Overclocked Radeon 9600 Pro: UT2004 benchmarks

[oingoboingo]

As mentioned in a thread I posted in the Hardware section (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86732), a utility called ATIcceleratorII has been released which allows simple OS X-based overclocking of ATI graphics cards, without the need for BIOS flashes or even rebooting. The software is available here:

http://thomas.perrier.name/software/ATIcceleratorII.html

I installed the software on my 1.6GHz PowerMac G5, with the standard Apple OEM 64MB Radeon 9600 Pro AGP 8x card, 1.25GB of RAM, and OS X 10.3.5. The software installed without a hitch, and adds an extra item to the System Preferences which can be used to adjust both the GPU speed and the RAM speed of the graphics card independently.

To test if the changes I was making to the Radeon 9600 were having any effect, I benchmarked the system using the Santaduck Toolpak Unreal Tournament 2004 benchmark suite. For these tests, Flyby mode on the DM-Antalus map was used, at a resolution of 1600x1200, in 32-bit colour. Details settings were at 'Maximum' (which corresponds to 'High' settings for all the UT2004 detail levels, all extra graphical effects turned on, and 'Low Sound Detail' selected). The full retail version of UT2004 was used, with the latest patches applied. All tests were run 3 times, and the average FPS scores for each run averaged out to give an overall score. No other software was running at the time of the benchmarks (except Finder).

-364.5 MHz core, 294.75 MHz VRAM (stock OEM Radeon 9600 Pro settings):38.8 FPS

- 382.5 MHz core, 294.75 MHz VRAM (4.94% core overclock):39.6 FPS

- 400.5 MHz core, 294.75 MHz VRAM (9.88% core overclock):40.2 FPS

- 400.5 MHz core, 324.00 MHz VRAM (9.88% core overclock, 9.92% VRAM overclock):43.05 FPS

- 418.5 MHz core, 337.50 MHz VRAM (14.81% core overclock, 14.50 % VRAM overclock):44.9 FPS

(*note: The FPS scores for each test are very tightly grouped, varying only by 0.1 or 0.2 FPS each run. I could add standard deviations, but at this stage, I'm too lazy :) )

I stopped overclocking at 15% for both GPU core and VRAM, since I wasn't sure how much Radeon 9600 Pros can be safely overclocked in general (I'll do some research), nor how well the cooling system in the G5 will cope with any increase in heat from an overclocked graphics card. However, even at 15%/15% overclocking, there was no sign of any visual distortion or artefacts during the 3 runs of the DM-Antalus Flyby benchmark (nor was there in any of the lesser overclocked runs). A 14.81% increase in GPU core coupled with a 14.5% increase in VRAM clock speed resulted in a 15.7% increase in average FPS scores, so in this part of the curve at least it looks like near to linear scaling.

When I'm feeling a little more adventurous I might try for some higher overclocks, and I'll definitely do some stress testing of the overclocked configuration (UT2004 spectator mode for a few hours at least) to see how stable this configuration is.

EDIT: PS, you can get the Santaduck Toolpak benchmarking kit here:
http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18189

[Mord]

it's a freaking g5, i think it cn handle an overclocked 9600, did you put some ramsinks on it?, or maybe batter cooling than the passive heatsink?

edit, i'm going to totally going to waste an ati rage on my cube with some mad voltage heatsinked 120mm fan fun :D

[Hoef]

Yeah would be neat to see the temperature read outs as well

[oingoboingo]

it's a freaking g5, i think it cn handle an overclocked 9600, did you put some ramsinks on it?, or maybe batter cooling than the passive heatsink?

edit, i'm going to totally going to waste an ati rage on my cube with some mad voltage heatsinked 120mm fan fun :D

Yeah, the whole thing is perfectly stable at 15%/15%, so I'll definitely be trying to overclock it some more. I haven't added RAM sinks or anything like that yet...it's just a completely stock G5. I figured the cooling fan that takes care of the PCI bay thermal zone would wind up a bit if things got toasty in there, but who really knows.

From doing a little searching around the web, it seems that the Radeon 9600 'Pro' that Apple supplies in the G5 might not be all that 'Pro' after all. It seems that the standard GPU clock speed in PC-issue Radeon 9600 cards is 400MHz (or very close to that), not the 364.5 MHz that the Mac Radeon 9600 Pro is set to. At least the Mac VRAM speeds (294.75MHz) are close to what most PC cards are set at (around 300MHz).

