This is for everyone who wants to know how to overclock an ATI Mobility Card.
Rules of overclocking
Rule 1: Don’t overclock on battery power. This is what will happen:
Rule 2: Just cause someone else can clock at that high doesn’t mean you can. No two pieces of equipment will overclock the same. Don’t use mine or anyone elses settings for overclocking, as there is a good chance it will not work.
Rule 3: Don’t complain about how you trashed your system by overclocking it. I’m not making any guaranties, and no one else will. You overclock at your own health’s risk and your computers risk.
Rule 4: Never set an overclocking program to change the clocks at start up. This will cause problems when you boot up on battery power, causing experiences like above. Also, never overclock for normal 2D use. It just isn’t a very smart thing to do.
Ok, now things to download:
Omega modified drivers - http://www.omegadrivers.net
Do not install, just download!
Driver Cleaner - http://www.drivercleaner.net/dc.htm
Install and wait for more instructions.
ATI Tool - http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/235
Will find clock maxes more efficently.
I9kfangui - http://www.mckenziedev.com/index.php...tory&Itemid=26
Don’t forget the Fanio driver!
3DMark05, 3DMark03, 3DMark2001SE - http://www.futuremark.com
Benchmarking (05) and stress testing (all).
Run 3DMark05 for a baseline.
Uninstall the original drivers. Go to Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs. Uninstall everything that has the name ATI with it. ATI Control Panel, ATI Drivers, ect.
Restart, and before Windows loads, start pressing the F8 key. You will get a menu that will ask you how you want to start Windows. Start it up in safe mode. Make sure that when you are asked if you want to restart and use System Restore or Continue Using Safe Mode, that you chose to run Safe Mode, and not restart. It will then find your graphics card, and the Add New Hardware menu will display. Click cancel. Now, start up driver cleaner and run it for ATI drivers, then restart into regular Windows.
Install the Omega drivers. Don’t worry about Fastwrites and stuff like that. Don't install Multires, but do install ATI Tray Tools.
We need to get the drivers settings correct. To do this, right click on the desktop>properties, Go to the settings tab, and choose advanced.
-Click on VPU Recover, and make sure Enable VPU Recover is enabled, and that the error reporting is not checked. VPU Recover will reset your clocks if you overclock to high and you start to loose control.
-Click on Powerplay, make sure it’s enabled, and check the settings. AC should be Optimal Performance, and all battery settings should be on Optimal Battery Life. Also, check Allow automatic color depth reduction.
-Go to displays, and open up panel settings. Make sure Scale Image is checked, and that it says "Expand while maintaining aspect ratio." Click ok however many times it takes to close all the boxes.
Run 3DMark05 again too see how much the Omegas helped.
**I installed Dell's drivers after I had uninstalled them and reinstalled Omega's and back several times, and it seems to have boosted the score from the normal -1000 by 400 points.
Now for the overclocking part.
Start>All Programs>ATI Tool>ATI Tool
Click find max core and let it run. ATI Tool will scan for artifacts, let it heat up, and then raise the clocks. When it gets high enough to artifact, it will start lowering the clocks until it stops artifacting. When it has run for a while without artifacts, you have got your max. Write it down, and repeat the process for the memory. Once you have found both maxes, set ‘em and stress ‘em.
-Note: Do not pre overclock the cards, as it will mess the card up. Start from the bottom, as it lets the card warm up to its maxium heat level (the more hot a card is, the greater the chance of an artifact) allowing you to get a 100% stable overclock.
For stress testing, there are several ways you can go about this. The first and most commonly used is to just click “Scan for Artifacts” under ATI Tools and let it run for 4 hours (240 minutes.) Another way to stress test is to play F.E.A.R. with some high settings for an hour or two. Another way to stress is to run 3DMark05, 3DMark03, or 3DMark2001SE with custom settings. 05 and 03 versions require you to buy the Pro license to do this, but 2001 or earlier don’t need it. Have your res be maxed out, choose the game tests, and have it loop. Loop for an hour or so and see if you get any artifacts.
Core artifacts look like this:
Memory artifacts look like this:
If you have artifacts, you will need to lower your clocks.
