GPU Clock UP/3DMark scores down

[typhoonmike]

Any clue why this happens? I started off raising just my memory clock. Got it at 250 right now with no problems. My GPU clock is at 205 and I get 3DMark2000 scores of around 4950. If I raise my GPU clock to 210 my scores drop to about 4880. I don't understand it.

Btw I'm using a WinFast Geforce II GTS Pro 64MB DDR.

[Morphoius]

You restarting before testing, correct?

[typhoonmike]

Yeppers. At first I thought I was just mistaken. So I went back and double checked. Sure enough when I raised the GPU clock from 205 to 210 my score went down. Weird.

[Violator]

That's the memory bandwith on the card slowing you down, you're trying to force more info through by upping the core and the memory can't push it through quick enough. It's a common problem with Geforce2s.

[typhoonmike]

But I've already raised the memory clock by 50.

[Violator]

It's bandwidth, not memory speed that's holding you back, the Geforce and Geforce 2 are memory bandwidth limited at higher speeds, meaning that overclocking is effective to a point but after that you're bottlenecking the card.

[Karsta]

Violator - What you say doesn't make sense to me.

When my GF2 GTS was still working I got 7246 in 3D Mark 2000 with 222/370 MHz settings on GF2 (and P3@866). With default 200/333 it would have been far less.
With GF2 one doesn't achieve so much by o/cing the gpu as o/cing the memory. Of course pushing both as high as possible gives the best result.
As I reached the top of my GF2, 3D Mark results started to decrease before the speeds it gave error messages or visible defects.
I also noticed that after applying an overclock I had to reboot - otherwise performance would be bad (isn't the case now with GF3).

[typhoonmike]

Heh. Well decided to start trying to get my Celeron 900 to get to 1200. Got it up to 1200 at 133FSB and ran 3DMark and my score dropped to 4554. Grrrr. So either I run my 900@1200 and have my vid card a bit slower or run my 900@1125 and break the 5000 with 3DMark. Actually I'm sure I won't notice a difference with either one but I would like to have my 900 at 1200. Course actually I can't keep it stable at 1200. Not exactly sure why. Seems stable right now at 1175 though. Oh well.