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Sager 8790 benchmarks and clocking

post #1 of 74
3/12/04 at 9:21pm
Thread Starter 
This is not the Sager 8790 review, the review for the 8790 can be found HERE

This thread deals with the clocking of the 8790 GPU.

The 8790 comes from Sager with modest clocking (415/280) which leaves room for a little tweaking for what looks to be a safe performance gain.

Here's Sager's comment on overclockng and the utilities involved:

Quote:
Sager does not endorse or discourage the usage of Third-Party Tweaking Software purchased by End-Users and encourages End-Users to make evaluation of such Third-Party Software themselves before installing. However, if any support issues arise on a system, the End-User will be required to remove the Third-Party Tweaking Utility Software in order to reinstate the “Sager Factory Default Settings.” Sager will not support any issues that are not reproducible under the “Sager Factory Default Settings” without the presence of Third-Party Tweaking Utility Software.
-Sager
After much playing around, I have become comfortable with running the system at a 460/290 clock speed with performance settings. This is running on a flat surface and in a room 75 deg. Yes it will run higher and I have ran it higher to the point of seeing artifacts. I feel 460/290 is a safe setting that will cause no problems and enhance performance significantly. If your room temp is different or cooling isn't as efficient you may need to adjust accordingly. Basically tweaking this will take out some of the tolorance left. It's more important to be on a flat surface and blow out your heatsinks every few months with compressed air (easy to do).

Here were my benching results as compared to stock:

UT2K3

1024 X 768 Flyby
4780 128
8790 146
8790@460/290 182
8790@ 500/300 190
8790@ 515/300 192

1600 X 1200 Flyby
4780 55
8790 62
8790@460/290 80
8790@ 500/300 85
8790@ 515/300 86

Aquamark 3
4780 23,025
8790 27,102
8790@460/290 29,751
8790@ 500/300 31,819
8790@ 515/300 32,420

3DMARK01 SE
Stock 8790 11,826
8790@ 460/290 12,851
8790@ 500/300 13,309
8790@ 515/300 13,524

3DMARK03 (340 patch)
Stock 8790 3,381
8790@ 460/290 3,748
8790@ 500/300 3,971
8790@ 515/300 4,033

The utility used is called "PowerStrip" and can be found HERE
Once installed, you just click in your lower right menu, go to "performance profiles", then "configure". There you will see the clock speeds and bar to change them.

You can also set the graphics to performance which will lower the quality, but raise the FPS. You just right click the desktop background, go to "properties", "settings", "advanced", and in the "OpenGL" and "Direct3d" tabs you'll see it.

At 470/320 it ran a 13,374 3DMARK01SE and @ 500/330 it ran a 13,868 at which point there were artifacts. So, be careful and don't push it... I feel 460/290 is a safe setting for properly running and cooled systems. If I run into any problems I'll be sure and update.
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post #2 of 74
3/12/04 at 9:33pm
Thanks Adam.

Are artifacts usually caused when the core is too high or when the memory is too high? Or both?

It would be awesome if it ran fine with no artifacts at 500/300, which is the speed of a desktop Radeon 9600XT.
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post #3 of 74
3/12/04 at 9:38pm
Thread Starter 
Running 500/300 right now, almost through. I haven't seen any artifacts. The artifacts from what I've seen can be caused by either setting being too high.

It seems to bench fine with the 500/300 setting. I'm updating the original thread with the scores @ that clock speed added. I made the thread in the way it is so we can collectively come up with the best possible settings. I'm using Sager's provided stock drivers.

I can't say 500/300 would be stable with many hours of gaming until I spend many hours of gaming with those settings
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post #4 of 74
3/12/04 at 9:39pm
Oh, and what video drivers were you using? Sager's drivers? ATI's? Omega's?

Thanks!
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post #5 of 74
3/13/04 at 12:22am
Thread Starter 
Played UT2K4 demo with the 500/300 settings for over 2 hours and no artifacts, freezups, lockups, or any problems. Bumping it up a little bit to see if it will reach 4,000 in 3DMARK03.

EDIT
4,000 reached no problem.
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post #6 of 74
3/13/04 at 1:17am
OMG - that 8790 must be groaning

I wouldnt want to buy that one offa you

Thanks for the detailed OCing tests and observations...this is VERY valuable information. Powerstrip is not a free program is it? I think it is a trial version...

