underclocking ;)

[g3gg0]

hi some strange question for you :p

because of power saving reasons and the need for a more silent PC i want to underclock my 9800 pro 256mb (R350)

standard freq: 378/338
highest OC freq: 418/357 (RAM gets with 60° too warm for higher clock rates if you ask me)
RAM is not cooled (plain ubga chips)

but underclocking the card down to 100/100 or similar fails with stripes over the screen or lockups :(
VPU recover can/will rescue sometimes at least to a non accelerated 2D mode then.

for now i use the freqs 337/310 as my low power profile as it seems stable.

do you have some experience how far down i can go and what the chip specs say?
how should the RAM/GPU rate fit together (maybe a rough ratio?)
any other chance to cool down my card a little bit in idle mode?

as i did it for my 2.6GHz P4 (OC: 2900, UC: 1300) with clockgen from cpuid.com,
i want the same 1-click-speedchange-solution for the graphics card, so hardware mod will make no sense.


thanks in advance :)

[Muk]

Usually 200/200 is the lower limit on mine.

[R350np]

Me too!
I have running my 9800np (Default: 324/290; Max: 390/340) at 200/200! Stable!
Going under 200 Mhz on Ram fails with stripes, GPU at 50 (yeah, very slow!) runs too, but PC somtimes freezes.
200/200 is stable and it runs very cool (40°C with external Thermometer at Heatsink).
I Think thats enough Power for Desktop! :D

[Nobru_rv]

U give me your 9800pro,i give you my 9550@9600 with only big HS on gpu.Connect3d.
So your pc will be very quiet ;-))))))

[littlewhoo]

I'm really impressed, how much the power consumption of my system can be reduced by underclocking my Radeon 9800 Pro videocard in Windows 2D mode.

Overall system power consumption (Windows, 2D, idle)

core/mem
378/338 MHz: 154W
378/200 MHz: 147W
200/200 MHz: 135W
100/200 MHz: 128W
050/200 MHz: 125W

As my system is running 24/7, I can save almost 167 kWh or 40$ per year by underclocking my videocard with ATITool to 200/200 MHz. :) Great tool.