How do you eliminate artifacts?

I have my 9700 pro clocked to 360 core with one of these adhered to it http://www.overclockers.com/articles528/

at 365 mhz i get artifacts on certain textures. I'm positive the artifacts are gpu related. What can i do to clock it higher?
Voltmod?

Make sure that the heatsink is making proper contact with the core (like removing the shim guarantees good contact, if the bolts are tightend). That should really help you clock higher. Touch the back of the GPU and if its really hot, then that's a sign of poor contact.
If the contact is good and the back of the GPU isn't really hot, then a volt mod will probably help

either the cooling isnt sufficient (check the temps like The Coolest said) or you hit the wall of your chip, you may get a better OC with a voltmod though yes

why are you positive the artifacts are GPU related? are they white dots and snow and stuff? or texture corruption? (which is related to the RAM)

Jognt said:

either the cooling isnt sufficient (check the temps like The Coolest said) or you hit the wall of your chip, you may get a better OC with a voltmod though yes

why are you positive the artifacts are GPU related? are they white dots and snow and stuff? or texture corruption? (which is related to the RAM)

Click to expand...

If I turn down the gpu speed the artifacts reduce or go away. I can only notice the artifacts in the last test of 3dmark01 and on a certain level in urban terror 3 (q3 mod). It's just white dots that I see.

The memory is also running at default speed. If the artifacts are memory related I'm going to throw this Sapphire POS out the window.


Thanks for the tips fellas

Ya, a voltmod will help. It is fun watching 3dmark 2001 go through with lots of artifacts and then you turn up the voltage while it is running and they go away!

GPUs, like everything else, are prone to the fundamental relationship laws of overclocking
D ).

Voltage = More Stability and more Heat/Potential for Damage
Heat = Less Stability and more Potential for Damage
Good Cooling = Less Heat (and as such, more Stability)
Speed = More Fun, More Heat (and as such, less Stability)

So, you're looking at better cooling, or more voltage, preferably both .

Sometimes a piece of hardware is simply maxed out, and further gains are seemingly unnatainable without sub-zero cooling and ridiculous amounts of voltage. A point of diminishing return is always reached sooner or later, where the gains don't justify the expense in voltage or cooling - your card might simply have reached it's wall with the cooling that you have - a volt modification won't do much good if your core is already running really hot (not saying that yours neccessarily is). In fact, more voltage can be a detrimental thing in that it contributes to your heat a great deal.