Use i9kfangui to monitor temps. The highest I have ever gotten under stress was below 60. If you think you have problems with over heating, then you should think of opening your computer up and cleaning the fans. If that doesn’t help your heat issue, you can do the i6000 heatmod described here: http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=127677 Only do this if you are comfortable with the possibility of wrecking your graphics card.
Now after all the stressing and making sure you have the most stable clocks you can have, run a new 3DMark and look at your improvement!
Note that I am using Radlinker, instead of ATI Tools. See below.
Congrats! You now have a overclocked ATI card! Enjoy your extra performance!
If you run into any problems, feel free to contact me or one of the other great guys around here. We will be happy to help you out anytime!
Tips and tricks:
-Use profiles in ATI Tray Tools. Make a default one, and the overclocked one.
-Use hotkeys. Set hotkeys for the two profiles, set hotkeys for the screenshot-taker, for the On Screen Display, etc.
-To speed up start up, set ATI Tray Tools to not load at start up, and give it a hotkey in Windows.
-Set your 3D settings!
-Change the Direct3D settings to:
Anti-Aliasing: Application Controlled
Adaptive anti-aliasing: Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering: Aplication Controlled
Enable High Quality AF: Disabled
Texture Preference: High Quality
MipMap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait For Vertical Sync: Always off
TRUFORM: Always Off
Support DXT texture format: Enabled
Support Bump Mapping: Enabled
Alternate Pixel Centers: Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering Optimization: Enabled (disable if you get errors)
Tilinear Filtering Optimization: Enabled (disable if you get errors)
Temporal AA: Disabled
Catalyst A.I.: High
Flip Quene Size: ??? Undefined
Smart Shader: Purely cosmetic. No effect.
Texture LOD Adjustment: 0. It's a really weird setting that screws things up horibly.
-For OpenGL:
Anti-Aliasing: Application Controlled
Anisotropic Filtering: Aplication Controlled
Enable High Quality AF: Disabled
Texture Preference: High Quality
MipMap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait For Vertical Sync: Always off
TRUFORM: Always Off
Triple Buffering: Disabled
Force Z Buffer Depth: Disabled
Temporal AA: Disabled
Catalyst A.I.: High
Smart Shader: Purely cosmetic. No effect.
-Tweak the settings!
-Standard Tweaks:
Override Pixel Shader Version: Disable Override for normal things. Use 1.x for performance increase.
Override Vertex Shader Version: Disable Override for normal things. Use 1.x for performance increase.
Optimize Pixel Shader Code: Enable
Geometry Instancing: Enable, disable if you get errors. GI helps in situations where there are lots of one object, and can help render those objects faster.
Force Mip-Map Filter: ??? Disable
Z Compression: Default
Fast Z Clear Enable: ??? Enable
Z Mask Enable: ??? Enable
Z Top Disable: ??? Disable
VPU Recover: Enable
Disable DMA COpy: ??? Disable
Disable Block Write: ??? Disable
WMV Acceleration: ??? Enable
-Advanced Tweaks
-Advanced D3D Tweaks:
Fog: Disable for performance and quality
Export W Buffer: Disable for performance, Enable for Quality
Fast Color Clear: ??? Enable
VolTxEnable: Enable for performance
Color Compression: ??? Enable
Export MipMap Cube Maps: ??? No Value
Export Signed Vol Textures: ??? No Value
Line AA Enabled: Disable for performance, Enable for quality. Exanple
Allow Macro Volume Textures: ??? No Value
Force Compresssed Stencil Buffer: ??? Enable
Constant Compare Enable: ??? No Value
Support For Non power of two size textures: ??? Enable
High Order Surface Support: Not sure if these work, but disable for performance anyways
Tiling Settings: Enable all of theses to allow better memory management
Don't mess with anything else, as they are only for troubleshooting.
-Tweak your colors! Either do this from the driver panel, or have it load with ATI Tray Tools. Do a Google for some monitor adjustment pictures, and find one that has a full scale of black to white brightness bars. Lower your brightness until the two blacks are about the same, and raise your contrast until the two whites are about the same. Keep plaing with those until both extremes are almost the same. Then, set gamma for red to be 1.00, green to be 0.90, and blue to be 0.85. Adjust if you feel like it.