I will need to pop the lid off the G5 and examine what brand and specification of RAM is being used in the OEM Radeon 9600 Pro...people are claiming VRAM overclocks of up to 350MHz and beyond with Sapphire cards. HardOCP managed to achieve a stable core GPU speed of 567MHz and a VRAM speed of 358MHz (716MHz effective speed, since it's DDR RAM). I don't expect to be able to achieve anything like that, since the OEM Radeon 9600 in the G5 does not have its own cooling fan (just a heatsink which is cooled by the shared PCI bay fan) and has no RAM sinks, but those HardOCP results are encouraging to say the least...

Now...somehow I've managed to be relegated to the PowerBook while my soon-to-be wife is monopolising the G5. How the hell did that happen!?! :)

[oingoboingo]

OK, a beer or two later and I have acquired enough courage to try some more adventurous overclocking. All testing conditions are identical as the previous tests.

438.75 MHz core, 351 MHz VRAM (+20.37% core overclock, +19.08% VRAM overclock): 47.0 FPS

456.75 MHz core, 351 MHz VRAM (+25.31% core overclock, +19.08% VRAM overclock): 47.7 FPS

474.75 MHz core, 351 MHz VRAM (+30.25% core overclock, +19.08% VRAM overclock): 48.4 FPS

474.75 MHz core, 369 MHz VRAM (+30.25% core overclock, +25.19% VRAM overclock): 50.1 FPS

At the last settings (474.75/369) I started to notice visual artefacts on screen. These persisted even after exiting UT2004 (I was seeing coloured blocks of pixels appearing in Finder). I rolled the Radeon 9600 back to 474.75/351, and the artefacts disappeared. I have been testing the system now for about the last 20 minutes running a 'bot DeathMatch in Spectactor mode, and everything seems stable and free of visual artefacts.

So, from my limited testing so far, it looks like a 474.75 MHz core clock speed (up 110.25 MHz from a stock speed of 364.5 MHz) and a VRAM speed of 351 MHz (up 56.25 MHz from 294.75 MHz) results in a stable graphics card, and an approximate 24.7% improvement in UT2004 framerates, as measured in the DM-Antalus Flyby benchmark.

[supergod]

Right now I'm running my Radeon 9600 (1.6ghz G5, 1gb RAM, os 10.3.5) with processor bumped up 18.52% to 432 mhz and memory up 18.32% to 348.75mhz. Everything seems to be going well so I'm going to push it farther later today. Does anyone know if this (minor) overclocking can lower the shelf life of a system? I'm not afraid of the card getting fried or anything, but I wonder if the extra strain on the fans or whatnot has a noticeable effect.

[vraxtus]

I wonder how well this will work with my Rad9800 SE...


And to the above poster... "shelf life" is the life of a unit that's still in a store inventory, without use. I think you meant just "life."

[ChrisFromCanada]

I thought I would test it on my 9800 Pro but right now I am too lazy to do anything very time consuming so I just did the graphics tests in xbench and this is what I found:

My computer before any overclocking:
Quartz Graphics Test 154.30
Line 130.25 3.32 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 149.16 10.49 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 152.99 3.53 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 144.30 1.57 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 219.48 3.58 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 88.67
Spinning Squares 88.67 62.05 frames/sec

And after both VRAM and processor were overclocked 10% each:
Quartz Graphics Test 164.35
Line 130.63 3.33 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 153.74 10.82 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 155.35 3.58 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 145.54 1.58 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 338.31 5.51 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 87.03
Spinning Squares 87.03 60.90 frames/sec

So, for some reason I expirienced a slight performance loss in OpenGL but a gain in Quartz. I also realize that my bottleneck of my computer is my processor and that the video card is much more powerful than it but I thought I would give it a shot. Maybe I will do the Unreal benchmark later.

[oingoboingo]

I wonder how well this will work with my Rad9800 SE...


And to the above poster... "shelf life" is the life of a unit that's still in a store inventory, without use. I think you meant just "life."

...unless he has it installed on a shelf, and is worried about the shelf overheating from the overclocked compuer sitting on it and...uhhh..nevermind.

BTW, have just complete a full hour of UT2004 bot DeathMatch testing with my Radeon 9600 at 474.75 / 351, and it has been totally stable and free of artefacts. I think we have a winner...

[oingoboingo]

So, for some reason I expirienced a slight performance loss in OpenGL but a gain in Quartz. I also realize that my bottleneck of my computer is my processor and that the video card is much more powerful than it but I thought I would give it a shot. Maybe I will do the Unreal benchmark later.

