The Tools

Unfortunately, because this card is still quite new and because of the way ATI has decided to allow us to mess with their cards, writing an application for overclocking the x1K Radeons correctly is tricky.

As a result of this, there are only two applications currently available: ATITool and what’s known as ATI Overclocker (AO). There are a few others that support clock changes (like Systools, ATI Tray Tools, and a few others), but unfortunately those are useless without AO or ATITool (you will see why once you are done with this tutorial).

There is also a new feature ATI has introduced to overclockers: software voltage adjustments. That’s right folks! There will be no need to hardmod (volt modifications with resistors) your video card to go the extra mile; it can all be done from the comfort of your desktop

VS

Both ATITool and AO do the job, but for this guide I have decided to use ATITool. AO is very easy to use, but it does not support one voltage setting which is very important (VDDCI) and it also lacks temperature monitoring. In addition, AO will relax memory timings when you change the memory frequency, unlike ATITool which keeps them constant. I will quickly highlight the benefits below:

More relaxed timings means higher memory frequency

A higher memory frequency is good for games (generally)

More aggressive timings result in better benchmark numbers (3DMARK)

This means you won’t go as high with ATITool on the memory as you will with AO, but ATITool will ultimately give you the better benchmark numbers. Once you feel comfortable with ATITool, you may try AO and do your own performance comparisons.

2D/3D Modes

This is where ATI has changed things in their “[over]clocking” approach. In the x1K series video cards, ATI has made a differentiation between 2D and 3D modes. What this means is: running in 2D uses different frequencies and voltages on the video card than running in 3D. This was introduced to help lower power consumption while idling (ie. 2D mode). This makes writing an overclocking tool tricky because now the programmer has to account for both settings. Luckily for us, there is a way around this. ATI uses the service it calls “ATI Hotkey Poller” aka “ati2evxx.exe” (perhaps that’s what it started out to be).

Its main function now, with an x1K card, is to detect a full screen 3D application, and to raise the clocks and voltages up to full speed. For an x1900 the 2D clocks are 500MHz on the core/GPU (graphical processing unit) and 600MHz on the video card’s memory. Voltages are 1.175v and 2.089v respectively (as configured by software). The 3D clocks and voltages for an X1900XT by default are:

625MHz on the core @ 1.425v

750MHz on the RAM @ 2.089v

The X1900XTX is similar and only varies in the frequencies (650MHz/774MHz) from the X1900XT.

The table below lists the default GPU and MEMORY speed for the different X1800 and X1900 models, the value is in the last column GPU/MEM.


Screenshot from HWBot Videocard Database

Now we can eliminate this confusion by shutting down that service (“ATI Hotkey Poller” - ati2evxx.exe) via Task Manager, or we can disable it entirely from inside the Windows Services management (Start > Run > services.msc). Once this service has been shutdown or disabled, the x1K video cards will no longer increase clock speeds and voltages once a 3D application has been detected, and your video card will use the “2D mode” settings you have specified (which translates to 500MHz/600MHz by default). The 2D mode settings will be the settings we will overclock with ATITool (or AO).


How to use ATITool is up next ->