Overclocking ATI Radeon cards in Linux

First let me start by saying that overclocking is very risky, you can seriously damage your system, so please use this guide with care.

That said lets start!

Compiz, Beryl and some games work a bit slow on old video cards, so we overclock and improve their performance!
I have an ATI Radeon 9550 card made by Gigabyte and Ubuntu Feisty.

lspci -v output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AS [Radeon 9550] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Unknown device 4050
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 255, IRQ 20
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
Memory at e9000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at e8000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [58] AGP version 3.0
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

fglrxinfo output:

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9550/X1050 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6334 (8.34.8)

Overclocking is made by Radeon overclock (rovclock) made by Hasw (hasw@hasw.net), you can get the source here and compile it manually (make;make install).
In Ubuntu you can do:

sudo apt-get install rovclock

After you installed it run

sudo rovclock -i

It will print out information about your card, in my case BEFORE overclock:

$ sudo rovclock -i
Radeon overclock 0.6e by Hasw (hasw@hasw.net)

Found ATI card on 01:00, device id: 0×4153
I/O base address: 0xc000
Video BIOS shadow found @ 0xc0000
Reference clock from BIOS: 27.0 MHz
Memory size: 131072 kB
Memory channels: 1, CD,CH only: 0
tRcdRD: 4
tRcdWR: 2
tRP: 4
tRAS: 8
tRRD: 3
tR2W-CL: 3
tWR: 3
tW2R: 2
tW2Rsb: 1
tR2R: 2
tRFC: 14
tWL(0.5): 2
tCAS: 3
tCMD: 0
tSTR: 1
XTAL: 27.0 MHz, RefDiv: 12

Core: 249.75 MHz, Mem: 195.75 MHz

Overclocking

sudo rovclock -c 280 -m 220

The -c option sets the core clock and the -m options sets the memory clock (try too keep it above 200).

AFTER overclock

$ sudo rovclock -i
Radeon overclock 0.6e by Hasw (hasw@hasw.net)

Found ATI card on 01:00, device id: 0×4153
I/O base address: 0xc000
Video BIOS shadow found @ 0xc0000
Reference clock from BIOS: 27.0 MHz
Memory size: 131072 kB
Memory channels: 1, CD,CH only: 0
tRcdRD: 4
tRcdWR: 2
tRP: 4
tRAS: 8
tRRD: 3
tR2W-CL: 3
tWR: 3
tW2R: 2
tW2Rsb: 1
tR2R: 2
tRFC: 14
tWL(0.5): 2
tCAS: 3
tCMD: 0
tSTR: 1
XTAL: 27.0 MHz, RefDiv: 12

Core: 276.75 MHz, Mem: 222.75 MHz

You can use glxgears to benchmark and see the differences.



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11 Responses to “Overclocking ATI Radeon cards in Linux”

  • 1
    Anonymous
    March 18th, 2007 05:19

    I have the Radeon Xpress 200M
    when I execute ./rovclock -i

    I get Core: 300.72 MHz, Mem: 0.0 MHz

    does this mean it doesn’t detect Mem: correctly?

    and if so … should I attempt to adjust it or not?

    thanx

  • 2
    Elez J. Shenhar
    March 18th, 2007 05:36

    It probably means your Radeon is using shared memory, meaning it’s using the system’s RAM since it has no RAM of its own…
    That’s just a guess.

  • 3
    Anonymous
    March 18th, 2007 06:46

    ./rovclock -i
    Found ATI card on 01:05, device id: 0×5a62
    I/O base address: 0×5800
    Video BIOS shadow found @ 0xc0000
    Reference clock from BIOS: 14.32 MHz
    Memory size: 15360 kB
    Memory channels: 2, CD,CH only: 1
    tRcdRD: 4
    tRcdWR: 5
    tRP: 8
    tRAS: 8
    tRRD: 8
    tR2W-CL: 1
    tWR: 1
    tW2R: 7
    tW2Rsb: 0
    tR2R: 3
    tRFC: 13
    tWL(0.5): 0
    tCAS: 3
    tCMD: 0
    tSTR: 1
    XTAL: 14.32 MHz, RefDiv: 6

    Core: 300.72 MHz, Mem: 0.0 MHz

    so should I adjust it if its using shared memory…? (I don’t know much about this but would like faster performance for my card)
    can you perhaps suggest adjust settings for me?

  • 4
    Alex
    March 19th, 2007 05:59

    You could increase the core clock but try it slow, with 5-10MHz increases at a time and run glxgeers to see if theres any difference in performance.

  • 5
    Anonymous
    March 19th, 2007 06:15

    before rovclock ./glxgears
    6672 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1323.513 FPS
    7100 frames in 5.1 seconds = 1397.675 FPS
    7080 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1404.010 FPS
    7080 frames in 5.1 seconds = 1394.494 FPS
    7048 frames in 5.1 seconds = 1388.388 FPS

    after rovclock -c 315
    6892 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1365.670 FPS
    7200 frames in 5.1 seconds = 1418.618 FPS
    7080 frames in 5.1 seconds = 1398.697 FPS
    6960 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1389.242 FPS
    7046 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1407.994 FPS

    well it starts with higher frame rate… but then drops and I don’t notice any significant performance change… will it be risky to try and increase it even higher then 315 it used to be 300…?

  • 6
    Anonymous
    March 19th, 2007 07:39

    Alex,

    it’s a 200m, it’s not much of a gaming chip at all. In Windows I get only 20fps in WoW on average. I wouldn’t increase the core at all, simply because, if it overheats and you damage it, there’s no replace the graphics card, it’s built into the motherboard of your laptop. You’re stuck buying a whole new one. I’ve never noticed much difference overclocking my 200m, and with it being my only PC, i’d rather not shorten the chips lifespan by or risk damaging it by overclocking.

    For other cards in PCs, this article is great. Thanks for the info.

  • 7
    owen
    April 2nd, 2007 03:31

    hiya
    9800 pro saphire - stock
    Found ATI card on 01:00, device id: 0×4e48
    I/O base address: 0xe000
    Video BIOS shadow found @ 0xc0000
    Reference clock from BIOS: 27.0 MHz
    Memory size: 131072 kB
    Memory channels: 2, CD,CH only: 0
    tRcdRD: 5
    tRcdWR: 3
    tRP: 5
    tRAS: 10
    tRRD: 4
    tR2W-CL: 3
    tWR: 3
    tW2R: 2
    tW2Rsb: 1
    tR2R: 2
    tRFC: 17
    tWL(0.5): 3
    tCAS: 4
    tCMD: 0
    tSTR: 0
    XTAL: 27.0 MHz, RefDiv: 12

    Core: 432.0 MHz, Mem: 371.25 MHz

    but - i think it is broken now. hehe

  • 8
    owen
    April 2nd, 2007 03:34

    stock 380mhz core and 340mhz

  • 9
    Silvio
    July 9th, 2007 18:32

    glxgears isn’t a benchmark tool

  • 10
    damir
    December 31st, 2007 15:15

    Hi! I use rovclock, only not for overclocking but for ‘underclocking’, since my card is defected and only runs properly on lower freqencies.
    The problem is that on every system reboot the card’s original frequencies are restored, which is bad since when i get to console to run rovclock, the card messes up pretty badly.
    I need to know if it’s possible to save card frequencies, so those are used on computer startup instead of original ones.

    Thank you.

  • 11
    Flashing a HD2900PRO to XT - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
    January 11th, 2008 17:46

    […] if rovclock works with current GPU hardware. This seems to be a guide to rovclock. __________________ Don’t get a PS3 if you plan on using the […]



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