OCing a stock passively cooled 9600np

[jlin453]

This is a BBA 9600np that I got refurbished from newegg for my dad's computer. It uses the smallish passive heatsink. I'm running atitool now to find its max but was wondering how "safe" it is to keep the passive heatsink on there? Atitool isn't finished yet, but so far it's at 450mhz on the core with no errors.

[M4D]

I would say it's safe enough if it's not causing errors or any
artifacts at all ?

But i would either change the cooling or @ the very least add a fan
to the cooling setup :D ...

Theres lots of different cooling out for gpu's have a look around the forums
for some ideas and if you feel you need to get more out of the
graphics card or just want to add some better cooling for peace of mind
then im sure everyone here wouldnt mind helping you out with
any further questions ;) ...

[jlin453]

Yeah I'm familiar with the types of cooling. I even have a spare zalman vga heatpipe that I COULD put on this card but don't know if I want to. I'm still having problems overclocking this card so I guess I'll see. Using ATItool or radclocker, the overclock doesn't seem to stay. It just goes back to default speeds. Gotta search some more. =/

[M4D]

I had a sapphire 9000 :D that was "clock locked" ?
i believe is the right term ? You might need to flash to a better
bios maybe, If thats @ all possible, Also you should try using
a program called rthdribl to test for artifacts as i know off hand
that it detects artifacts much better than any other program i've used ...

Good luck with it though, And whatever you decide post some more info :D Im always here ...

[jlin453]

Well after reading past posts, I've tried disabling the vpu recover which didnt work, and tried dlding the latest omega driver and it didn't work neither. I don't know if I want to resort to using old old omega drivers (pre 3.4 was it?) Sigh.. still googling

[Mr.Radar]

Do you mean it goes back to default speeds when you reboot or after you exit ATITool/other OC prog? It should go back to default speeds after a reboot. That's normal.

[jlin453]

No, I read it somewhere that when you set the OC speeds it's set and done but once you open a full screen 3d application it reverts back to stock speeds. ATI did this so places wouldnt OC the card and sell it as a higher card :(

[jlin453]

Just as an update in case others have this problem, I flashed to a Powercooler 9600Pro bios and everything works fine now. Default speeds are 400/200 and I can manually OC the speeds while keeping it.

I picked this bios because I found out through ATItool that these particular samsung memory chips can't handle more than 240mhz. The chips themselves are really hot so I'll try putting heatsinks on them. The Powercooler bios was the only one that had a default memory speed below 240, so I went with that.

Horray for google, and horray for w1zzard his tutorial on another forum, and horray for their bios collection :D :D :D