-Make use of the profiles in i9kfangui! Set the gaming one to have all fans on all the time (note, the i6000 only has one fan, so don't worry if it says there are problems with fan 2) and set another profile for normal usage. Autostart it, and your done!
-Undervolt your CPU! Don't be afraid of this, as it has plenty of benifits if you do it right. Visit the guide in the "Guides" section of this forum to learn about this.
-Use the OSD (On Screen Display) to show your FPS, and it can also tell you some information such as your current clocks, how much memory you are using, and what may be even more important is that it can show the time! Great if you have problems getting enough sleep while gaming. Give them some hotkeys, so you can flash them whenever you want.
-General Option settings!
Load with windows: User preference
Swap mouse buttons for tray menus: User preference
Use new Apply 3D settings mode: ??? Enable
Disable low level color correction: Enable if you use ATT color correction, other wise disable it.
Disable confirmation on rotation: User preference
Use skinned menu: ??? Enable
Reset clocks on exit: User preference
Reset clocks before suspend mode: User preference
Aggressive 3D detection: ??? Enable
Show Temperature in Fahrenheit: User preference
Enable ATT Shared Memory: ??? Enable
Update interval: 1 second
Use Limits for overclocking: Enable, user preference (recomend 60% overclock, 80% downclock)
Do not ask for refresh rate: User preference
Always select maximum refresh rate: User preference
Do not wait 10 seconds before changing resolution: User preference
Audio settings are based on user preference.
ScreenShots settings are also user preference.
Note: I used to use ATI Tray Tools, but it screwed up my games. Then I used Radlinker with no problems, until I tried to use ATT again, but by downloading from Guru of 3D, rather than using the Omega included one. If you have problems using that, then use one of these other programs:
Radlinker – http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942
A great program that doesn't bloat the system tray! I used this program for a long time and didn't mind it at all.
Powerstrip – http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm
I’ve used this before, and didn’t like it because it seemed to limit my overclock.
Notebook Hardware Control – http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm
A popular multi function program. It overclocks your ATI card, undervolts your CPU, monitors temps, and more. Personaly, I don’t like this either.
Rules of overclocking
Rule 1: Don’t overclock on battery power. This is what will happen:
Rule 2: Just cause someone else can clock at that high doesn’t mean you can. No two pieces of equipment will overclock the same. Don’t use mine or anyone elses settings for overclocking, as there is a good chance it will not work.
Rule 3: Don’t complain about how you trashed your system by overclocking it. I’m not making any guaranties, and no one else will. You overclock at your own health’s risk and your computers risk.
Rule 4: Never set an overclocking program to change the clocks at start up. This will cause problems when you boot up on battery power, causing experiences like above. Also, never overclock for normal 2D use. It just isn’t a very smart thing to do.
Ok, now things to download:
Omega modified drivers - http://www.omegadrivers.net
Do not install, just download!
Driver Cleaner - http://www.drivercleaner.net/dc.htm
Install and wait for more instructions.
ATI Tool - http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/235
Will find clock maxes more efficently.
I9kfangui - http://www.mckenziedev.com/index.php...tory&Itemid=26
Don’t forget the Fanio driver!
3DMark05, 3DMark03, 3DMark2001SE - http://www.futuremark.com
Benchmarking (05) and stress testing (all).
Run 3DMark05 for a baseline.
Uninstall the original drivers. Go to Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs. Uninstall everything that has the name ATI with it. ATI Control Panel, ATI Drivers, ect.
Restart, and before Windows loads, start pressing the F8 key. You will get a menu that will ask you how you want to start Windows. Start it up in safe mode. Make sure that when you are asked if you want to restart and use System Restore or Continue Using Safe Mode, that you chose to run Safe Mode, and not restart. It will then find your graphics card, and the Add New Hardware menu will display. Click cancel. Now, start up driver cleaner and run it for ATI drivers, then restart into regular Windows.
Install the Omega drivers. Don’t worry about Fastwrites and stuff like that. Don't install Multires, but do install ATI Tray Tools.
We need to get the drivers settings correct. To do this, right click on the desktop>properties, Go to the settings tab, and choose advanced.
