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Thread: Can I get away with no sinks on vid ram ?

  1. #1
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    Can I get away with no sinks on vid ram ?

    My BFG6800 OC came with the big copper dual fan HSF, it's not as quiet as I would like. I have an aerocool VM-101 fanless heat sink, however it does not come with sinks for the ram. Soooo, I'm wonder how it might work w/out them untill I can get some on it.



    System: current config
    AN7
    XP2400 - 213x11
    2x512 corsair XMS series 5,2,2,2 PC3200 - 1:1 11,2,2,2
    BFG 6800OC - currently at 393/862 - drv 71.84 - opened pipes and shader with riva tuner
    WD 80GB - Maxtor 15GB - both ATA 100
    Older Creative Labs CDRW 8 4 32 dev man reports it as CREATIVE CD-RW RW8438
    Newer Noname DVD drive - dev man reports it as JLMS XJ=HD1665
    3.5 floppy drive
    winfast (Leadtek) tv tuner
    Onboard NIC
    Areocool HT101 HSF - push/pull with 2 cheap 80mm fans (stock fan was messed up) using AS5
    Codegen 500 W PSU - all volts above rated except 12v which will dip just under
    Full tower case
    XP PRO SP2


    Smagma
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  2. #2
    Stark Raving MOD Midknyte's Avatar
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    ooh. i would get some ram sinks if i were you. those chips get pretty darn hot. you might be able to get away with running at stock speed, but you'd probably see some artifacting after a while.

    did you already open the aero cool? I would recommend the zalman vf700cu instead. it has a very quiet fan (you can even run at 7v instead of 12v) plus it has ram sinks.

    btw, the 71.84s have a known heat issue. what are your idle temps? I would suggest you update to the 71.89s or try the 76.44/45 WHQL betas.

  3. #3
    Member widget2003's Avatar
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    yeah i would have said yeah no ram sinks are needed if the card was maybe a 9800 or 5900 but your card would need them i reakon and also for your peace of mind

  4. #4
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    Sorry guys, I got way sidetracked.

    Anyway, I did decide to wait till I got some sinks. I did open the Pkg already so no return, that thing was a bear to get open.

    I have the sinks now and will put everything on Sat. I will be blowing an 80 mm fan over the vid card, maybe two. I'm gonna switch to the 71.89 drivers in about 10 seconds

    Thanks
    Smagma
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  5. #5
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    Now, that's just crazy! GPU idle temp went from 61C to 49C just from switching to the 71.89 drivers. Was the software mis-reporting or can the drivers make that much difference ?

    Edit: stooopid me I forgot I lost my OC when I switched drivers
    Last edited by Smagma; 06-03-2005 at 09:03 PM.
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  6. #6
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    OK, now were back to crazy. OCd back to 395/849, that core is 2Mhz faster than before. it's idleing at 48C without the AC blowing and 46C when it is. I may still get a slightly better OC, I hope.

    The Card is a BFG 6800 OC

    Smagma
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  7. #7
    Member widget2003's Avatar
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    oh the vid card's ram would have been ok with a 80mm fan blowing on there but yeah sinks will help a lot.

    and it still might have caused troubles i dont know

  8. #8
    Stark Raving MOD Midknyte's Avatar
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    yeah dude. there was a serious heat issue with the 71.84s-76.10s. I'm guessing they just applied whatever fix worked on the 76.40s.

    the 6800's ram gets super hot. that's why they have a heatpipe on the stock heatsink.

  9. #9
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    OK, I have the ram sinks and VM-101 on. At the same OC as before, I gained back all the heat I lost last night. However, Thats with no fans. I put it on backwards also, so that the cpu fans weren't pulling in it's hot air. Seem's to have settled at 64C after being on for about 10 min so far. I'm gonna rearange things a little and set up an 80mm fan for it.

    Smagma
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  10. #10
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    update: The 71.89 brought the idle temp down but seems to be less stable than the 71.84 . I dropped the OC to 351/760 and it's still crashing to desktop or freezing Farcry and DOOM3. If the load temps are even higher with this new heatpipe setup that might cause it. I think I'll set the GPU back to stock speeds and see if it stableizes, if that doesn't do it, I'll set the CPU back to 200x11 and see if that does.

    Idle settled in at 50/51C, not sure what to do for a load temp except set up a second monitor and put the temp on it.

    Think I'll try the 76.xx stuf and see what that does first.

    Smagma
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  11. #11
    Stark Raving MOD Midknyte's Avatar
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    you can monitor temps with rivatuner. leave the hardware monitoring on, then play your game or a 3dmark demo, etc. then you can see your recorded temps.

  12. #12
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    I didn't know that, I'll use that then. As I said the 71.89 didn't seemed less than stable, but that may have been my CPU OC. I change the CPU to 200x11 which my mem should have no problems with. The CPU has never had problems at that speed either, but I suppose it could be going South on me.

    I tried the 77.13 and it seemed more stable than the 76.44. What I thought was interesting is that when I had it detect optimal freq it gave the highest Core I've ever seen it give 392. I noticed a kind of horizontal flickery line kinda thing so I went back to 71.84 to see if it was a driver thing. apparently not.
    I suspect that my ram may not be getting sufficient cooling with the new sinks.

    Any way. I'm going back to do a more thorough testing of the 77.13

    I hope the next Official release deals with the temp issue.

    Smagma
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  13. #13
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    I noticed a kind of horizontal flickery line kinda thing so I went back to 71.84 to see if it was a driver thing. apparently not.
    Can you say EMI ... I knew ya could
    I don't know why It didn't occur to me, since my mobo, etc is outside the case now, about 1 1/2 foot away from the monitor Nothing that going liquid and getting everything back in the case won't fix.

    77.13 still seems stable

    Smagma
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  14. #14
    Stark Raving MOD Midknyte's Avatar
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    the auto detect for max overclock isn't that accurate, but it can give you a baseline score. you'll have to change the settings and test to find your true max.

  15. #15
    Member Smagma's Avatar
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    I just did some doom3 timedemos between the 71.89 and the 77.13 All else being equal the frame rates were the same. The tests were done with no aa/af or vsync - At Quality 1024x768 also no aa/af or vsync I get 64.3 FPS and at High quality 1024x768 etc. it dropped about 10 FPS which is still playable. Long story shorter, I can play what ever with aa and play without lag. normally I use 2xq for doom3 and I set farcry aa/af in-game.

    I haven't found the max Core freq with these drivers yet, but so far I haven't seen it stable beyond 400 Mhz. Iv'e had the ram close to 900 but it seems like what works one day doesn't the next. right now it's at 395/802. I'll be pushing further later.

    Smagma
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