9800GTX – monster overclocking and an RMA already

I got my 9800GTX last week, and it flies! It's certainly not a big leap from my 8800GTX, but it's a nice bump upward and all my games have been noticeably smoother. Using my usual combination of Rivatuner and the ATI Tool artifact scan, I got the core clock up to a whopping 799mhz and the shader up to 1890mhz using the stock cooler (my water block is still at the Primochill labs).

Here's the weird thing though: the memory clock wouldn't budge. Any increase at all cause ATI Tool to freeze up or crash, and I got display driver errors. Pretty odd considering I've heard of people getting a solid 2500mhz memory clock on this card. But here's what's really weird: despite total stability in ATI Tool, I kept getting crashes in games. I downclocked the card to stock speeds, and still got the crashes. The crashes were display driver errors. So on an educated whim, I downclocked the memory to 100mhz below stock speed. Presto, no more crashes! I was able to increase the core and shader clocks to the previously mentioned speeds with no troubles.

Problem is of course that I didn't pay for a card that won't run at stock speed. So I'm getting an RMA. The card is running just fine for now, so I'll be getting plenty of use out of it over the next week while I wait for EVGA to ship me the new card.

On another note, Primochill gave me a quick update late last week. They think it was the result of PCI Ice, which had been reformulated with an anti-algae, and the Liquid Utopia (also an anti-algae) being used together in such a small loop. I should be hearing back from them Monday or Tuesday.