Overclocking Buyer's Guide - August 2004
by Wesley Fink on July 27, 2004 11:24 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
PCI Express Video
PCIe Overclocking Recommendation: ATI X800 XT Platinum 256MBPrice: N/A
It's almost an embarrassment to recommend a video card that we couldn't find for sale anywhere, but if you are an overclocker looking for top performance on a new Intel 925X board, the X800 XT is the best option for the present. If you're set on a new Intel 775 system for overclocking, then you need to get in line to buy this card.
Unfortunately, the ATI X800 PRO is 12 pipelines instead of 16, so more than just overclocking the video card is required to reach X800 XT performance levels. Many are reporting success in modifying certain brands of the X800 PRO AGP to 16 pipelines, but explaining how to do that is beyond the scope of this Guide. A search should find "how-to" information if this interests you. However, we have not seen any reports of modding a PCIe X800 PRO to 16 pipes. In addition, we could not even find an X800 PRO PCIe for sale at any vendor either.
There are X600 XT PCIe cards available from several vendors and they would be a good alternative if your overclocking goal is to reach the highest speed possible with a 775 platform. We are finding the ATI PCIe cards to be more tolerant of out-of-spec PCIe settings on the 775, so the X600 XT should allow you to reach the highest overclocks possible in the new PCIe systems. However, you need the X800 XT if your goal is the highest overclocks combined with top video performance at those rarified overclocks above 250 to 260 clock frequency.
As we have pointed out in the past, you can choose either the X800 XT or the 6800 Ultra and be perfectly happy and perfectly competitive in the performance area, but for overclocking PCI Express, we have found the ATI cards simply survive to higher PCIe overclock levels.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on ATI video cards from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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bluedart - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
It does say the price. Read from the top of the page:AGP Overclocking Recommendation: eVGA 256MB GeForce 6800 GT
Price: $389 shipped
BTW FX53 is a good choice at overclocking. Keep in mind this is with air. But if you utilize other forms of cooling the FX will go even higher, approaching 3GHz with proper cooling (see THG's review). This makes it one FX58. That is absolutely a grand overclock, seeing that FX58 speeds will not be here for another year or so.
danidentity - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
#4: Did you read Anandtech's article on breaking the overclocking lock? Almost all companies have broken it. It is very possible to reach those speeds with the stock HSF.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
devonz - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Why isn't the 6800 GT card in the price list on that page? Or am I missing it somehow?T8000 - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I think recommending an Athlon FX for overclocking is a joke. Those things do not even manage a 5% overclock, and their real world performance is only close to a P4 at 3.4 GHZ, as gaming at 640x480 is not very common among people spending this kind of money. And at a realistic setting of 1600x1200 and 4xFSAA, the CPU is not really the bottleneck in todays games. When you do encoding, where CPU speed does matter in the real world, the P4 is head and shoulders above Athlon FX.yzkbug - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
How about a VALUE OC DDR section? Paying $300+ for 5-10% performance increase over ~$150 regular DDR is a waste, imho.Zebo - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Peferformance------------
1. 2.8 P4C to 3.6 $180
2. A64 3200 to 2.5 $223
Value
--------
1. Duron 1.8 to 2.4 $44
2. Mobile XP to 2.6 $89
:)
Zebo - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Wow recommending a P4C over a moblie barton in the value section.Twice the price for roughly the same OC performance I don't get it. It's the inverse of price to performance. must be an error is all I can imagine.Then recommending a Socket 775 presshot. Lets see this 3.8- 4GHZ OC with stock HSF. I don't think so. Then the overclock lock issues which hav'nt been settled, have they? My understanding is 10% over stock FSB, yeilding about 3.4 Ghz far from 4ghz, the system crashes!! What kind of overclockers choice is that?
chuwawa - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Perhaps it's time to start recommending the Athlon64 3000+ for the value OC alternative.bluedart - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
This is a great guide for overclocking, although I believe that there needs to be some more acutal testing with the 755 and 939 sockets to give us a better picture of how they perform. It is especially difficult when PCIxpress and ddr2 aren't widely available yet.If anyone else has some REAL data on overclocking these new platforms, I would like to see those posts.
Currently I am making a heat sink out of synthetic Diamond (better heat transfer than copper and silver by 2x) and will be testing it on the FX system. If there are any other reccommendations I would be more than happy to hear them.
expletive - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I would cast a vote for the A64 3500+. If it can reach 2.6 like an FX53 at half the price that's tough to beat.The 3500+ is currently retailing for $390 shipped online. I know thats not quite a 'value' but to get FX53 gaming performance for half the price, that can't be denied....