Overclocking an ATI RADEON card...

RayG

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RayG
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Oct 12, 2001
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Somewhere in Ontario, Canada
Normally when I purchase a computer I get one built to specifications, but just before Christmas I got tired of the kids whining about their computer being too old, hard drive not big enough, etc. etc.

Anyway, I wander into Radio Shack and they have a HP Pavilion a1230n sitting there that seems to have all the bells and whistles. It's got an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU, 200gig HD, 1 gig of RAM, internal ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, not to mention DVD and CD burners, etc. etc. I thought the specs looked pretty good, but wasn't certain about the video, so had a bit of a discussion with the salesman about it. I should have been far more skeptical, cause the salesman is only looking to make a sale, and might not really know much about the inner workings of the system...

In any case, he assured me Express technology was the latest technology available in video card architecture, and the system would run any games my kids might have. Which is true. What he didn't tell me was that he was referring to the open PCI Express slot inside the computer, not the integrated Xpress video graphics that I was specifically asking him about.

You can guess what's coming next. Kids have been playing games since Christmas and complaining about the quality of the video and all the lagging that games are experiencing. So, I pop on the net and check up on the specs for the ATI Radeon Xpress 200, and I see it's getting pretty decent reviews. So, I log into an online chat with an HP representative (I ended up talking to 4 different individuals), and they basically tell me that no, the integrated video graphics will NOT play all my kids games, for that I need to purchase a separate video card to plug into the PCI Express slot.

I was pissed, disappointed, frustrated, and kicking myself for not waiting a couple days so I could thoroughly research the video capabilities of this brand of HP. I feel I was misled by the salesman, 'cause at no time did he mention slapping in a secondary video card.

Anyway, since I'm now stuck with this lemon, anyone know of a way to overclock the integrated video in the meantime?

The online techs from HP weren't much help, they offered some suggestions on how to improve video performance, but my kids are pretty sharp and had already tried those methods.

Any additional hints, tips, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

RayG
 
Even if you could overclock the core speed, the integrated graphics share the main memory with the CPU.

And most of the time they don't support shaders and other graphics goodies.

Bite the bullet and buy a PCI-E card.
 
thrombus29 said:
Even if you could overclock the core speed, the integrated graphics share the main memory with the CPU.
Click to expand...

The BIOS shows the video memory as 64meg, even though a diagnostic test shows the video capable of 256meg, the BIOS won't allow me to increase it from the 64meg.

Bite the bullet and buy a PCI-E card.
Click to expand...

Great. You can't see me right now, but I'm banging my head with a hammer. :D

RayG
 
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Smike said:
He's right though...

Get a PCI card! You don't play games with an onboard card!
Click to expand...

Which is how I got misled by the salesman to begin with. When he rambles on about it having the latest advanced technology, it will play all their games... yada yada yada... and he seems to be talking about the onboard graphics.

RayG
 
RayG said:
Which is how I got misled by the salesman to begin with. When he rambles on about it having the latest advanced technology, it will play all their games... yada yada yada... and he seems to be talking about the onboard graphics.

RayG
Click to expand...
Well, he was right when he said it would play all of the latest games, it just won't play them at any decent frame rate. ;)

thrombus29 is right, overclocking the card would probably not make a whole lot of noticable difference unfortunately.

Find out what slots your motherboard can support for a video card. It will be either PCI-Express (Fastest), AGP (Second Fastest) or PCI (Not as fast). You CAN spend up to $500 for a video card, but you certainly don't have to. The best bang for your buck comes with an nVIDIA or ATI card at around the $200 mark. You can even go with last year's models for about $100 which will still work really well for games.

Don't fret... It happens to us all. My first PC that I ever bought in 1997 for around $3500 came with the world's first 3D decelerator. It's a learning process for sure! :)
 
You're not really out anything you would have to buy a good video card anyway. Most of the name brand machines don't come with a high end card as that would raise the price quite a bit.

May I recommend a Nvidia GT7800, not cheap but what a great card. Power hungry though, make sure your power supply is up to the task.
 
jimlintott said:
May I recommend a Nvidia GT7800, not cheap but what a great card. Power hungry though, make sure your power supply is up to the task.
Click to expand...

Cough cough. The 7800 is what you buy when you're the one playing the games. It costs about as much as Ray's computer probably did.

Now, good news: The CPU, disk, memory, and motherboard are all good. No problems there. It's not the absolute fastest machine in the world, but it's not bad at all. (Faster than what I have. ;))

The X200 has 2 pipelines running at 300MHz. You don't need to understand the details here, just the numbers. So 2 x 300 = 600.

An ATI Radeon X700 has 8 pipelines and runs at 400MHz, for a score of 3200. An Nvidia 6600 has 8 pipelines and runs at 300MHz, 500MHz for the GT version, scoring 2400 to 4000.

You can pick up an X700 or a 6600 for about $100; the 6600GT costs about $30 more, so the X700 is probably the best value... Although some games run a bit better on the 6600.

You can get a PCI-Express video card for $50, but it's not going to be a whole lot better than what you have. But for $100, you can turn your lemon into something pretty darn good.

(For the record, my Windows machine is a P4 2.6 with a 6600GT.)
 
Actually, check this page. You can get an X800 - with 12 pipelines at 400MHz - for $129 less a $20 mail-in rebate, or an X1600, 12 pipelines, 500MHz, for $129 but no rebate. If you have the extra $30, that's definitely the way to go.
 
Yep. The 6200 is a four-pipeline card, about twice as good as the X200. It's about as low as you can go and still get okayish performance. Going up to the next level, like the 6600 or the new X1600, is good enough for the great majority of games. There are still people who buy two 24-pipeline 7800GTX's, though.

Of course, that would be me if I still got paid the way I did in the dot-com years. Sigh.
 
Cough cough. The 7800 is what you buy when you're the one playing the games. It costs about as much as Ray's computer probably did.
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Heh, heh. I think his box probably cost more than $500.

If he grabbed pretty much anything that is PCIe and had 256megs of ram he'd be good to go. I'm an Nvidia fan because they work so well with Linux.

Over the years of buying PCs I've always held back a bit on the video card to save some cash even though gaming was a primary reason. Last time around I didn't hold back and got the 7800GT and am really glad I did.
 
The two most graphically intense games that I have come across are Total War and the Gothic series. When I finally broke down to get a machine that could gobble them I bit the bullet and get a Radeon x800 card.

The video memory is expandable to a gig, I think and when I chatted with a radeon tech he said that it should be good for 3-4 years, that is, handle newer generations of games.

Buy it.
 
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