What Gives,I overclock my vpu and i get a lower bench mark score

[backyardtechie]

This is bugging me, I have a ATI All in wonder VE (basically a 7500 series i believe) and i have used the ati overclocking tool and i can go pretty high from 250/260 to 285/290.Buutttt my bench mark gets worse.I have heard that some nvidia cards hve a similair prob , it is because of throttling.But i have never heard of ATI using throttling in there vid cards , but i can't explain my problem besides that.O yah i have slightly modded my vid card , i put a socket 7 cpu fan on the stock heatsink and do my best to keep the air flow going.

Current System

PIII 733mhz OC'd to 815mhz
512mb pc100 OC'd to124
Samsung 80 gig HDD
PCI ATI All in Wonder VE
400 watt PSU

Cheers
Backyardtechie

[ddka]

Im no expert, but I would suspect your CPU would be a bottleneck to increasing your performance.

[johnnyis42]

though i have never heard of nvidia using a "vpu throttling" technique to prevent overheating, i do know that when manufacturer's do that to their chips they set the threshhold for the throttling temperature alot higher than normal, even overclocking normal, temperatures.

but as for the vpu clock vielding lower benchmark scores, yeah, that has happened to me too.

get this.... what i noticed was that using high end video cards do this every time, but when i use the lower end card from a series, my results from overclocking the GPU/VPU are much better.

my geforce 2 GTS had the problem, my geforce 3 had the problem, but my geforce 4 4200 yielded fair resaults when overclocking the GPU, as well as my radeon 9700 pro and 9800 pro.

i have a theory about this. overclocking the memory ALWAYS results in better scores, but the GPU for me ahs been hit or miss. i'm guessing this might have somehting to do with timing or synchronization. that maybe there is somehting on the board that deals with the timing of the memory and GPU that depends on a certian ratio or something. this is like some of the botherboards experiencing severe performance hits when you run the memory asynchronously from the front side bus.

so yeah, i've seen the problem before, but all i have is an idea why it happens. it could also have to do with the particular GPU on your card, the old overclocking rule that not all silicon is made equal. keep in mind the 7500 is practically ancient technology at this point, on par with your gerfroce 2 cards.

[backyardtechie]

Hmmmmm i agree , but i guess i have finnally decided to upgrade.
Here's the build list so far:

ASrock K7V88 Mobo
AMD 2400+ Sempron
512mb PC3200 ddr
80 Gig hardrive

But i was gonna get a Ati Radeon 9200 se for my vid , but the core clock is less then my current card.The new card is gonna cost me 95 bucks but if it is jus as bad or worse then my current card would be the point of paying money.Also the guy at the shop said it's not worth overclocking the sempron, but i never listen , so i'm gonna see if i can get it to atleast 2800 territory

Backyardtechie

[johnnyis42]

well, even though the7500 based radeon VE has a faster clock, the greater ammount of video memory and the added pipelines will make up for that.

if you're interested, chekc out a couple sites' reviews of the variouys cards, or better yet check the overall comparison of all modern cards at http://www.techreport.com/etc/comparo/graphics/

this shows a really good chart comparing all modern cards and their more important features which should give you a good idea why one model differs from another.

in your specific case, you'll be getting a graphics processing engine with the 9200 SE that has twice the pixel pipelines, has over twice the max pixel fill rate, and i'm going to guess that it has 128 MB of video RAM.

if you can find it, i would suggest getting the radeon 9100. don't let the number game fool you, it's actually a much better card than the 9200 SE. also, if you can find a Radeon 8500 for a good price, that would be better than the 9200 SE as well, since neither of these 9200 or lower model numbers support the directx 9 features that make the newest games (doom 3, far cry, HL2, etc) so pretty to look at.