-Click on VPU Recover, and make sure Enable VPU Recover is enabled, and that the error reporting is not checked. VPU Recover will reset your clocks if you overclock to high and you start to loose control.
-Click on Powerplay, make sure it’s enabled, and check the settings. AC should be Optimal Performance, and all battery settings should be on Optimal Battery Life. Also, check Allow automatic color depth reduction.
-Go to displays, and open up panel settings. Make sure Scale Image is checked, and that it says "Expand while maintaining aspect ratio." Click ok however many times it takes to close all the boxes.
Run 3DMark05 again too see how much the Omegas helped.
**I installed Dell's drivers after I had uninstalled them and reinstalled Omega's and back several times, and it seems to have boosted the score from the normal -1000 by 400 points.
Now for the overclocking part.
Start>All Programs>ATI Tool>ATI Tool
Click find max core and let it run. ATI Tool will scan for artifacts, let it heat up, and then raise the clocks. When it gets high enough to artifact, it will start lowering the clocks until it stops artifacting. When it has run for a while without artifacts, you have got your max. Write it down, and repeat the process for the memory. Once you have found both maxes, set ‘em and stress ‘em.
-Note: Do not pre overclock the cards, as it will mess the card up. Start from the bottom, as it lets the card warm up to its maxium heat level (the more hot a card is, the greater the chance of an artifact) allowing you to get a 100% stable overclock.
For stress testing, there are several ways you can go about this. The first and most commonly used is to just click “Scan for Artifacts” under ATI Tools and let it run for 4 hours (240 minutes.) Another way to stress test is to play F.E.A.R. with some high settings for an hour or two. Another way to stress is to run 3DMark05, 3DMark03, or 3DMark2001SE with custom settings. 05 and 03 versions require you to buy the Pro license to do this, but 2001 or earlier don’t need it. Have your res be maxed out, choose the game tests, and have it loop. Loop for an hour or so and see if you get any artifacts.
Core artifacts look like this:
Memory artifacts look like this:
If you have artifacts, you will need to lower your clocks.
Use i9kfangui to monitor temps. The highest I have ever gotten under stress was below 60. If you think you have problems with over heating, then you should think of opening your computer up and cleaning the fans. If that doesn’t help your heat issue, you can do the i6000 heatmod described here: http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=127677 Only do this if you are comfortable with the possibility of wrecking your graphics card.
Now after all the stressing and making sure you have the most stable clocks you can have, run a new 3DMark and look at your improvement!
Note that I am using Radlinker, instead of ATI Tools. See below.
Congrats! You now have a overclocked ATI card! Enjoy your extra performance!
If you run into any problems, feel free to contact me or one of the other great guys around here. We will be happy to help you out anytime!
Tips and tricks:
-Use profiles in ATI Tray Tools. Make a default one, and the overclocked one.
-Use hotkeys. Set hotkeys for the two profiles, set hotkeys for the screenshot-taker, for the On Screen Display, etc.
-To speed up start up, set ATI Tray Tools to not load at start up, and give it a hotkey in Windows.
-Set your 3D settings!
-Change the Direct3D settings to:
Anti-Aliasing: Application Controlled
Adaptive anti-aliasing: Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering: Aplication Controlled
Enable High Quality AF: Disabled
Texture Preference: High Quality
MipMap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait For Vertical Sync: Always off
TRUFORM: Always Off
Support DXT texture format: Enabled
Support Bump Mapping: Enabled
Alternate Pixel Centers: Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering Optimization: Enabled (disable if you get errors)
Tilinear Filtering Optimization: Enabled (disable if you get errors)
Temporal AA: Disabled
Catalyst A.I.: High
Flip Quene Size: ??? Undefined
Smart Shader: Purely cosmetic. No effect.
Texture LOD Adjustment: 0. It's a really weird setting that screws things up horibly.
-For OpenGL:
Anti-Aliasing: Application Controlled
Anisotropic Filtering: Aplication Controlled
Enable High Quality AF: Disabled
Texture Preference: High Quality
MipMap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait For Vertical Sync: Always off
TRUFORM: Always Off
Triple Buffering: Disabled
Force Z Buffer Depth: Disabled
Temporal AA: Disabled
Catalyst A.I.: High
Smart Shader: Purely cosmetic. No effect.