XBench is a dubious benchmark. The scores don't often seem to be reproducible, and there should be no reason why overclocking your card would result in a loss of performance. Try with a 'real world' application (well, as 'real world' as Unreal Tournament is) and see if you can measure an improvement.

[vraxtus]

I think I'll try this on Halo later tonite when I get home... also oingo, what is the "dual 2.5 upgrade kit" described on your sig...?

edit: nvm I'm an idiot.

[neonart]

This is very interesting! I will try to run Halo timedemos later to see if this mod helps this supper crappy game. All my other games run amazing on my setup, while Halo sucks miserably. Hope this helps!

[invaLPsion]

I'm not surprised that people are having such good luck with OC'ing their video cards, seeing as how Apple underclocks their OEM cards in the first place...

For example, my 9600XT is supposed to run at 500MHz CPU, 600MHz memory. It only runs at 400.5MHz CPU and for some strange reason, 621MHz memory.

I'll try turning my 9600XT into an actual 9600XT later... I will inform everyone of the results... ;)

[supergod]

Thanks for taking the time to make fun of my using the word shelf life on a forum. Just so you know, the definition of shelf life is not limited to use in a store (or on a shelf). It simply means the length of time in which a product remains suitable for use... or at least that's what the dictionary says. Now that that's out of the way, while a computer with a overclocked video card may not experience artifacts or overheat, is there any other kind of long term damage? I'm not particularly worried, just thought I should know.

[vraxtus]

Thanks for taking the time to make fun of my using the word shelf life on a forum. Just so you know, the definition of shelf life is not limited to use in a store (or on a shelf). It simply means the length of time in which a product remains suitable for use... or at least that's what the dictionary says. Now that that's out of the way, while a computer with a overclocked video card may not experience artifacts or overheat, is there any other kind of long term damage? I'm not particularly worried, just thought I should know.

shelf life
n.
The length of time a product may be stored without becoming unsuitable for use or consumption.

tr.v. stored, stor·ing, stores
To reserve or put away for future use.

Sooooooooo... not really!

Anyhow, the long term effects of overclocking remain to be seen, at least for most Mac users, who typically (with the exception of the eMac) don't really OC processors... especially GPUs, so time will tell.

And lighten up dude, I'm just trying to show you that you didn't really use the term correctly, that's all.

[invaLPsion]

So, from my limited testing so far, it looks like a 474.75 MHz core clock speed (up 110.25 MHz from a stock speed of 364.5 MHz) and a VRAM speed of 351 MHz (up 56.25 MHz from 294.75 MHz) results in a stable graphics card, and an approximate 24.7% improvement in UT2004 framerates, as measured in the DM-Antalus Flyby benchmark.

Where can I find this DM-Antalus Flyby benchmark? :)

[Demon Hunter]

I'm not surprised that people are having such good luck with OC'ing their video cards, seeing as how Apple underclocks their OEM cards in the first place...

Does this include Mobilty chipsets in the Powerbooks? That would make more sense than underclocking a desktop card. :confused:

Has anyone tried this with one of the new Powerbooks? Or is that GPU suicide?

[supergod]

Don't worry I take no offense. I'm just trying to show you that online dictionaries have one definition whereas the complete 20 set Oxford English dictionary has many many definitions for even the most common words. Well, at least I can be confident that overclocking my machine won't melt it (poor overclocked imacs!). Danke.

[broken_keyboard]

I'm not surprised that people are having such good luck with OC'ing their video cards, seeing as how Apple underclocks their OEM cards in the first place...

For example, my 9600XT is supposed to run at 500MHz CPU, 600MHz memory. It only runs at 400.5MHz CPU and for some strange reason, 621MHz memory.

I'll try turning my 9600XT into an actual 9600XT later... I will inform everyone of the results... ;)

It's the same with the 9800 Pro. The reference frequencies for this card are Proc: 378MHz, Mem: 337.5MHz but I just ran this program on my Apple OEM version and it shows Proc: 351MHz, Mem: 324MHz

[vraxtus]

It's the same with the 9800 Pro. The reference frequencies for this card are Proc: 378MHz, Mem: 337.5MHz but I just ran this program on my Apple OEM version and it shows Proc: 351MHz, Mem: 324MHz


Can you get me a link to these specs? I need to spec my 9800 Pro SE before I go and OC it. Thanks!

[Converted2Truth]

I get artifacts @ 9.88%/9.92% :( Oh well.

[invaLPsion]

Does this include Mobilty chipsets in the Powerbooks? That would make more sense than underclocking a desktop card. :confused:

Has anyone tried this with one of the new Powerbooks? Or is that GPU suicide?

