ATI Radeon X1950 Pro with Native CrossFire

For our next set of performance metrics, we spent a little time overclocking the Radeon X1950 Pro using the clock frequency slider available within ATI's drivers, under the "Overdrive" tab.

Overclocking the Radeon X1950 Pro (Fastest 3D Video Cards) + Overclocking = Even Faster Cards

To find each card's peak core and memory frequencies, we slowly raised their respective sliders until we begun to see visual artifacts on-screen while running a game or benchmark, or until our test system was no longer stable.  During our testing, we found that ATI's built-in optimal clock speed detection mechanism didn't work well with the X1950 Pros in its current state, as it would cause an error and trigger a VPU recovery. Manually tweaking the clocks seemed to function properly, however.

Radeon X1950 Pro - Overclocked Speeds: 614MHz Core / 712MHz (1.42GHz DDR) Memory
Radeon X1950 Pro - Default Clock Speeds: 575MHz Core / 690MHz (1.38GHz DDR) Memory

Radeon X1950 Pro - Overclocked Speeds: 614MHz Core / 712MHz (1.42GHz DDR) Memory
Radeon X1950 Pro - Default Clock Speeds: 575MHz Core / 690MHz (1.38GHz DDR) Memory

When all was said and done, we were able to take the Radeon X1950 Pro up from its default core and memory clock speeds of 575MHz / 690MHz, respectively, to 614MHz / 712MHz, increases of 6.7% and 3.1%. We're not totally confident in these results, however, as the test system would lock without any sort of visual artifacts but the cards were running nice and cool.  As is always the case when overclocking anyway, your mileage may vary.

While we had the card overclocked, we re-ran a couple of benchmarks to see what kind of performance gains would result from the higher clocks.  F.E.A.R.'s frame rate went up by a paltry 1 FPS, while Prey's increased by 3.3 FPS.