz ?? That is unless the manufacturer of your card used poor quality GPU chips ???

you may never find any that give great overclocks, just because your card may not be best quality ??? As I sometimes say, you can't make a silk purse from a sows ear ! So if starting with a sows ear, then you are limited in what can be achieved with any bios !

[fazi1985]

With original bios, it stopped at 405, now it takes this speed, but no higher. It's useless to try all bioses, I suppose, cause it's possibly a poor chip. But my question is: can I yield greater speeds with a volt-mod? (with this poor quality chip, and of course a good cooler) Or it would just damage the card?

What's your opinion about Artifact Tester? Is it reliable?

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by fazi1985

With original bios, it stopped at 405, now it takes this speed, but no higher. It's useless to try all bioses, I suppose, cause it's possibly a poor chip. But my question is: can I yield greater speeds with a volt-mod? (with this poor quality chip, and of course a good cooler) Or it would just damage the card?

What's your opinion about Artifact Tester? Is it reliable?

I can't believe your GPU speed won't overclock beyond 405MHz ?? The default for a XT type card is 390, and you are saying that yours only goes 15MHz higher, then stops ??? Overclocking doesn't just stop ! You start at some point getting artifact issues and at some higher point it may lock up, but speeds don't just stop ?

If your core speed can go no higher than 405MHz with original or any other bios, then first thoughts are that either the GPU chip or other Card components are faulty ?? Or, just maybe the GPU heatsink is not making good thermal contact ??? And, If we widen the scope of possabilities, a very low core overclock can also be forced by having a bad PSU ???

Before you even consider a voltmod, it would be most interesting to know what current GPU volts you get ??? Should be 1.2v in 2D, 1.3v when throttling triggered and 1.4v in 3D !

And, if your GPU voltage is minimum of 1.4v in 3D, and you still can only overclock to 405MHz with this level, then you should be considering replacing your card, not voltmodding it !!!

Also, its not useless to try many bios's, I flashed with about 20 before I settled with the MSI bios I currently use ! You see I wanted better performance and was prepared to go to whatever lengths necessary to get it !!! There are no instant easy answers with this kind of activity ?

The artifact tester should not be considered a good testing mechanism for your card !!

I used Aquamark3 for a lot of overclock testing because it is quite stressful and doesn't take long ! Also for final testing to prove efficacy of overclocked speeds; I also usually set both driver AA&AF to 8x, as these levels really stress your GPU and memory !!

[fazi1985]

I think stock speeds should be 400/800. Firstly gpu was set at 400MHz by default (by Inno), secondly RAMs are 2.5ns Hynix, so OC is measured only after 800MHz.
So it really "dies" at 405MHz, with both bioses. "Dies" means: stops, and sits back to throttle speeds, which means, it gets too warm, or sg. Stock cooler is pretty small, and does not cover vrams. Other Inno 5900XT users can OC to about 420 with this cooling, which is still a lot higher than mine.
You can be right: - cooler does not fit to gpu perfectly
- gpu is faulty (what is PSU? )

I'm sorry for this amount a questions!

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by fazi1985

I think stock speeds should be 400/800. Firstly gpu was set at 400MHz by default (by Inno), secondly RAMs are 2.5ns Hynix, so OC is measured only after 800MHz.
So it really "dies" at 405MHz, with both bioses. "Dies" means: stops, and sits back to throttle speeds, which means, it gets too warm, or sg. Stock cooler is pretty small, and does not cover vrams. Other Inno 5900XT users can OC to about 420 with this cooling, which is still a lot higher than mine.
You can be right: - cooler does not fit to gpu perfectly
- gpu is faulty (what is PSU? )

I'm sorry for this amount a questions!

PSU is your computers main power supply, which may be 300Watt or as much as 500Watt ??? Wattage rating will be printed on side of PSU !

Apart from actually having a problem with GPU heatsinking, most people I know with very poor overclocking had poor quality PSU's ? But even with them, overclocking didn't just stop ! And the 420 other Inno 5900XT owners are getting is very poor, unless something is also wrong with their cards ??? Are we just back to GPU heatsinking ???

And if your default stock GPU speed is 400, then only overclocking to 405 isnt worth the effort ? So you have got to sort out if it is PSU or just bad heatsinking that is your problem before considering any form of bios flashing or overclocking ??

