"new" video card

CART Rulz · Post by **CART Rulz** » 18 Nov 2004, 17:03

Its a "sandwich" heatsink with aluminum plates on each side, with 2 heatpipes connecting them. There is a fan that constantly blows, and a turbo fan that is controlled by a switch. Its supposed to be an effective design, but the temp seems high.

Flow · Post by **Flow** » 18 Nov 2004, 19:06

carrera wrote:me i don't have any problems with heat of course...why...because according to the u.s.a i live in an igloo..
carrera

Yup, the problem we have is frost on the monitor... need to scrape the frost whit a credit card a few time while racing...hummm!

Im actualy working with an architect to find a way of having a second floor for my igloo... He cool, there were a polar bear in my backyard last week eating my garbadge...

Ouf!... I think il go back to work!

CART Rulz · Post by **CART Rulz** » 18 Nov 2004, 21:10

Hey guys I've got another question. Whenever I hear about overclocking, I always hear about artifacts. Any idea what that means? Is there a program to test for artifacts?

Oh and concerning cooling, I may be able to help my situation. At the moment the card is running at 58-60 degrees. Remember when I made that invention I said the A/C duct was right under my desk? Well guess what, now its winter and heat is blasting out of the duct, and it seems to raise the temperature a considerable amount. Now its at 58-60 but later in the night when it gets colder, the heat goes on and the temperatures raise up to 68-70. So by redirecting the heat, I should be able to lower temps without providing a cold air supply. Though I'm still working on how to pump cold air into the pc without an air conditioner. I bet liquid nitrogen would to the trick, hehe

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 19 Nov 2004, 01:49

artifacts are irregularities in the video, lots of time it will be white dots, sometimes a checkerboard effect will appear, really Cart, with that card running as a 9800XT now, i really see no reason to overclock it anyway, it will cause a heat increase for sure, and the performance gains aren't worth the hassle in my opinion. if you were to watercool it, then i'd say o/c the h e double hockey sticks out of it, lol
Actually i was running mine at XT speeds for several months with no problems, but the performance increase wasn't that much as far as FPS was concerned, maybe an increase of 5 or so, nuttn huge

The biggest advantage of flashing to an XT is that it unlocks a few shader optomisations from what i hear, and increases the quality

Also, can you close that duct? if so, you'll have no heat comin' in, lol

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 19 Nov 2004, 02:48

here are a few tips when running 3D Mark too Cart, make sure you set the controls in your "advanced 3d tab" in your drivers to high performance, that will significantly increase your scores, also make sure AA and AF are set to application preferance

CART Rulz · Post by **CART Rulz** » 20 Nov 2004, 17:49

Hey guys I've got a question. There are two P4 processors I'm looking at, one is a 3.4 and the other is a 3.6. They both have 1MB Cache and 800Mhz FSB. Do you think there would be any difference betweem them? There is a huge price difference, $280 vs. $465. Also, would this be a big jump from my P4 2.6, 512KB Cache and I think a 533Mhz FSB? Also, are the any Motherbopard suggestions? I've heard Asus and Gigabyte are good.

Thanks for all your help,

CART

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 20 Nov 2004, 21:25

For motherboards, while they're not the only ones doing good boards, you really can't go wrong with ASUS, even if you have to pay a small premium. You can see that as buying peace of mind without compromising performance.

As for the price difference between the CPUs, the price difference is usually exponential between the top, best CPU and 2nd- and 3rd- best CPUs. Unless you really have to brag about it, it's usually not worth buying the most expensive CPU.

aawil · Post by **aawil** » 24 Nov 2004, 04:34

After a day of the computer being down and me not knowing why i finally figured out why it kept instantly shuting down on me. I took the heat sink off to clean it but i didn't put new grease on it. And that was the problem. I was ready to throw the thing out the damn window. Feeled so damn good to know I figured that one out.

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 24 Nov 2004, 07:03

Be sure to use something like Arctic Silver instead of the cheapo white thermal paste ("grease") or even worse, the double-sided so-called "thermal" tape or thermal pad. It does make things run cooler by a not-insignificant margin compared to using the cheap stuff.

aawil · Post by **aawil** » 24 Nov 2004, 07:15

It is the silver stuff made by antec. A very small tube of it cost me $16 I wasn't to pleased. After a couple hours of running the cpu at 46 degrees C. And that's not under a heavy load like the F1 game. Does this seem high?

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 24 Nov 2004, 13:28

try checking it after running the game for about 20 mins or so Aaron, if it stays under 50 c then you're ok, but like Bilbo says, Arctic silver 5 is the BEST thermal paste you can get, a small tube at Comp USA is about 10 bucks, and is worth the investment, all you need is a very thin coat over the core of the processor

CART Rulz · Post by **CART Rulz** » 26 Nov 2004, 03:10

Ok guys how cold is too cold? I have made my other "invention" whereI'm drawing cold air from the outside and blowing it right on the cpu and vid card. After playing about 3 hours of Battlefield 1942 the temperature of the video card has dropped from 70C to 55 degrees Celsius under load, and my cpu reading is 32 Celsius, but thats from the temp probe I have, I don't know how to measure through the mobo, I don't think it has a probe. As I sit here and let it idle the temps keep dropping as it gets darker. CPU is now 22 and vid card is 51. It even gets down to 48 if I turn on the turbo fan. Now, if I use this all the way through the winter, the air temp gets to about 0-10 Fahrenheight, and I can only imagine what the temps inside will be like. Is it ok to have temperatures very low? If its at 55 now, it will probably be like 40-45C, or maybe even lower in a few weeks.

