I used this guide:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ds-warning

I used Rivatuner and ATI tools per the guide. It ran more than 2 minutes w/o artifacts. Ran 3DMark06 fine. I was reading through the forum, and I didn't see a lot of people getting this much OC.

70% fan speed
Core: 802 mhz
Shader: 1966 mhz
Memory: 972 mhz

The core temp is ~59C while running ATI tool artifact scanner for several minutes. Stock was 78C.

Am I missing something? Are these results normal for this card?

Specs:
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC
Antec earthwatts EA500
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz, OC'd to 3.3ghz@1.34V
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
BFG Tech GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB
Windows Vista Home Basic 32 bit (OEM)

As long as you followed the guide properly, it looks fine. You can't OC the memory any higher?

No. For some reason, OCing the memory causes artifacts right away. I don't think I changed it at all.

That's too bad, raising it higher could bring more performance boost.

I would run ati tool for at least 30 mins.

I have noticed that my overclock will run fine for 10 mins, but when it hits the 30 min mark the temp will get high and artifacts will appear.

To make sure. Go for 30 mins. If no artifacts have appeared, and your temp has been stable for at least 7 mins, then your good.

This makes sense considering you play games for longer than 2 mins at a time, so why would you stress your card under load for only 2 mins...

good luck

I've always seen that the memory on the GTS doesn't go very far (I've heard 1080Mhz), though you seem to hit a wall very early. Though, all of the benchmarks shown see to indicate that the memory overclock has little to do with the increase in FPS. It did in some cases, but in most about 90% of the increase came from the core overclock. Hopefully you can get that memory to at least get above 1000Mhz though.

I usually stay at a 780/1070 OC for my card, but I have pushed it to about 800/1100. It was slightly higher than that, but I don't really remember.

up the fan speed.whats your load temp?in my experience when the load temp go above 71C the pc will freeze instantly. so 70C is your limit.have to up the fan to at least 50%. and the noise is what i called acceptably quiet.