Fitting a better heatsink is probably the best way to start, since for good overclocking it is essential that GPU/memory temps be kept under control ! So you will need it anyway, and it will instantly show if heatsinking was your problem ?

EDIT:

and don't worry about the number of questions you ask, if it gets you the answers you need, then ask what you want !

[fazi1985]

OK, I know what is PSU, but didn't know the word. (I'm from Hungary)
So it might be a problem, it's a 300W Mercury ****, but no money for an Enermax PSU yet. But some lads here tried an old 250W Codegen PSU for fun (2 optical drives, 5900XT, P4 at stock speeds, 2 HDDs), and everything worked fine, until greater OCing. And it's only a 250W PSU from a not really better vendor. So the problem is possibly the cooling.

Or may the gpu be faulty? Is it possible to sell a bad chip? It must be tested for several hours before shipping, doesnt it?!

I promise no further questions!!! D

[fazi1985]

PSU is not a problem. I tried a 400W piece, and the same occured. It must be the cooling or crappy chip.

[WindtalkerCS]

I currently have a gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra GT Edition stock clocks are 520/950 and i have it overclocked via the BIOS to 300/565/1000 and it runs fine and it registers in rivatuner fine but i get almost no improvement over 520/950 or even underclocked to 475/950, would an upgrade to a different vendors BIOS help my proformance any and is it possible to save the data for my VIVO so that will still work.

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by fazi1985

PSU is not a problem. I tried a 400W piece, and the same occured. It must be the cooling or crappy chip.

it may in fact be a crappy chip or cooling, however lets go back to your overclocking technique ??

Are you using driver coolbits, or Rivatuner ??

What mostly confuses me is you cards inability to overclock from 400 to 405 without throttling back during testing ???

A known problem of overclocking, especially with Rivatuner, is that the throttling function gets prematurely triggered during the stress tests, and remains in that condition until reset by rebooting ! This means if it has been triggered by the overclocking stress tests, and you don't reboot, then your card will repeatedly throttle down to 375MHz during any performance testing !!! And it doesn't matter if you overclock by 1MHz or 100Mhz, it will always happen with Rivatuner !!

I personally haven't noticed this effect when using coolbits, however that doesn't mean it can't happen. Therefore I always tell everybody who is overclocking, to reboot just in case the throttling function has been triggered ??

[jimmor]

Originally Posted by WindtalkerCS

I currently have a gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra GT Edition stock clocks are 520/950 and i have it overclocked via the BIOS to 300/565/1000 and it runs fine and it registers in rivatuner fine but i get almost no improvement over 520/950 or even underclocked to 475/950, would an upgrade to a different vendors BIOS help my proformance any and is it possible to save the data for my VIVO so that will still work.

You have a very good card and should therefore expect excellent results from it ! However high performance cards can only give their best in good performance systems ? There are shall we say basic laws of diminishing returns that will affect overall performance of your computer setup ? The fact that you don't feel you are getting much more from your card when raising its clocked speeds from 475/950 to 565/1000 may therefore be a sign that its performance is being constrained by mobo/CPU/DIMM bandwidth bottlenecks ?? This is just a guesstimate on my part, since I don't know what the rest of your setup is like, or what criteria you were using to measure performance improvement ??

Also when measuring performance improvement from your card, it is best to stick to programs like 3dmark03, and aquamark3 and codecreatures1; good graphics card tests !! And use programs like 3dmark01 as a guage of overall performance changes ?? It is also most important to use same known and stable driver, like 53.03, for all testing otherwise it will be almost impossible to separate driver and card perceived performance issues ??

And you should try another 5950u bios, but don't worry about VIVO problems untill satisfied that another bios is going to give more than your original ??

I actually tried the Gigabyte 5950u bios, but found it average, and definately not in my top 10 ! However every card is different, so try the MSI that I use and the BFG and even the Leadtek, or anything else you fancy ? When and if you find a better bios, you may also find the new bios also provides the VIVO output you require ? Always remember a lot of 5950u cards provide very similar facilities !!!

my only other suggestion, is to modify your original bios with the "40" latency change as indicated in my 59xx bios modding Guide at first post of thread ! It will improve your cards memory bandwidth !!