Speeds on the Mobility Radeon 9700 CPU can safely range from 390MHz to 450MHz. Apple has the ones in the powerbooks running at 392MHz... :cool:

It may not be GPU suicide, but you could risk overheating your powerbook...

[dabirdwell]

In a Dual 867 MDD? It's older, but still ATI.?

[broken_keyboard]

Can you get me a link to these specs? I need to spec my 9800 Pro SE before I go and OC it. Thanks!

These are the official figures, but they round them slightly.
http://www.atitech.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/compare.html

For the exact values check out sites like ocfaq.com

[vraxtus]

In a Dual 867 MDD? It's older, but still ATI.?


Again, if you read the release notes page, it says all ATI cards are supported, even Rage128 cards...

bk - thx

[dabirdwell]

where it says what the safe limits for my card might be (Radeon 9000, RV250)

[oingoboingo]

Where can I find this DM-Antalus Flyby benchmark? :)

I used Santaduck Toolpak, a benchmarking program which will run pre-defined flybys or botmatches on any of the UT maps, with Low or High graphics detail, and will report detailed statistics at the end of the test.

http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18189

[oingoboingo]

Thanks for taking the time to make fun of my using the word shelf life on a forum. Just so you know, the definition of shelf life is not limited to use in a store (or on a shelf). It simply means the length of time in which a product remains suitable for use... or at least that's what the dictionary says. Now that that's out of the way, while a computer with a overclocked video card may not experience artifacts or overheat, is there any other kind of long term damage? I'm not particularly worried, just thought I should know.

Sorry, just messing around. Don't take offence. From what I've read, overclocking chips can have an effect on their lifespan, but this is the kind of reduction of lifespan that results in a chip lasting only 20 years instead of 30. It's more of a long term thing, and the general feeling is that hardware will become obsolete and be thrown away many times over before you will be hit by overclocking-induced lifespan reduction.

My personal feeling is that if you are conservative with your overclocking (ie: start by overclocking in small steps, back off when you start experiencing artefacts and/or instability) then you should be good. The cooling system in the PCI/AGP bay of the G5 should be able to adapt to any exrta heat produced (remember that the fan in that bay needs to be able to keep an AGP graphics card and up to 3 PCI/PCI-X cards cool simultaneously...I think it will cope with a single overclocked AGP card). Depending on how adventurous you are feeling, you could add extra cooling to your graphics card, like an active fan on your graphics card if it doesn't have one already, or RAM-sinks (passive heatsinks which attach to the VRAM modules). These things may help improve the efficiency of the cooling system and are commonly used in the PC world.

That's only my opinion. Apple will almost certainly not approve of video card overclocking. If you're worried about damaging your hardware or voiding your warranty, don't overclock at all. There is always an amount of risk involved, but in my opinion, some moderate overclocking probably isn't going to hurt too much.

[invaLPsion]

I am a little hesitant to overclock now that I almost screwed up my iMac G3 700MHz by simply clicking "stock frequencies." The screen went all green and flickery... weird...

[neonart]

Tried some Halo timedemos and here are my results:

(First is stock GPU and second at 10% over-clock)

Date / Time: 8/31/04 7:48:41 (0ms)
2000MHz, 2048MB
OSX\Applications\Halo\Halo -windowed -ip ... Frames=4700
Total Time=96.70s
Average frame rate=48.60fps
Below 5fps= 9% (time) 0% (frames) (9.657s spent in 11 frames)
Below 10fps= 10% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 15fps= 11% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 20fps= 14% (time) 1% (frames)
Below 25fps= 21% (time) 4% (frames)
Below 30fps= 25% (time) 7% (frames)
Below 40fps= 44% (time) 20% (frames)
Below 50fps= 57% (time) 32% (frames)
Below 60fps= 66% (time) 42% (frames)
###Sound Options###
Hardware Acceleration= No
Sound Quality= High
Environmental Sound= No
Sound Variety= High
###Video Options###
Resolution= 1280 x 960
Refresh rate= 0 Hz
Framerate throttle= No Vsync
Specular= No
Shadows= No
Decals= Yes
Particles= Off
Texture Quality= High

