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ATI 9700 ramsinks

M

Myrandex

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 4, 2002
Messages
439
I purchased an ATI Radeon 9500 128MB, and successfully modded it to an ATI 9700 card. I slapped on a Thermaltake Crystal Orb for the fan, and I could take the clock speeds higher, but I am still receiving minor pixel corruption (so far only in Half Life based games, like Counterstrike or Day of Defeat). It used to be pretty bad, but I turned back the memory clock and it went away for the most part (now just minor on occasions). I am thinking some Ramsinks would help. I would like to find the cheapest place to grab 8 of them, plus the best way to attach them. There used to be a sticky here with links to vendors, and one vendor had Alpha heatsinks for the 9700 cards for pretty cheap, yet the sticky is gone thus so is my link. Any help would be appreciated, thanks all,
Jason
edit -> My card is a Sapphire card with 3.3ns Infeon (sp?) modules; how high should I push these anyways?
 
max you're going to get your memory is 300 (600DDR) unless you decide to do a volt mod, which isn't for the faint of heart, nor the inexperienced at soldering :p

Max you can get with a volt mod is probably somewhere around 330 :(

I was able to hit 330 for a short while, and then no longer :p

You're pretty limited by the memory type on your card, but the core should do great, did you remove the shim? Make sure you have good contact and you should be able to push 380+ core, IMO, but as all overclocking, there are no guarantees.
 
I am running at 300 core / mem right now, just to be on the safe side. I did not remove the shim because I was afraid of damaging the core. I put the thermal paste on a little thick to help with the contact situation (I know its not the best, but its better then having a hole or seperation form). At 300/300, I still receive the smallest of artifacts after playing for a while, and thats only in the half life games I play, I can run 3D Mark with no artifacts at all. The artifacts saved in a screen shot from when its real bad if you want to see, its mainly purple, red, and green dots showing up on textures. Do you think Ramsinks would help alleviate this problem, or should I not waste my time with them? Also, whats the best adhesive, for them, I Don't want to use thermal tape.
Jason
 
i used to get those artifacts too, it's probably the core... if it's memory artifacts they'll be polygonal (triangles and the like). The best option is to mod your heatsink so it makes better contact... or find someone to sell you a 9800 pro cooler (i can give you an e-mail if you're lookin' for one) Ramsinks wont help those memory modules unless yo'ure volt modding, they're not heat limited. They're crappy infineon 3.3 limited ;P
 
What is the official speed for 3.3ns RAM? I forgot the formula to find it. I figure a Crystal Orb would be more powerful then a stock 9800 fan. This thing has like a 5500 RPM fan, and its Copper coated with Nickel for the heatsink. I wonder if I should invest in some AS3 or AS5 for it.
Jason
 
I used ATI Tool, and my core went all the way up to about 360, but my mem was a different story. If y'all arean't familiar with the tool, it gradually overclocks and tests for artifacts, 'finding the highest speed'. Well the core went great, I set it at 551 with RadOverclocker, ran 3Dmark '03 (score increased to 5000), no artifacts at all and all is well. When I ran the program to find memory max speed, it started creeping up nice and slow, and once it hit 300MHz., yellow artifacts began appearing on its DirectX spinning cude with a 'fuzzy' texture applied to it. So the utility started backing down, it got to 275MHz. and I just hit cancel out of disgust. Then I started the mem tester again, and at about 275MHz. the whole windows screen got awful, and the whole 'cube' was a yellow splotch, I turned my comp off, turned it back on and was greeted with the beep meaning no video card. I turned it back off again, waited a little bit, then turned it back on and everything is working, but now I feel like my memory is crap. The only chance I could see is they are heating up, and not dissipating it real fast, thus the graphical errors when slowing the memory down. Any other theories will be accepted, and all replies much appreciated,
Jason
 
lower your core. You should be able to get 297 SOLID with those memories, but not much higher. Also... softmodded cards generally have a bit of artifacting, no matter how small... ATi's QC is supposed to be pretty damn good. If you dont see them in games then i'd call it good.
 
Originally posted by Myrandex
What is the official speed for 3.3ns RAM? I forgot the formula to find it. I figure a Crystal Orb would be more powerful then a stock 9800 fan. This thing has like a 5500 RPM fan, and its Copper coated with Nickel for the heatsink. I wonder if I should invest in some AS3 or AS5 for it.
Jason
Click to expand...

Assumption: 3.30ns

1/(3.30*10^-9s)=3.03*10^8Hz=303Mhz
 
w3rd up

A 92mm fan would probably be more effective blowing over your card than passive ram sinks.

Ram sinks are for asthetics mostly, unless you have a fan.
 
Originally posted by V0ltage
get some ramsinks and a vantec card cooler.
Click to expand...

People... the 'fin 3.3's wont go higher unless you voltmod... if you're a lucky bastard they will, but they're not good chips. You can put ramsinks on for looks, but it wont help.. i'd know :(
 
Hah ManAngel, my ram is so bad it can't even run at the normal speed, it locks up at 300.00MHz. (and I think less, maybe I'll try 290 out for a while).
 
Originally posted by Myrandex
Hah ManAngel, my ram is so bad it can't even run at the normal speed, it locks up at 300.00MHz. (and I think less, maybe I'll try 290 out for a while).
Click to expand...

damn that SUCKS... my 'fin 3.3's ran 303 fine... anything higher = L:KAFJA:LFKJDA!!!!!!!

I voltmodded and got up to about 324, but that'd artifact after too logn... (i had it up to about 3.2v)
 
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