ATITool is crap!!

OK, I have a Radeon 9000 64MB DDR, non-pro, with a Vantec cooler on it. I run ATITool to find out my maximum core speed and RAM speed. My defaults are 250 MHz for the core and 200(400) MHz for the RAM. First I do the core. It climbs and climbs, higher than I've ever overclocked it before. I watch in amazement as it passes 300 MHz, which I was SURE would produce artifacts. But no, nothing. I finally begin seeing artifacts at around 320 MHz, so ATITool starts backing down. It goes back down to 250, and still there are artifacts. 200 comes and goes, with just as many artifacts as 320! I finally got sick of waiting after about 30 mins, and aborted, still seeing artifacts with my core UNDERclocked to less than 100 MHz!!! I reboot, which takes maybe 20 seconds, tops, and run ATITool again. This time I stop it after 285, and have not seen an artifact since.

Next, I do the same thing with the RAM. It climbs to about 240, which is WAY higher than it should be capable of, before producing any artifacts. Sure enough, the same crap happens again, even with the RAM running below stock specs. I reboot, fire up Powerstrip, and change back to 285/215, and start running 3DMark01. Absolutely nothing wrong, again, after rebooting.

Is this normal? Has anyone else had a similar experience? I can understand the card still being a little hot from being run so high, even with the cooling, but after 30 mins, running below stock specs, I think that little ******* has cooled down plenty. ATITool seems to think there is still a problem, though. This program is garbage as far as I'm concerned. With as long as it took, I could have manually adjusted my clocks and tested them just as fast. And it doesn't take me 4 seconds after an artifact appears to realize that it's there, unlike ATITools. What do you guys think about ATITools? Is it garbage, or am I doing something wrong here that I don't know about?

im pretty sure the method of testing for artifacts with ATI tool its crap.... it is nice to OC with but the find max core/mem thing doesnt work for **** for me either(9800 pro)

I've found ATItool works great, The biggest things to remember are you need to set the ratios for how far the memory goes down while the core goes up. Which version are you using? That might explain a little.

Finally instead of using the max core just increase the speed yourself and use the scan for artifacts instead its faster and just as effective.

With that card, your probably better off just doing the manual OC. Sounds like there may be a bug with your card & ATI Tool. I'm sure ATI Tool & ATI 9000's don't get tested to much. I think a lot of people just use ATI Tool to get a general idea of what their card OC's to & go from there. I personally love the temp monitor feature for my XT that feeds to MBM. But thats the only thing I like about it, lol.

I have ATITool 0.0.23, which I think is the most recent version. I was raising the core only when I tested it; the memory stayed right around 200 MHz. Powerstrip gives me WAY more control than ATITools does. The only thing it lacks that ATITools has is the max core/RAM testers, which don't seem to work worth a crap anyways. I think I'm just going to stop using ATITools altogether.

I wouldn't bash something just because you can't get it to work right....lol

I've used it on my 9800pro and my x800xt-pe, and it's worked great. I can usually go higher in benchmarks then what it finds, but just barely.

You also have to take into account that it is a free program, done in the spare time of someone. It's always going to have some bugs, that's why it's 0.0.23.........

The reason it keeps turning it down is because sometimes when artifacts appear, they don't go away til u reboot. This time, set a limit on it, right before it started artifacting before, and u should be all good......

ATI TOOL PWNS U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!one11111oneoneone!!!!

There were some issues on certain non-DX9 cards under specific driver versions that caused it to not clear artifacts after they occurred. I think the latest version has fixed that issue, so long as you're on a version of drivers that's pretty recent.

I've never had a single issue with ATI Tool, from my modded 9500np, 9800np, modded 9800Pro, and my modded X800Pro Vivo. But I also keep current with my drivers and my version of ATI Tool...

I have a Radeon 9000 AIW. Stock clocks are 275/270. Overclocked it will do 333/310. I too had a problem with ATItool ver 0.23 finding the highest stable overclock but using ATI Tray Tool, the process worked without a flaw. It must be something with older cards and ATItool. I am using Catalyst 4.6 drivers. Later catalyst versions do not work very well with this card.
In any case, I suggest you use ATItray tool to OC the 9000.

