Overclocking a Geforce3 TI 200 question

[excelscior]

How does a person know at what setting to set the Memory clock and the Core clock of a graphics card? My Geforce 3 TI 200 Core clock is set at default 175 mhz. And my Memory clock default is at 401mhz. How would I know how far I can crank these two parameters up too? Should I go up 1 mhz at a time for each and watch for instability? Or do I change the memory clock by itself for example, until my pc locks? Then back off a bit, then work on the Core clock? By the way.......the reason I'm curious is that since I removed the heat sink from GPU. I replaced it with a third party fan. Since then, my pc locks up within 2 minutes of playing Unreal Tournament or 3D mark 2001 the bench work test. It just locks up. Thanks for any advice. Laterz.

[namrak]

Since you replaced the stock fan and used a third party fan, what kind of thermal conductivity did you use between fan and gpu? Thermal tape? Thermal tape is inefficient in transferring heat. If you used thermal paste, how much did you put on? There only really needs to be a very thin layer. Many individuals err on the heavy side and too much paste makes for inefficient heat transfer as well.
What this means is under heavy 3d gaming, your video card will become unstable and lock up. You'll probably have to pop off the fan and reapply thermal paste like Arctic Silver 3.

I just went through the process myself with a GeForce3 to squeeze out more performance out of it. The Crystal Orb couldn't help me overclock the card any more. I just may have reached the limit of my card at 230core/535mem.
Most people overclock their cards by testing in increments of 5 at the beginning. Then you might want to do a search on Google looking for a range of overclock speeds of the particular video card you have.
G'luck!

[gibsinep]

The fan isnt on right, I am sure. Your video card is getting much to hot and vant stand it so it freezes itself. Check out what namrak said

[excelscior]

I actually purchased 2 Geforce3 TI 200 for both my pc's. One of them came from Pony. It had a heatsink/fan combo. And the memory modules had heatsinks over them. "Very classy". The other geforce card was not "so classy". It was a OEM from Nvidea. It only had a heat sink over the GPU. Not other cooling was included. I guess it saved Nvidea some money. It could be that I did not use enough or even use thermal paste at all. I'll check though. Thanks for the insight guys. Laterz.:t :D

[gibsinep]

hmm, My Geforce 3 ti 200 has a fan/heatsink.

I bet that OEM card isn't clocked as high as the average retail card, thats how they can get away without having a fan.

Or how big is the Heatsink?

[excelscior]

The OEM heatsink was big. It covered the entire GPU and grazed a few memory modules near it. I just wanted to add a fan because I knew I would eventually overclock this thing. I did buy a couple memory module heatsink add-ons and a heatsink combo for the GPU. I'll see how things go from here. Thanks again. Laterz.:t

[JuNacy]

I think I have the same exact card. My friend gave me his old GF3 Ti 200, and all it had was a large, black heatsink on the GPU. It was clocked to GF3 Ti 200 specs, 175/400. Anyway, I swapped out the heatsink and slapped on a Tt Crystal Orb with some ASIII, and some ramsinks. I got a decent overclock out of it. I have it at 215/485 with no artifacts. Chances are that you should be able to get a decent overclock with that card. Just remember to bring it up slowly.

[gibsinep]

Well if the Heatsink was large then I nderstand how they did it. Kinda like what they do tothe V3 1000mhz chips no fan just amassive heatink.

[namrak]

Yeah, I've seen those too where the video card doesn't come with a stock hsf, but just some MONSTROUS heatsink. Passive cooling would be fine for the average joe, but then they'd be in the wrong forum wouldn't they? ;)

Junacy, I figure you could squeeze out more from your GeForce3 Ti200. After reading as much overclocking articles on the Ti200s, I found that most people were ending up around 220s-230s for core and 500s-530s for memory speeds using the stock hsf or Blue Orb/Crystal Orb.

[JuNacy]

Well, I was using Coolbits to OC the card and the highest it would go was 220/500. The slider bars were at the end so there wasn't any room left to make it go any higher....I guess I was stuckwith some slow memory chips....Is there another utility that I could use to push the card higher?

[namrak]

There's a couple of ways I can suggest to overclock your card higher. Nvidia drivers only allow you to overclock the core and memory frequencies by maximum 25%. That's why you are only able to hit 220 core and 500 memory speeds which most GeForce3 Ti200s can easily hit.

The first way is to download Riva Tuner here (http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/) and use it to maximize overclocking. Pretty cool to use, but some people like to keep installations of applications to a minimum. You can easily make the necessary modifications to your registry yourself. This brings us to the second option...

The second way is to follow these directions to modify your registry yourself. *Disclaimer* I don't accept any responsibilities if you mess up your registry since its your decision to follow these directions or not. With that said, it will be breeze following these steps.

1) Run regedit and then Ctrl-f (Find command) to search for "Krusty" (no quotes).

2) Take the data value in Krusty and use it for Bart. You do this by right-clicking on Bart key and choosing modify. Make sure that Krusty and Bart have the same data values.

3) Once this is done, don't close the registry editor, but go to your overclocking tab in the Display Properties panel. You'll find that your overclocking core and memory maximum slider values have increased by another 25%. Begin incrementing your overclocks for your Ti200.

4) If the max slider values still aren't high enough for you, the value in Krusty will be changed and you can just do it over again for another increase.

There you have it. The Krusty registry hack in all its glory. I was able to hit 230/530 with my Leadtek GF3 Ti200. Here (http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/geforce2-overclocking.html) is an overclocking article at x-bit labs briefly going over the Krusty hack. Read through the overclocking section thoroughly of the article. Let me know how much higher you hit. Good luck! :cool:

[JuNacy]

I tried the registry hack and I was able to get it to 230/530 max, but it wasn't entirely stable even though I bumped up the AGP voltage. Artifacts galore when running 3dmark2001. But I backed it down to 225/515 and it runs pretty good now. Thanks for the tip namrak....:)

[namrak]

Very cool! At least you were able to get an extra bump in core and memory speeds. I'm sure that's worth a few marks in 3dMark. :cool:

It seems like not too many people know about the Krusty hack, though everybody seems to know about Coolbits.
Learn something every day heh heh. :D :t

Cheers...

[gibsinep]

Yeah I didnt know about that "Krusty" hack.


Thanks namrak