Hi everyone.
As i said before, i have done some testing over the weekend. i decided to take the "yard condition" slim (65nm, 2004B, dyn001) that was overclocked to 750/925 with stock voltage because i thought that the potential would be the biggest at this particular one.
Spoiler: it is not.
First i had to find out whats the stock voltage (dont have my multimeter here..), so i began to start with 0,96v. Console booted, but no picture. there is only one conclusion: its undervolted. i went higher and higher until the core stabilizes and found out that 1,1v has to be the stock voltage. so now i had a reference and knew from my experience, how far i can go as i do have some older experiences from my curie graphic cards. i decided to test core frequency first, so i built a 800/900 and flashed it. i raised voltage to 1,15v (took the value for 1,165v as there are some losses due to efficiency) and it stabilized with 800/900. tested Crysis 3 and some other games and everything was running fine, no artifacts, no crashes. i was pretty positive and sure it will take a lot, so i next tested 850/900.
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First boot: freeze in xmb. i raised voltage to 1,2v. still freezes, but a little bit later. so i raised voltage again to 1,22v but still kept freezing in xmb. at this point i knew, that this is gonna be a tough one as that is way too much volts for that low frequency. i knew it wouldnt help to push voltage higher, but i did. raised it again to 1,25v. still freezing. at this point it was absolutely clear, that the rsx cant take that much voltage and stabilize. i set fanspeed at 100% in fantable and as everbody expected, it didnt freeze in xmb instantly anymore. i tried to start a game, but it froze. of course it did. i raised voltage to 1,28v, but nope, it turned of with 3 beeps when a game is started. errlog says 1002 but thats what i expected. Tokins are worn out and cant provide that much power any longer.
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yep, thats a bummer. GPU started so insanely high with stock voltages but just lets me add another 50 mhz...
alright. i went back to 800 core as it seems to be the maximum that chip can handle.
but... what about vram? maybe i got some more luck there. i put a 800/950 on and lowered voltage to 1,25v and yep, it boots. tested crysis 3 again for 30 minutes with 50% fanspeed and gpu temperature was at 65 Celsius. Everything was fine. so i decided to push it further. 800/975 was next. and again it perfectly boots and runs stable in crysis 3. now i had a goal. i wanted a 4 digit vram clock and flashed 800/1000. nothing special to say, it runs.
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so i tested crysis 3, farcry 3 and gta 4. it does a great job. performance is very decent and there is no flickering/texture warping or artifacts. temperatures seem fine and thats what they have to be. [notice the word "cell" in that crysis scene, maybe its a little foreshadowing whats going to be overclocked next?lol]
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if temps exceed 70 C it starts with artifacts but it wont crash. i decided to stop here even though i am very sure i could raise vram to 1050. but at this point its not necessary as it is way more than some of you would expect from a 65nm rsx.
whats the conclusion and what do we learn from that?
there are many things i can confirm:
1) yes, chips do have to run on low temps. 70C seems to be a magical border at slim consoles. sweet spot is 60-65 C.
2) yes, 65nm seem to be not the best choice for overclocking as they only can handle poor core frequencies
3) no, its absolutely wrong that they cant go over 650 core. "none of them can", but mine do obviously. even with stock voltages. they dont go high, thats correct. but they can definitely do 700 or in some cases 750.
4) yep, it looks like at least some of them can reach crazy vram speeds, as mine does easily 1ghz.
5) and last thing: there has to be a difference between 65nm slim and 65nm fats, as i have never seen such crazy vram speeds on fat 65nm fabs. my 65nm fat does struggle with 650core and 850 vram, but i think we need to get more data here. maybe my fat is an unlucky one, but i dont think so.
i am thinking about desoldering the tokins and start a new test with tantalizers. i dont have much hope there as voltage is already too high for such poor frequency. im pretty sure i shouldnt go over 1,3v Vcore...
thanks for reading and i hope i could help.
to be continued...