I see that Catalys 5.1 is now out. Should I try that, or stay away from it?

ATiTool is not particularly useful in it's "find max overclock" feature; it consistantly finds maximum overclocks somewhat higher than will actually run clean through stressful benchmarking and gaming.

I sometimes use ATiTool to overclock my card, but never use the "find maximum overclock" feature.

The 3DMark2001SE Nature test looped is also a much more thorough video card stess tester then ATiTool, you are better off testing out your overclock with the nature test, instead of the ATiTool artifact detecter.

I see that Catalys 5.1 is now out. Should I try that, or stay away from it?

Click to expand...

Drivers are largely up to you, I would give the 5.1s a whirl, and see if you like them

It seems that ATITool either works for some cards, or dosen't work. Apparently your card falls into the latter category.

Ever since ATITool first came out there have been artifact scanning issues. It wasn't so much that the artifact scanning didn't work, or that it couldn't detect artifacts, but that for some reason it was unable to clear the artifacts when they were produced. This leads into an "infinite downclock" state like you experienced. Through the versions it's gotten better at clearing the artifacts, but after this "bug" has been around for so long I'm less and less tempted to believe that it's ATITool being the problem (instead, being a bug of some kind in the drivers or core/mem reset mechanism).

There have been a number of people who have gotten ATITool to work perfectly, so I would hardly call it crap (then again, since I'm one of the people for whom it has always nearly perfectly worked for, I'm probably biased...). If ATITool isn't your thing, there are many other programs out there that can overclock, and even one other one that can scan for artifacts (though it'd be a tad more suspect of it's scanning because of what it does). The program is ATI Tray Tools if you're still interested in the whole scanning concept.

JigPu

It doesn't work for me either. It finds artifacts all the time on my card. I never see artifacts in games.

Even though I am upgrading, I have used ATitool to find my clocks on a 9200AW. I pay attention to what is going by and then find when it does start to artifact.
That gives me an idea how high to go, with I got. Yes, it is not perfect, but is every chipset? Scanning for highest clock is a trial and error. trying a free proggy is also trial and error, and as an O/C'er you got to use common knowledge to obtain the potential out of all your chips.

I always use ati tool to find max oc's, then run 3d2k1 nature repeat 10 times, and watch for artifacts.

And I either up the oc or lower it depending on what I see

Something of importance - anyone and everyone who is having issues getting ATiTool to work properly, should be emailing W1zzard (the author, his bug-reporting email adress is included with the software) about their problem, including the type/manufacturer of graphics card that they use.

In order for the software to improve and become less-buggy, user feedback and bug reporting is am absolute neccessity.

I find it unlikely that W1zzard has access to every single ATi video card ever produced; as such he can hardly be expected to produce a perfect video card utility, without solid feedback from all the card owners who have problems with his software.


Alteratively, bugs can be reported at the official ATiTool forums: http://forums.techpowerup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

ATITOOL PWNZ ALL!!!!!!!111oneoneoneone!!!111!!!one!1!!!!111!!!oneoneone(xclamationmark)
lol iv never had a prob with it when overclocking my faithful 9600XT...

I think it's an interesting tool to check out, but in the end it's not very useful for me.

Works perfectly in finding where abouts my max clocks are. Other than that, I guess you really do need to do the trial and error way if you're looking for your max oc's.

There were some bugs along the way in the beta's but as bugs appeared, W1zzard fixed them and such. It's a very nice little program imo.

I've never had an issue with ATItool, but I got really common chipset though. 9200AIW(still just a 9200). With the less common chipsets follow felinusz advice. That might/will give the program more depth, and the next guy may have better luck.

lol, now I am having a problem w/ it....

Where I used to be able to change my Cat AI, now it greyed out! I went to 5.01 and now back to 4.12 and still greyed out.

I've also uninstalled and reinstalled it like 5 times....