Overclocking your X1800XT Page: 1
Overclocking any X1K isn't very easy, as you will soon find. But, if you follow this guide closely, you will surely have some success.

OC3D will not be held resposible for any issues that may occur as a result of following this guide. Overclocking your X1K card with any 3rd party application VOID's your warranty.

First off, before we start, adequate cooling is a must.  Stock coolers will work, but only if you run upwards of 75% fan speed in-game.  There arent many 3rd party heatsinks out there either, that work properly with X1K cards.  I reccomend removing your stock heatsink, and applying a thermal paste such as Arctic Silver Ceramique, to squeeze some more performance out of it. 

Now, let's begin the process. First off, you need to disable ATi's services and startup programs.

To do this, click Start, then click Run.

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A window will appear. Type in msconfig and click OK.

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When you click OK, another window will appear. This is the System Configuration Utility. To disable ATi's services, click the Services tab. At the bottom of the window, click Hide All Microsoft Services.


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You will need to un-check two things. Ati HotKey Poller, and ATI Smart.

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Once you've unchecked those two services, click the Startup tab. Search for cli, this is ATi's Catalyst Control Center, or CCC. This wrecks havok on ATi Tool, and other 3rd Party overclocking applications.

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Once you have un-checked all three things, click OK. Another window will appear, asking you weather or not you would like to restart your computer now, or later. Click Restart, to do it immediately.

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Now for some ATi Tool fun.





Overclocking your X1800XT Page: 2
ATi Tool is a 3rd party overclocking utility made by W1zzard, a programer at TechPowerUp! To get ATi Tool, click here.

Once you've downloaded and installed ATi Tool, start the program up. You will end up at the main screen, with a temperature graph, clock speeds, and numerous readings. To get started, click the New button, under profiles.



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Overclocking your X1800XT Page: 3
Now your voltages are correct. It's time to OC, but first, some info about temperatures. If you havn't noticed already, there are a lot of readings that ATi Tool reads from the X1K series cards. There are five different readings, to be exact.

What do they mean? In order from the first reading to the last..

  1. Voltage Regulation. This temperature monitors the VREG area. This is near the rear of the card, around the long pink/red heatsink. Try to keep this under 75ºC. You can lower temps by placing a 120MM fan at the rear of the card.
  2. Core Draw (Amps). This tells you how much power your core is drawing. X1K's draw a crap load of power, so expect this to be quite high at times.
  3. Fan Speed. This tells you how fast (in percent) your fan is going.
  4. Core Temp. This is your X1K's core temperature. Make sure this does not exceed 80ºC at any time.
  5. Ambient Temp. This is the temperature of the air around the video card. The sensor is located towards the front of the card, by the DVI plugs.
Now that you have proper understanding of the temperature readings, it's finally time to overclock.

Note: Do not adjust the sliders when the 3D View, or Artifact Scanner is open. It will most likely lock up your computer.

Simply adjust the bars to your liking. Drag them up 10-15MHz at a time, and open 3D View for about 2 minutes to test general stability. Fire up CS Source, or another game you like to play. If it doesn't freeze within 20-40 minutes, you're all set! These cards are very sensitive, and they WILL lock up if you OC too high.

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Those are my stable clocks on this Zalman VF700-Cu. I'm sure I could go higher, but there really is no need at the moment. Note that these cards draw an outstanding amount of power. Single rail (+12v) PSU's are preferred with X1K cards, in most cases. If you have a dual rail PSU and your card is unstable even at stock, investigate a bit. Check both of your +12v RAILS with a Digital Multi-Meter. You can get a DMM at your local Radio Shack for $19.99. If your rails sag a noticeable amount (under 11.80v) under load, you either need to adjust your rails via pots if your unit has them, or you will need a new PSU.

If you're lucky enough to have a Tagan PSU with a switch on the back, to select either a single 12v rail or dual 12v rails, slide it over to a single 12v rail.

Here are my voltages (idle, 0.03v less compared to my DMM)..

Idle:
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Load:
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(Click to view full image)
Per normal, always take caution when overclocking. Please take note, that these cards have been known to lock up and send the monitor into standby mode when the core is pushed too high with too little voltage. So, if you're OC'ing and your computer freezes, then your monitor goes into standby mode... do not fret. Just press the reset button on your case and you'll be back up as soon as your computer boots up again.

To have ATi Tool apply these settings at startup, please read the next page.




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To make your live simpler, ATi Tool has a built-in startup feature. To set ATi Tool to start up, click Settings again, at the bottom right of ATi Tool. Then, click the arrow next to the drop-down box. Select Startup Options.

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Now enable the following options.

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Note that I have "When loaded via Windows Startup, exit after loading above profile." checked. I have this checked because I noticed that ATi Tool tends to make my keyboard/mouse un-responsive, or laggy at times during gameplay. This happens in CS:S, BF2, etc. It's really annoying, and costs you your life in-game many times. So, I reccomend checking that, to avoid problems. You can always fire up ATi Tool temporarily to check up on clocks, temps, etc. Once you're finished, you can close back out.

Now you're done! Enjoy your new X1K card, and have fun overclocking!

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