Connect3d ati radeon x1950xt under performing and showing wrong specs

Hi ive just built a new rig which is

Gigabyte p35c-ds3r mb
intel q6600
adata 4gb 800mhz memory
vista home premium 32bit
250gb sata
connect3d ati radeon x1950xt pro

And i thought i be flying through games but when playing pes 6 i see only alittle speed difference from my old pc which was a
1.8ghz amd
512mb
geforce 6800xt

Ive notice in the catalyst control center its showing my card specs at

core clock 500mhz
memory clock 594mhz

when it should be running at

core clock 625mhz
memory clock 1800 mhz

anyone know what the problem is? any help much apreciated

I also have Ati X1950XT and the Catalyst Control centre is showing core clock 500 mhz and memory clock 594 mhz.. i dont know why is that.. i have been waiting for a reply on this forum but havent got any yet..plz inform if u get one

Hey i cant believe no1 else has posted

But the reason why its showing lower speeds in ati panel is because that will be the speed it runs in the desktop like browsing dowloadin etx. But when playing games it should play at its original clock speeds. In the ati utility theres a way where you can make your ati gfx card run max in windows and in games, the choice is yours. Anyway i hope this helps

Hi dee_jay
How can i get my Ati card to run at max by using the Ati utility? I never found any option like that..
Hey and i m facing another problem with my card.. Whenever i play Call of Duty 4 after 40 mins to an hour of play graphics corruption start i mean green blocks start appearing on my screen than after a few minutes the whole computer crashes and a reboot is than required.. i have read quite alot of reviews about this card and people say that i gets overheated in 3d games and many of them had to change their card fan to a new one.. Did u face any of this with your card..
Thanks

I have two X1800XT's (512MB each) running in my main system and they run at 60 degrees centigrade idle, and can hit 70+ under load. At the time this temperate was of a concern, but I read in many places that this was normal.

Not sure on your type of card, but as it's only a model up, I reckon it should be fine. But perhaps one of your other options is to remove one card and buy a Zalman cooler or something for one of them and see if it makes a difference. Also consider contacting ATI, and then there's the usual things like update to the latest catalyst etc.

I am sorry nobody else had replied to this topic before, but a lot of us do this sorta thing all day and its easy to a few to slip through the cracks.

But as dee_jay mentioned, all high end cards today will have at least a 2d and 3d clock speed. The 2d clock speed is set lower than the 3d clock speed as its used while you are in windows doing the typical day to day tasks that would run perfectly well on much slower graphics sub systems. So to save power, heat, and noise its very common for your video card to run at lower speeds while you are in windows. But once you load up a game or and 3d application designed to take advantage of the video cards abilities, the card will automatically adjust its clock speeds to gain the performance you need. As the card automatically adjusts you do not need to overclock it yourself.
However if you would like to overclock the card you can use various tools such as ATI Tray Tools, ATI Tool, or Riva Tuner. These are probably the 3 most popular tools out there for this task. Each has its own advantages, I like the ati tray tool because it allows me to overlay my fps, memory usage, and video memory usage into all of my games (saves me from having to drop the console and remember all the commands :P), Riva Tuner has a very nice monitoring system as well that would allow you to go off and play your games and when you are done you have a complete chart of everything that happened while you were playing, a chart of the clock speeds, fan speeds, voltage, temperature, and so forth. ATI Tool is also very powerful tool and actually has a nice built in 3d tester that lets you check for stability while you are overclocking, even before you load up any games.

And m-umerh, the situation you are describing certainly sounds like the card is overheating a bit. Typically that type of graphics corruption is known as "artifacting" and can manifest itself in various ways such as tearing (large black triangles appearing on your screen), checker boarding (your image is corrupted by a checkerboard like pattern of black and white squares) and in the lesser cases simply via colored blocks or missing textures.
The x1900s did have some issues with cooling and it was best to replace the cooler with something more potent than the stock cooler. Among the popular replacements were the Zalman VF900, the Arctic Cooling Accelero X2, and the Thermalright HR-03 (original, not the newer revisions as they are designed for the 8800/hd2900/hd38x0 series). My personal choice would be the HR-03, I have one on my HD2900 pro currently (pics can be found here ) and it cut my load temps virtually in half and I am only using a low rpm 92mm fan. This is a large cooler (not too heavy though...) and it does not come with a fan (you have to add your own 80/92mm fan if your case has insufficient airflow) so its gunna be the most expensive route. The vf900 and accelero X2 are a bit smaller and cheaper, but provide significant temperature drops in their own right and both are near silent. There is a thread over at Rage3d (found here ) of user documented temperature changes with these and other coolers on the x1800/x1900/x1950 series cards.

In your case you may not need to replace the cooler (though it is a good route to go) but you may simply need more air flow in your system. What case are you using and how many (and what size) fans are within the case? If you have some open slots for fans you should add some fans and odds are that will fix the issue. Typically larger cases have what is known as a "dead zone" in the expansion slot area. Usually air will not reach this area and your cards end up recycling increasingly warm air to cool the cards and this is not a good situation. Usually the solution is simply to mod a fan into your side panel in that area such as I had done with my old case (found here ) and that fan did a great job if blowing cool air over the expansion slots and keeping those cards nice and cool. Perhaps one of these solutions will help you keep your card in check. If you find added cooling does not effect the problems you are having then it may be possible that your card is damaged and should be RMA'd back to its manufacturer. Im not a COD4 player, but I do know a few who are still using x19x0 series cards to play the game just fine, so Im quite certain its not an issue with the game and that card. Upgrading your drivers may help rule out this possibility.

As for the X1800s they certainly did get hot, and though high temperatures can be normal, it is not necessarily a good thing and you too may want to invest in some new cooling to keep the cards in check.

Regarding the lower clock speeds in windows, i actually monitored clock speeds by using riva tuner in various 3D games but my clock speed remained constant during the whole gameplay..One more thing that i couldnt do is check the temprature of the card, i have tried almost all the Ati supporting softwares including Ati tool, Riva Tuner, Ati tray and i cant get to display the temperature.I have tried all the options to get the temprature on my screen but couldnt do it.Until i get to know the temprature i wont know wether my card is getting overheated or not.
And stang i read the thread at rage3d comparing different VGA coolers and they talked about auto fan speed and 100% fan speed. How to change these fan speed? There is a option of fan speed in riva tuner and ati tray but i dont know how that works.
You asked me about the case that i m using. It's ATX midi tower with 600 W power supply. It doesnt have any extra fan other than the fan of the power supply(and ofcourse there is a CPU fan). And it doesnt even have any space to install an extra fan. What other method do you think will be good to keep tempratures down?

I have had the same problem with x1950 xt. My solution was to use Riva Tuner. Ati tool and ati tray tool needed to be set to run 3d clock speeds or use hot key, voltage needed to be included in this profile. Using riva tuners graphs, I was able to confirm that I was actually using 3d clock speeds.

Great card, but a pain to get working right.

Hello dummy. I am using Riva tuner but where exactly can i find the option of 3d clock speeds. can u plz tell me step by step what to do? it would be great help

I only have the ati display driver installed, no CCC.

• open riva
• customize
• video-card icon (low level sys. tweaks)

It should ask to detect 3d settings
ok


that should be it,
you can run the graph while you game and see that the speed kicks up. I usually kick my fan speed up for gaming.

edit:added pic of graph