# atitool usage



## sac (Jun 3, 2005)

just downloaded the recent atitool.  im a noob at this therefore require a little help on a couple of things

1. i have an asus ati radeon 9600xt but i currently have an amd athlon 1.2gh processor.  is it still somewhat worth overclocking my card??

2. i have the stock cooling fan.  will it matter??  for example, will it still be able to overclock a little??

3. do i run find max mem, find max core, scan for artifacts (in that order)??  i read that each one takes about 2 hours.  is this correct and will it tell me when each test is complete??

im not expecting to have my card super overclocked (as i said im only using stock fan) but still want to be able to overclock it a little.

Thanks


----------



## infrared (Jun 5, 2005)

Hey there

Firstly, i guess you know the risks of overclocking...

The tool is pretty much fool-proof.

You don't need to do the 'find max's' in any specific order, make sure after you've found the max for one, you set it back to default before finding the other's max if that makes sense. Once you've found both the max's, scan for artifacts, and if it finds any, it means the card is either running too hot or too fast, in which case try lowering the clocks.

If your card supports it, you should monitor the temperature throughout the process. Just as a rough guide, u don't want the temperature passing 65c.

The stock cooling fan will reduce the amount you can overclock the card by because of the excess heat, which causes artifacts, which ATITool will respond to by reducing the clock... It's all the in manual   

2 hours... hmm, basically, when it finds the first artifact, it lowers the clock, and again the next time it finds one. After a certain amount of time, it will stop finding artefacts, and you can hit abort. I was in a rush when i overclocked mine. Had it done in 38minutes, but i wouldn't recomend rushing the job. Best to find a nice stable clock.

Obviously don't push it too far, if it crashes at a certain point, don't push it past that point again. My GPU crashes at 300mhz without finding any artefacts, so i set the 'safety range' in the overclocking section of the settings.

Tell us how it goes.

-Ps, if i posted something in here anyone's uncomfortable about please say.

~Simon


----------



## sac (Jun 7, 2005)

ok im a little confused atm.

my default settings are at 500 core and 300 mem.  i ran a mem test and it ended up crashing my card (graphics went funny and all sorts of colours came on the screen).  i rebooted and when i opened up atitool again i got a window saying that atitool crashed due to a "too high overclock.  last working frequency was: core 499.50 Mhz - memory: 92.25 Mhz."

this is where im confused (as mentioned im a noob so dont probably understand this too much).  i scanned for artifacts for a little over 2 hours without errors and i was using my default settings.  why isnt it crashing with default settings yet crashes when the mem is less??

can someone please help on using the program effectively (i know its a pain teaching a noob sometimes)??


----------



## infrared (Jun 7, 2005)

That's weird.

I'm guessing at the time you were searching for the max mem??

It looks like for some reason ATI tool is detecting artefacts when there weren't any. If it lowers the clock too much, the card will screw up until rebooted. One thought:

click on settings, and open the 'artifact scanning' from the drop down menu, and check the box for 'use old scanning method'. Click back, and try to find the max mem again, but keep an eye on the clock, if it starts reducing from default, abort. While searching for max mem, the core speed will vary by a couple of mhz, this is normal.

Don't worry about asking questions. Better to ask a dumb question than fry something   

~Simon


----------



## W1zzard (Jun 7, 2005)

with memory testing it sometimes happens, that the memory controller "freaks out" and produces artifacts, atitool lowers the clock, but memory controller is still making artifacts, so atitool keeps dropping the clocks till the card crashes because of too low clock. this just happens from time to time.


----------



## sac (Jun 8, 2005)

W1zzard said:
			
		

> with memory testing it sometimes happens, that the memory controller "freaks out" and produces artifacts, atitool lowers the clock, but memory controller is still making artifacts, so atitool keeps dropping the clocks till the card crashes because of too low clock. this just happens from time to time.



ok so should i run "find max mem" again until it doesnt give me the same problem?? or

should i do what infrared said


			
				infrared said:
			
		

> click on settings, and open the 'artifact scanning' from the drop down menu, and check the box for 'use old scanning method'. Click back, and try to find the max mem again, but keep an eye on the clock, if it starts reducing from default, abort.


----------



## W1zzard (Jun 8, 2005)

try what infrared suggests, if that doesnt work try running the scanning again, make a note where it goes crazy and set this frequency as limit in settings -> overclocking -> safety range


----------

