Safe overclock for my Radeon 9600pro?

[siicogamer]

Hi all,

I have and old 9600pro and I'm wondering what a safe overclock would be.
ATM, I have it clocked at 424.80mhz core clock and 214.20 Memory clock Using Ati Tool.
The max for mem was like 230 and max for core 450.

Is this safe for my card? I'm getting artifacts on the screen rarely on images on the web but im unsure if this is normal?
Another person recommended that i lower the clocks which i did, but still artifacts. Even if i overclock a tiny bit from my stock clocks it still has artifacts(remember i said rarely).

Also any other way i can push this card to better clocks?
I don't know anything about changing the voltages of the care or how to volt mod.

Thanks in advance

[sasamkd]

I guess it's up to the sample you have. I have Inno3D Radeon 9550 (gpu/ram 250/200MHz) with passive cooling. And as I know the core is same for 9550/9600/9600pro, just the speeds are different. I attached 8cm case fan and managed to push the card to 500 MHz for the gpu, and 227MHz for the memory and it is still working perfectly after all these years. I didn't try to go any higher with the gpu speed. I think 100% overclock is enough. Memory limit was 227. Didn't touch any voltages or something else.
Also I flashed the BIOS with one from Sapphire 9600, but didn't notice any changes so I returned the original BIOS.

[siicogamer]

i had a 9550pro and i overclocked it to the same clocks you did, it was fine for about 4 years then BOOM it died.
But i didn't have any fans. Did u have a vga fan on your radeon?

[sasamkd]

Yes I attached 8 cm fan to the graphic card.
And wouldn't mind if the card goes BOOM. Planning to buy new pc soon. ;)

[siicogamer]

hOLY CRAP hows that even possible? on my 9550 i only had a stock heatsink no fan. And the heatsink was smaller than 8cm, u musta crammed that fan on.. how did you do it?

[sasamkd]

You probably had 9550 with 64bit memory bus. Mine was 128 bit, and the heat sink was just above 8 sm. So, fitted nicely.