Sapphire TRIXX Preview

[W1zzard]

[page=TRIXX]
At Cebit this year, Sapphire announced that they will soon ship a new overclocking tool with their video cards.

We bring you the first exclusive shots of the new tool, called TRIXX.

General
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/general.jpg

After launching TRIXX from the start menu or from the tray, where it is running when minimized, the first screen which is displayed, is "General".

Here you can find some information about your card, for example at which clocks it is running, what the temperatures are and how fast the fan is going.

For temperature monitoring and fan monitoring to work, your card must have an LM63 monitoring chip (also see our article: Does my ATI card support temperature monitoring? (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/94)).
The LM63 is present on all 9600XT, 9800XT, X800 and X850 boards, which means that most video cards around today will be able to use TRIXX to its full potential.

The Menu
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/menu.jpg
When you click the "Menu" botton, a new panel pops up which shows the available options. Sapphire is planning to add more features to TRIXX, so this menu might change in the near future.

Profiles
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/profiles.jpg

On this screen you can create per-game profiles and define certain clock and image quality settings for each of them.
When you launch a game while the TRIXX icon is visible in the system tray, TRIXX automatically detects the launch of this game and will apply the correct profile.
It is also possible to directly launch the game from TRIXX's tray icon menu.

Overclocking
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/overclocking.jpg

This is where the fun starts. TRIXX provides predefined modes which help you maximize your video card performance, or reduce noise.

The modes are as follows:

Standard: Everything at stock
Performance: In this mode a detection technique is used to determine the maximum overclock your invidual card can run without any problems.
Extreme: This mode uses the same detection method as the "Performance" mode, but increases fan speeds to be constantly at 100%. This mode is perfect for some benchmarking action.
Silent: When you choose "Silent" the card will be clocked down to reduce heat output and the fan speed will be reduced to 30% - very useful if you want to watch videos on your computer.
Custom: This mode gives you the ultimate control over your video card. You can choose any combination of GPU and memory clock, without any upper limit. Fan speeds can be varied between 20% and 100%.


When you choose "Performance" or "Extreme" for the first time, you will be asked if you want to run the maximum detection test. Using these profiles is only possible after running this test, which establishes a safe frequency limit for your video card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/detection.jpg

This is how the maximum clock detection screen looks like. First, the maximum memory clock is tested for a few minutes, after that, the test finds your maximum core clocks.
If the test crashes at any point, which sometimes happens, you will be asked if you want to continue testing the next time TRIXX is started.

When the test is finished, you have to confirm the detected clock rates and they will be saved. If you are changing video cards a lot, do not worry - you can re-run the detection test at any time. TRIXX will also reset the detected maximum clocks if a video card change has been detected.
What it can not detect is, if you swap two video cards which are the same model, for example a 9600XT to another 9600XT. In that case, you have to choose redetect maximum speeds when selecting performance/extreme:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/redetect.jpg

Updates
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/updates.jpg

On this panel, you can find out by the click of two buttons, if a new version of either TRIXX or the Catalyst Driver Suite is available. If a new version is available, another click on the button (which changes text), will take you straight to the download page.

[page=Benchmarks]
Benchmarks
Test system: P4 2.4C @ 3.0, 512 MB generic PC3200 memory, Sapphire X800 Pro VIVO AGP modded to 16 pipelines (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/100). Default clocks of the card are 475 MHz core and 475 Mhz memory.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/start.jpg

I clicked "yes", went to eat a pizza. When I came back, the test was completed and the final clocks were 527.30 for core and 580.14 for memory.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/max.jpg

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/clocks.gif

A quick 3DMark2005 run shows a performance increase of about ten percent.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/3dmark_stock.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/3dmark_oc.jpg

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/TRIXX/images/3dmark.gif

TRIXX will be bundled with all Sapphire retail video cards starting from May. The tool will only work on Sapphire video cards.

[PSDeluX]

gj

[ziwro]

Can i use this program my sapphire x800xl

[DanTheBanjoman]

Flash a Sapphire bios on a card and it'll detect your card as Sapphire? And then work...

Or is that a bad idea?

[Unregistered]

anyone using this software yet?

[AMDCam]

I thought it was already shipping with the X800 series, I heard about it months ago. But will it work with all Sapphire cards, say a 9800 Pro too? I don't think it'll help anymore than ATItool can, but it's cool.

[thedivinehairband]

Ive been using this software at home. i found a link to download it. works very well i'd say. yes it works with an x800xl as thats what ive been using with it.

[Dippyskoodlez]

Flash a Sapphire bios on a card and it'll detect your card as Sapphire? And then work...

Or is that a bad idea?

it might, as long as the pcb and everything is standard, but the temp sensors may be different, and detect wrong. If the card has auto throttling, that may cause some severe problems. Other than that, it should be about the same, aside from possibly varying ram timings, effecting the speed and overclockability.

make sure the ram matches!!!

[Urlyin]

I thought W1zzard had a hand in helping Sapphire develop it ....

[Dippyskoodlez]

I thought W1zzard had a hand in helping Sapphire develop it ....

probably did. :) He's very very busy these days :)

[DanishDevil]

I prefer ATITool over anything :) I hated TriXX when I tried it with my X800GTO2. Went back to the good ol' days and got the beta of ATiTool.

[ChAce]

Looks sweet to me, but we have ATiTool ;)

[MCMOPAR]

Yeah I use ATItool, too but it doesn't have the fan control TriXX has. I'd like to give it a try on my Sapphire X800Pro I bought back in July. Can it be downloaded from Sapphire or anywhere else? I would hope they wouldn't leave all of us hanging who have bought their products in the recent past.
Specs:
Asus K8N4-E Deluxe mobo (s754, PCI-e graphics slot)
(2) 512 mb DDR400 PC3200 Ultra ram modules w/Ultra Gold heat spreaders
Sapphire X800PRO VIVO 256 mb video card (max oc 560 core/560 mem according to ATItool)
420W power supply
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2 ghz (oc'd to 2.365 ghz (215x11) = 3655)
stock fan/heatsink presently
Gigabyte 3D Cooler-Ultra GT PCU31-VH heatsink/fan (this week 11/03/05)
Technics CD/DVD burner
250 gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA 133 hard drive
Raidmax Storm case w/5 case fans + 2 power supply fans
17" Flat screen Compaq monitor (CRT - not flat panel - 1280x1024 max at 60 Hz)
Logitech MX-510 optical mouse
Best 3DMark03 score to date: 11,852

[rhythmeister]

Where can I get this software for my Sapphire x1600 Pro agp 256Mb?! I can't get it from teh Sapphire site and my bestest friend google can't help :( Errr, scrub that, me got lol Now I get an error saying "TRIXX will only work with Sapphire cards"...however mine IS a Sapphire, anybody got any ideas on how to get it working?