Date / Time: 8/31/04 7:51:31 (0ms)
2000MHz, 2048MB
OSX\Applications\Halo\Halo -windowed -ip ... Frames=4700
Total Time=84.03s
Average frame rate=55.94fps
Below 5fps= 4% (time) 0% (frames) (3.451s spent in 7 frames)
Below 10fps= 4% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 15fps= 5% (time) 0% (frames)
Below 20fps= 7% (time) 1% (frames)
Below 25fps= 13% (time) 3% (frames)
Below 30fps= 17% (time) 5% (frames)
Below 40fps= 33% (time) 15% (frames)
Below 50fps= 48% (time) 27% (frames)
Below 60fps= 61% (time) 39% (frames)
###Sound Options###
Hardware Acceleration= No
Sound Quality= High
Environmental Sound= No
Sound Variety= High
###Video Options###
Resolution= 1280 x 960
Refresh rate= 0 Hz
Framerate throttle= No Vsync
Specular= No
Shadows= No
Decals= Yes
Particles= Off
Texture Quality= High

So a 10% increase in GPU and video RAM gave a 15% increase in frame rate. UNFORTUNATELY, video artifacts and glitches were constantly present. I'll pass on this.
Good thing is my RV350 is running per spec with ATI's claims.

[Converted2Truth]

I've had two ATI cards that i've overclocked. The 9600 in my G5 and the 9800 in my peecee. I cannot overclock the 9600 in my G5 above 10% without artifacts and I cannot overclock my 9800 pro(with Arctic Ice Video card silencer!) more than 12% without artifacts. So, i just don't get how some of you can flash 9800 pros into XT without artifacts! Maybe i just have bad luck with my cards... or maybe it's the elevation in Wyoming... i don't know... but i can conclude from my own experience up here that ATI cards suck for OC'ing. How in the world are some of you overclocking your 9600pros 25-30% with stock cooling?

[neoelectronaut]

Think this'll work on an eMac?

Even more important, is it safe?

I'll all up for increasing performance, even if it's only 5%.

[Converted2Truth]

Think this'll work on an eMac?
It will work with anything above a Rage128 (so the site implies anyway).

[oingoboingo]

I've had two ATI cards that i've overclocked. The 9600 in my G5 and the 9800 in my peecee. I cannot overclock the 9600 in my G5 above 10% without artifacts and I cannot overclock my 9800 pro(with Arctic Ice Video card silencer!) more than 12% without artifacts. So, i just don't get how some of you can flash 9800 pros into XT without artifacts! Maybe i just have bad luck with my cards... or maybe it's the elevation in Wyoming... i don't know... but i can conclude from my own experience up here that ATI cards suck for OC'ing. How in the world are some of you overclocking your 9600pros 25-30% with stock cooling?

Is your 9600 in your dual 1.8GHz system a Pro or an XT? What are the stock RAM and core speeds of your card? The stock speeds of my Radeon 9600 Pro in my 1.6GHz G5 were reported as 364.5 MHz core and 294.75 MHz VRAM. From what I've read around the net on the PC side of things, the normal core speed for a Radeon 9600 Pro should be around 400MHz. If your stock clock speed is higher than mine, that might explain why you can't overclock it to as high a percentage...you're already ahead to begin with.

Other things which might explain the differences in overclockability...my Radeon 9600 Pro is a replacement card fitted by an Apple dealer about 6 months ago to fix the 'Black Screen of Death' problem that I had with my original Radeon 9600 Pro. Perhaps the cards which were issued as replacements use different quality RAM, or a slightly different PCB design. I will take a photo of my Radeon when I get home and post it here so people can compare. The other possible factor is that it is still relatively cool here in Sydney. The ambient temperature last night when I was doing the testing was probably around 16-17 degrees C, although I did thrash the hell out of the system for over an hour on UT2004, so you would think it would have heated up.

Of course, as with all overclocking, not all chips are created equal. Different batches of chips have different overclocking potentials. Maybe that's all the difference is due to.

[Converted2Truth]

Is your 9600 in your dual 1.8GHz system a Pro or an XT? What are the stock RAM and core speeds of your card? The stock speeds of my Radeon 9600 Pro in my 1.6GHz G5 were reported as 364.5 MHz core and 294.75 MHz VRAM. From what I've read around the net on the PC side of things, the normal core speed for a Radeon 9600 Pro should be around 400MHz. If your stock clock speed is higher than mine, that might explain why you can't overclock it to as high a percentage...you're already ahead to begin with.
Yeah, mine shows that it normally runs @ 364.50/294.75 and i get major artifacts once i turn it up 9.88%/9.92% so it runs @ 400.50/324.00

Ya know? I think i figured out why Apple underclocks all their cards... it's because they have to... they get the reject chips that throw artifacts at normal resolution...so they clock those down to where they run right and... well you get the point. For real though... why would they underclock all their cards? Mine won't even run at stock PC speeds! This is a piece of shhiittt ati card i've got... i'm tell'n ya...

