Legit Reviews

Well, my lovely x1800xl gets me 9050 in 3dmark 05 with a mild overclock of 577 on the core (1.125 V) and 738/1476 on the memory (2.225 V). It's all dandy and stable... BUT

When I up the voltage to try and get above 577, the comp freezes while doing 3D of any sort. Is there some process (besides ATI Smart or ATI Poller) that isn't allowing me to increase the voltage past 1.125 effectively? I'm hoping that its not a core thing... any ideas or opinions? Idk... if I can get my core above 600 I'm looking at an easy 9500 or 9600... : /

AMD Athlon 3700 @ 2640 gHz (1.550v)
2GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-6 (2x512MB)
Shuttle SN25P nForce4 Ultra
350 Watt SilentX PSU
Connect3D X1800XL @ 577 (1.125v), 1476 (2.225v)
Sony DRU720A DVD +/- Burner
MAxtor Maxxline 300GB SATA HD
MAG Innovision 19" LCD Monitor
Logitech 5300e 5.1 System

Are you setting the fan speed to 100%? It may be getting too hot once you up the voltage.

Nah thats the thing... I have the zalman gpu fan at 3500 rpm all the time 100 percent...

My problem is that, even at idle temps of 50 or 48... the core still freezes when it hits 65 C.... it freezes at 63-65 C at 580 or above, but...
when it gets as hot as 70 C at 577 everything stays stable and fine... its just that darn voltage that's baffling me...

i always had the problem where when i used any other program besides ati tool my computer would freeze when i even looked at the voltages. LOL You might want to try all the software possibilities, and if you havent tried ati tool, give it a shot

I am using atitool... thats all i ever use....

hmmmmm...... i really dont know then. you are in the right place to ask though.

Sometimes you just get a core that doesn't like to be O/C'd... Keep trying different programs and voltages, but that might be the case.

I am thinking either Apoptosis' thought, or your power supply may not be up to the challenge. You're asking a lot out of a 350W PSU.
Very well may be enough, but that would be my first test/check. Used to be my main bottle neck for OCing my system; caused BSODs at really random times, and lack of MHz/GHz when voltage was set high. then switched out my Antec TruePower 300 to an Antec TruePower 550, and all those problems went away.

Unfortunately, either problem (non-OCing GPU, or too small of a PSU) is hard to determine unless you have lots of extra hardware available to you. :-/

Hope this is of some help...

Very good point on the PSU psaus420! Welcome to the Forums! I'm having the same issue here on a test bench with some PSU's not being enough for current cards.