Thanks,

CART

carrera · Post by **carrera** » 26 Nov 2004, 16:10

Yo cart,
don't worry about core temps man...optimum operating temperature for a processor is actually -40 degrees fareheit(celsius is the same at that point).Your computer processors run best at that temperature and above.just watch for condensation after you shut it down.That should not be a problem as you power supply and processors stay warm for a few minutes aftre anyway and burn up any moisture.Our outside temps here this morning is -11 degrees.Mid winter will hit -40 degrees(celsius and farenheit).My 9800 pro all in wonder runs in game at 45 degrees and my processor runs at 38 degrees.But I am using and amd not a pentium which runs hotter
carrera

carrera · Post by **carrera** » 26 Nov 2004, 16:12

p.s I cannot flash my all in wonder because it has the wrong memory.I can however flash the other 9800 pro(not all in wonder)to an xt.I will do that as soon as i get the time.
carrera

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 26 Nov 2004, 18:26

I tried a GeForceFX 5700 (plain, not Ultra or LT) in my PC last night. What a deception, I am getting 1/3 (yes, one third!) the performance I had with my old GeForce 3, according to 3dMark2001SE (~2500 vs ~8000) and F1C's 3D Config application (10.1 vs 29.8 MTri/sec). While I did not expect an amazing gain in performance, I was expecting it to be at least comparable to the GF3...

This does not look normal to me but I have tried to play with pretty much every setting I could with no result. I changed drivers between ASUS's and nVidia reference, I changed FastWrites, Sideband Adressing, AGP Aperture Size, changed chipset drivers from latest VIA Hyperion to older 4-in-1 drivers, forced every effects (AA, AF) to disabled and enabled all optimisations in the driver config and got almost no perceptible difference. The voltages and temperatures look OK.

I will probably reinstall XP as a last resort this weekend to clear any potential driver problems but I'd like to know what you guys-who-change-video-card-more-often-than-me think about this situation. Is there hope or should I just stay with my old, trusty and rusty GF3 until I change the whole system in about a year or so?

System Specs:
ASUS A7V266-E board (AGP 4x, 266MHz FSB, 430W power supply)
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ (2.0 GHz true)
768MB RAM
ASUS v9570 128MB GFX5700 (vs ASUS v8200 Deluxe 64MB GF3)
Samsung CM-348B CD/RW-DVD ROM Combo drive
Too many harddisks

Thanks for your help.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 27 Nov 2004, 00:41

have you tried using Driver Cleaner? seems to me that that card should kick the hell out of the GF3, if you want it let me know, and i can send it to you bilbo , or just download it from http://www.driverheaven.net/ it's a program that removes all traces of older drivers, lots of folks swear by it

carrera · Post by **carrera** » 27 Nov 2004, 03:25

I think Steve is right.I think you have too many references to old drivers in there.Even my daughters computer with a geforece 3 ti 500 gets 34 million triangles per second with 1024x768 85 hz configuration.The geforce 5700 should kick its ass badly.The 9800 pro though gets a cool 74 million triangles per second at 1280x1024 at 75 hz so i think the 5700 should get around 45 to 50 million at 1024x768 85hz...If all else fails though.you should just reformat the thing to get maximim speed anyway.
p.s I run a 60 and an 80 gig hard drive because I have no raid channel to speed things up.ATA 133 is the best i can do for now till i get another motherboard..
carrera

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 27 Nov 2004, 03:25

Hey Steve, I owe you one! Cleaning the drivers just did the trick! Without tweaking, I now get ~10k in 3dMark2001SE and 2.9k in 3dMark2003. F1C's 3DConfig gives me 33.3MTri/sec and now recommends Full textures/effects.

While these numbers are not the end of the world, they're pretty much in line with what I expected and now I can start tweaking. I am primarily looking for better image quality with this card and it looks like I'm gonna have it now, especially since I can now see things in the benchmarks that I could not see before!

Thank you very much!

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 27 Nov 2004, 03:29

< pats self on back > you're welcome Bilbo, LOL, believe me, i went through the same thing when i first installed my 9800 Pro, but even driver cleaner didn't help, i had to do a reformat < some people have to when switching from Nvidia to ATI >, glad you're rockin now m8 !!!!
Also, how familiar are you fella's with Aquamark 3? i just installed it the other day, and i get a score of 44,600 or so. is that a decent score for a 9800 XT running in my system?

In 3DMark 01SE i get around 17,700, and in 03 i get 6,625 ish

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 27 Nov 2004, 03:32

Thanks for the help Carrera, I will now look into tweaking that (nowadays)cheap card (sorry, we were posting at the same time).

Steve, I was not expecting that kind of problem because I figured going from nVidia to nVidia wouldn't hurt that much. Well, I guess I was wrong...