[oingoboingo]

Yeah, mine shows that it normally runs @ 364.50/294.75 and i get major artifacts once i turn it up 9.88%/9.92% so it runs @ 400.50/324.00

Ya know? I think i figured out why Apple underclocks all their cards... it's because they have to... they get the reject chips that throw artifacts at normal resolution...so they clock those down to where they run right and... well you get the point. For real though... why would they underclock all their cards? Mine won't even run at stock PC speeds! This is a piece of shhiittt ati card i've got... i'm tell'n ya...

Yeah, it's pretty crap that the Radeon 9600 Pro that Apple ships has a 10% slower core clock speed than the run-of-the-mill PC equivalent...and then goes on to throw artefacts everywhere when clocked up to 'normal' speed. I thought the underclocking might be to do with the semi-passive cooling system that the G5 Radeon 9600 Pro uses (ie: heatsink only on the card, depends on the PCI bay fan to move air), but from what I'm seeing with my card at least, heat doesn't seem to be an issue at higher clock speeds.

And people wonder why Macs are generally so mediocre at games. First of all, Apple ships budget spec rubbish like the GeForce FX 5200 in G5s, and then when you upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro or 9800 Pro, they're underclocked from their PC equivalents. I wish I could understand Apple's hardware choices sometimes...

[MacsRgr8]

Got the same problem with my OEM Radeon 9800 (128 MB VRAM).

I can easily increase the Processor to miles above 10%, but if I increase the Memory by more than 12% I get artifacts.. Even in the Finder.

This is my typical setting:

[neoelectronaut]

I uninstalled the program but am considering re-installing it.

Where do you think a good stopping point would be?

[ChrisFromCanada]

Got the same problem with my OEM Radeon 9800 (128 MB VRAM).

I can easily increase the Processor to miles above 10%, but if I increase the Memory by more than 12% I get artifacts.. Even in the Finder.

This is my typical setting:

I am getting the same thing. It seems that the RAM is very sensitive.

[ChrisFromCanada]

I uninstalled the program but am considering re-installing it.

Where do you think a good stopping point would be?

I would go up in increments of 5% but the second you start seeing artifacts (random colours or blotches on the screen, you will know when you see it) set it to Stock frequencies then go up to where you last were safe.

[dabirdwell]

in the Dual 867 will handle a 20-30% increase in speed with no artifacts; only noticable change (other than faster Expose and slightly higher iTunes viz framerates) is an increase in fan activity, but then, I think this may be one of the "windtunnel" models. I can't decide how far to push it, but I really have no artifacting at these speeds.

[TDM21]

Now if they could come out with a program to overclock Apple's NVidia cards I would be happy. Although that would be computer suicide with my PB. The fans will kick on every once and a while when I run vizuals in iTunes.

[dabirdwell]

The Radeon 9600 can handle a good bit of overclocking also. I think I can tell that it gets hotter, but no artifacts at 20%+ Proc and Mem. I am happy with the standard graphics performance of the PowerBook, but it will be awesome to be able to crank up the speed when I want to run Motion and other graphics-intensive stuff.

Incidentally, the 1.25 will allow you to do a little work with Motion without too much waiting. I also noticed an appreciable speed-up in performance after the ATI overclock. I am only using 512 RAM, so I'm sure that slows me down a lot, but with an extra 15-20% video speed, I can play around no problem.

I have not done any projects yet, only getting familiar.

[oingoboingo]

The Radeon 9600 can handle a good bit of overclocking also. I think I can tell that it gets hotter, but no artifacts at 20%+ Proc and Mem. I am happy with the standard graphics performance of the PowerBook, but it will be awesome to be able to crank up the speed when I want to run Motion and other graphics-intensive stuff.

Incidentally, the 1.25 will allow you to do a little work with Motion without too much waiting. I also noticed an appreciable speed-up in performance after the ATI overclock. I am only using 512 RAM, so I'm sure that slows me down a lot, but with an extra 15-20% video speed, I can play around no problem.

I have not done any projects yet, only getting familiar.

Experiments with GPU/VRAM speed and Motion performance will be very interesting. There has been some debate on these forums recently over the impact that graphics speed will have on Motion. You are in an excellent position to be able to benchmark speedups which are soley dependent on graphics performance, independent of CPU, memory, disk and other factors. Look forward to seeing some reports of how it goes! :)