-Tweak the settings!
-Standard Tweaks:
Override Pixel Shader Version: Disable Override for normal things. Use 1.x for performance increase.
Override Vertex Shader Version: Disable Override for normal things. Use 1.x for performance increase.
Optimize Pixel Shader Code: Enable
Geometry Instancing: Enable, disable if you get errors. GI helps in situations where there are lots of one object, and can help render those objects faster.
Force Mip-Map Filter: ??? Disable
Z Compression: Default
Fast Z Clear Enable: ??? Enable
Z Mask Enable: ??? Enable
Z Top Disable: ??? Disable
VPU Recover: Enable
Disable DMA COpy: ??? Disable
Disable Block Write: ??? Disable
WMV Acceleration: ??? Enable
-Advanced Tweaks
-Advanced D3D Tweaks:
Fog: Disable for performance and quality
Export W Buffer: Disable for performance, Enable for Quality
Fast Color Clear: ??? Enable
VolTxEnable: Enable for performance
Color Compression: ??? Enable
Export MipMap Cube Maps: ??? No Value
Export Signed Vol Textures: ??? No Value
Line AA Enabled: Disable for performance, Enable for quality. Exanple
Allow Macro Volume Textures: ??? No Value
Force Compresssed Stencil Buffer: ??? Enable
Constant Compare Enable: ??? No Value
Support For Non power of two size textures: ??? Enable
High Order Surface Support: Not sure if these work, but disable for performance anyways
Tiling Settings: Enable all of theses to allow better memory management
Don't mess with anything else, as they are only for troubleshooting.
-Tweak your colors! Either do this from the driver panel, or have it load with ATI Tray Tools. Do a Google for some monitor adjustment pictures, and find one that has a full scale of black to white brightness bars. Lower your brightness until the two blacks are about the same, and raise your contrast until the two whites are about the same. Keep plaing with those until both extremes are almost the same. Then, set gamma for red to be 1.00, green to be 0.90, and blue to be 0.85. Adjust if you feel like it.
-Make use of the profiles in i9kfangui! Set the gaming one to have all fans on all the time (note, the i6000 only has one fan, so don't worry if it says there are problems with fan 2) and set another profile for normal usage. Autostart it, and your done!
-Undervolt your CPU! Don't be afraid of this, as it has plenty of benifits if you do it right. Visit the guide in the "Guides" section of this forum to learn about this.
-Use the OSD (On Screen Display) to show your FPS, and it can also tell you some information such as your current clocks, how much memory you are using, and what may be even more important is that it can show the time! Great if you have problems getting enough sleep while gaming. Give them some hotkeys, so you can flash them whenever you want.
-General Option settings!
Load with windows: User preference
Swap mouse buttons for tray menus: User preference
Use new Apply 3D settings mode: ??? Enable
Disable low level color correction: Enable if you use ATT color correction, other wise disable it.
Disable confirmation on rotation: User preference
Use skinned menu: ??? Enable
Reset clocks on exit: User preference
Reset clocks before suspend mode: User preference
Aggressive 3D detection: ??? Enable
Show Temperature in Fahrenheit: User preference
Enable ATT Shared Memory: ??? Enable
Update interval: 1 second
Use Limits for overclocking: Enable, user preference (recomend 60% overclock, 80% downclock)
Do not ask for refresh rate: User preference
Always select maximum refresh rate: User preference
Do not wait 10 seconds before changing resolution: User preference
Audio settings are based on user preference.
ScreenShots settings are also user preference.
Note: I used to use ATI Tray Tools, but it screwed up my games. Then I used Radlinker with no problems, until I tried to use ATT again, but by downloading from Guru of 3D, rather than using the Omega included one. If you have problems using that, then use one of these other programs:
Radlinker – http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942
A great program that doesn't bloat the system tray! I used this program for a long time and didn't mind it at all.
Powerstrip – http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm
I’ve used this before, and didn’t like it because it seemed to limit my overclock.
Notebook Hardware Control – http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm
A popular multi function program. It overclocks your ATI card, undervolts your CPU, monitors temps, and more. Personaly, I don’t like this either.
I wanted to do that mod soo baddly....
.