Someone will have to come up with the numbers for other simple ocing programs...
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post #7 of 74
3/13/04 at 1:50am
... i dont get the aquamark score, is that 27fps? im confused
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post #8 of 74
3/13/04 at 2:00am
Thread Starter 
That's just the over all Aquamark score it gives you, non-FPS format.
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post #9 of 74
3/13/04 at 2:08am
wow....just to put this in perspective, i built a system for a friend before xmas that had a 2.4 HT, gig o ram, and an oem sapphire 9800 pro..and i dont think that thing even with the 9800 broke 4 grand in 3dmark 03 when i benched it. now, being his first system, he was quite proud of it...now i get to go tell him there is a portable that can beat it lol.

i think you should do a bit of lapping (proc and vcard heatsink if posible) and get some good thermal paste in it...prob eek out a few more mhz
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post #10 of 74
3/13/04 at 3:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsferrari
OMG - that 8790 must be groaning

I wouldnt want to buy that one offa you

Thanks for the detailed OCing tests and observations...this is VERY valuable information. Powerstrip is not a free program is it? I think it is a trial version...

Someone will have to come up with the numbers for other simple ocing programs...
Powerstrip is free, but you get a stupid pop-up on start-up that I think you can only disable if you buy it. Don't know, haven't played with it all that much.

The Omega drivers actually let you overclock with them, but I had some issues in Battlefield with the latest version with them so I wouldn't recommend them.
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post #11 of 74
3/13/04 at 4:01am
I like ATiTool (http://atitool.ocfaq.com). It has hotkeys and 3d app detection so you can define different clock speeds for different applications. Plus you can have the card running at default speeds or even underclock when you are not in deep demand of the graphics card.

Do the ATi mobile chips have a similar feature to save on juice usage?
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post #12 of 74
3/13/04 at 7:09am
@Adam

Indeed cool! - So far your determined bench values are the best from all those sources where I've heard 8790 (D870P) bench values from. Seems you pushed the GPU even further than the other few people which already got that 8790 beauty...

Maybe it's also time to say a BIG THANK YOU for this great forum and the outstanding support you guys are always doing here.

Regards

krobotkin
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post #13 of 74
3/13/04 at 9:59am
Infamous said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by caboosemoose

Anyway, this is all irrelevant because there's gonna be an 8 pipe mobile GPU from nVidia before the end of the year that's going to hammer everything we've seen to date.


8 pipe moble GPU? Please state your sources. Where might we read up on this claim? I would like to see it myself. Afterall:
Quote:
Originally Posted by caboosemoose
I would kind of have to see it myself to believe it.


Well, I can't really say where my info comes from, so you can take it or leave it. Sorry, I know that's annoying, but I don't really have a choice. If i told you how I knew i'd be in breach of an NDA related to another product (not the 8-pipe mobile GPU, because otherwise i would be risking trouble mentioning it).
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post #14 of 74
3/13/04 at 10:05am
Bratag said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by caboosemoose
Yeah, part of the reason why I find it impossible to believe is that we had a 5680 in and I couldn't get mpre than 10MHz OC out of the core without problems, much less the near-130MHz OC you claim to achieve - note that I'm not calling you a liar or anything, just that I would kind of have to see it myself to believe it.

We've had a couple of other, non-Clevo notebooks with the 9600 in, too, and none of them have OC'ed well at all. In the Dell 8600, which has a GPU fan and in which the supposedly superhot 4200go (actually it's muchcooler than a 9600) OCs very nicely indeed, the 9600 has problems running at stock 337MHz.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant because there's gonna be an 8 pipe mobile GPU from nVidia before the end of the year that's going to hammer everything we've seen to date.

'

Then your 5680 sucked ass - or it wasnt a 5680 - or you did something wrong - I have OCed my 5680 up to 400/275 easily and have run just about every game/demo at full that I could think of - now I conservative and run 378/260 and it works just fine.

Please define the "we" you refer to in your posts.

Sounds to me that you are an nvidia fanboy who doesnt like ATI.
-------------------

Firstly, I m no nV fanboy - the best mobile video card ever, IMHO, was the radeon 7500 M. At launch that thing was amazing - gave 2/3 the performance of the best ATI desktop card of the time (8500) without OC'ing at all. Imagine getting 2/3rds the performance of a 9800 XT! I don't rate any of the current mobile GPUs, be it nV or ATI. I'm not sure what ATI will be releasing this year. If I did, and it looked good, then great, but I don't, whereas I know that nV's next gen stuff looks fantastic on paper. Of course, we'll have to see how it turns out.

As for the we, I work for a print IT magazine. There's no point saying which or hinting where, you can take me at word or not, your choice. Even if I did give you a name, a could be some crazy making weird claims anyway, and I'd rather stay somewhat anonymous. Maybe I should change my handle to anonymoose?

Oh, and I didn't do anything wrong OCing that 5680, it's not exactly hard to anable the OC sliders and mess around with them, is it. And as for whether it was a 5680 or not, well what can i say, they are not difficult to identify.
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post #15 of 74
3/13/04 at 10:50am
Caboosemoose you must be from Kansas! Their's plenty of people in this forum who can point you toward their futuremark scores if you'd like. You need to see the light.
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post #16 of 74
3/13/04 at 3:03pm
I still dont understand the Score that aquamark posted, is that good or bad?
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post #17 of 74
3/13/04 at 3:06pm
The aquamark score is really good Q-Ball. It's better than my desktop at 20K score. 2.2 P4 400mhz fsb, 1.25gb of pc2100 ram, i845 intel chipset, 4x AGP w/ ATI 9600pro 128mb video card, and a 120gb WD hard drive at 7200 rpm with 2mb buffer. Running XP pro.
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post #18 of 74
3/13/04 at 10:09pm
Adam, please tell us which drivers and versions you are using. Omega's or ATI standard? What version number? What do you use to keep the overclocking (omega's built-in or do you boot with powerstrip?). Thank you.

By the way, while unrelated directly to notebooks, I decided to test three of the programs mentioned out on my desktop since I don't yet have my 8790. I installed Aquamark 3, Powerstrip, and the ATI Tool. First I ran AquaMark 3 three times with two different ATI drivers to establish a baseline, then I ran the ATI tool and played with it for a while. Then I took the settings I got there and plugged them into Powerstrip. I have not attempted to use Omega's drivers though tempting since I can't get the settings in Powerstrip to stay. The goal of this experiment was to see how and if the programs worked (better to screw up my desktop than a $3000 notebook). Questions to follow at the end.

My test setup:
Intel P4a 2.2ghz 400mhz fsb
1.25GB of pc2100 ram
i845 Intel mobo
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB video card at 4x AGP (core R350?)
WD 120GB hard drive w/ 2mb cashe

ATI catalyst 3.7
23678
23776
23759

ATI catalyst 4.3
23774
23839
23791
*slight increase in score*

Ran ATI tool for about an hour and watched it test both the max core and memory. Unfortunately, the program didn't seem to work very well or something because I started getting massive artifacts and the program kept increasing the values. Had to abort as the screen started splitting and yellow triangles started appearing like mad blurring the screen. Not sure what this meant and aborted the settings and moved the counters back down.

30 minute tested artifact free setting:
core: 450.69
memory: 309.46

While these are arbitrary values, they are about 20 points lower than the point the extreme artifacts started showing up. I consider these values to be "safe?".

I then loaded these values into Powerstrip, saved them, and re-ran Aquamark 3.

Aquamark 3 overclocked w/ Catalyst 4.3 drivers
25499
25398
25390
25374

Note the GFX and CPU scores are radically different too:
4.3 no oc: GFX 3114, CPU 5023
4.3 w/ oc: GFX 3402, CPU 5094

Questions time:

1) What does all of this mean? I was expecting some sort of thrill from "dangerously" overclocking the video card, but I'll just left with a feeling of confusion.

2)What did I just accomplish? Yay, I increased my AM3 score by 2000 points, now what?

3) What will this do for me on my notebook when it arrives this next Wednesday?

It seems to me that the point of doing this is to clock the card at a more reasonable level beyond the speeds set by Sager which are at a level so low as to be almost underclocked.

Adam what drivers and versions do you use for the 8790? Do you tell Powerstrip to load at startup or do you use the Omega drivers and set the clock and memory speeds there? What testing programs do you use? Do you play games like BF1942 for hours on end? In the end, what did you achieve?
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post #19 of 74
3/14/04 at 12:54am
Oh, and what speed processor and amount of system ram are you using during the benches?

And what video drivers are you using?

Thanks Adam.
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post #20 of 74
3/14/04 at 1:24am
Thread Starter 
Again, the drivers used were the ones Sager sent the system pre-loaded with. I order the demos with XP Pro loaded so I can get a true out of the box benchmark. The driver version says: 6.14.10.6414

The RAM is 2 sticks of 512MB 400DDR (1024MB total), the processor is the 3.4 GHZ Northwood P4.

The purpose is to show what this thing can do. I run and game with it @ 460/290 and took the settings from performance to the defaults for a nice picture. I don't consider any artifacts to be a properly clocked and cooled GPU. All the benches I put on the list ran with no artifacts in a 75 deg room on a flat desk.

I've been putting MANY hours of gaming on this unit with it bumped to 460/290 which anyone here can verify with no problems. I gamed a few hours @ 500/300 and didn't have any problems either but I feel it's pushing it more than I care to considering a little more than that I notice very small artifacts after running 3DMARK03 a few times.

So, do I game for hours on end with games like BF1942, UT2K3/4, SWG, Halo... and so on? Yes =) I've been gaming for 4 hours already tonight straight, we just stopped to get some pizza and I'll probably be back on for another, um, at least 4-6. Yesterday I put about 7 hours gaming on it and the day before even more.

If you don't want or need to overclock, then I say don't. If you want to maximize your FPS, I would, will, and often do =). If you're trying to justify doing it, well, you can't unless you need the extra FPS due to lag. You probably won't find any current games out there that the 8790 GPU can't handle even with stock settings.
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