Suggestions for cooling ATI 1950xt?

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Emraith

n00b
Joined
Dec 16, 2006
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I've replaced the stock cooler with a zalman vf900, applied with artic silver 5. The video card gets warmer than I think its supposed to be, hovers around 85-90c after about an hour of gaming. I've tried adding an Evercool Fox-1(this) which does pull air out the back, but didnt seem to help the temperature. So I picked up an Antec Vcool card(this) Which again, does absolutely nothing either.

My case does have pretty good airflow, as best as I can get it anyway. 1 Silverstone 120mm fan pulling air in, toward the video card. Side of the case(Thermaltake Armor) has a 250mm fan pulling air in, which is right above the video card too. 1 Silverstone 120mm above the video card(behind cpu heatsink) for exhaust. I was thinking about getting a small water cooler for it, but most of the reviews i read on the tidewater were less than impressive.

Does anyone have any other suggestions of what I can do it get this card's temps down?
 
That seems way too hot...I have an X1900XTX running at 730/830 with stock cooling and it never goes over 65.....Something is wrong ...

where are you reading temps?
 
Ramsinks are on and secured. I did reseat the cooler, no change in temps. I didnt call customer service, because if i'm not having an actual problem, I doubt they'd do anything. The card works perfectly fine, no artifacting or anything. Its just it seems to be running alittle warmer than i'd like. Although, I really havent found much details on the default/safe limits of the card. From what I have found, the temps seem safe, but I'd like to overclock the card altitle more

Also, forgot to add, the card doesnt get hot for all games. If i'm playing css, unreal tourny 2k4, etc, it doesnt go above 60. Its just when i'm playing games that actually use the card, lord of the rings online, company of heroes, etc, that the card heats up
 
I have a Sapphire x1950XT with similar insane heat issues.

Before the Zalman VF900cu went on it was an unusable card for anything beyond surfing the net.

What worked for me was significantly dropping the core voltage using ATI Tool v0.26. Default was about 1.425 or 1.450 volts but now I'm running it down at 1.225 volts. It still overclocks to 648 MHz / 999 MHz even with reduced voltage and I can 3D game day and night with the Zalman fan at minimum. It was horrible from the factory but now it's a 10+.

You can leave the memory voltages at default.

x1950xt3dzn7.png


VGPU is the important voltage to drop. It reduces the number of amps flowing through your card significantly which instantly reduces the heat.
You can also drop VDDCI a little as well but it doesn't effect heat output nearly as much. For 2D my card uses 1.175 volts for the GPU so you don't have to worry about that.
I actually boosted my card to 1.200 volts for 2D.

VGPU = 1.225 volts works for the 3D games I play. If you have any artifacts or instability then try raising it a notch but run your card with as little voltage as possible and your heat problems will be gone.

Rivatuner has some good graphing software built into it to help monitor temps and amps flowing through your card while gaming.
You will see a big difference when you drop the volts.
 
Hrm. Under ATT, the stock voltage on my Sapphire X1950XT shows up as 1.2v for 2D, and something in the 1.4v ballpark for 3D.

I'm going to try some combinations of undervolting and overclocking, as I have a feeling the voltage regs are overheating way before the core or memory hit their limit.
 
kept getting artifacting when having the volts lower than 1.375. Temp seems like it might have dropped alittle bit, highest I noticed it was about 78c..better than 85. Is there anythign I would need to do to get ATT to detect 3d mode and switch on its own? I had to make a 2nd profile and change it manually before going into the game
 
I created two profiles and then it switches back and forth automatically using ATI Tool depending on whether it detects a 2D or 3D app.



I'm not sure why but my GPU is very happy at low volts. Are you at default MHz or are you doing some overclocking?

During the early days with my card I saw 110C before it crashed so maybe 80C isn't too bad.
My card survived the 110C baking competition without any known long term effects.
 
I setup the 2d/3d profiles to automatically switch like you did, but it didnt seem to do it, although I did only test with 1 game, so it might be something with that game. I have the card set at like 641/936 for 3d, very small overclock

and yeah luihed, I guess my next step is to pickup that cooler, but I was just looking to see if there was anything to get the vf900 to work, since it seems to be a great cooler too.
 
luihed: Thanks for the info on the HR-03. Here's the direct link to the review at Tom's Hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/14/thermalrights_the_hr-03_is_a_vga_cooler_gorilla/index.html

Emraith: I use Rivatuner which graphs temps, voltages and MHz in the background while gaming. I also use SpeedFan to control the GPU fan speed and keep things quiet when not gaming.

If your computer is stable while gaming then I wouldn't worry too much about the temps.

I'm not sure if the memory on the ATI card is as good as the memory on the Sapphire cards for overclockability. You might want to try dropping it back to 900 and see if you can lower the GPU voltage without getting any artifacts.
 
Wow. Well, I tried running 650/1000 (648/999) like yours in ATT's Overdrive at 1.3V, and it seems to be fine. I'm going to start bumping it back up again today and see what happens..

These cards are rather confusing when it comes to overclocking. Dropping the voltage by 0.1-0.2v for stability? I mean, wtf. :D The voltage regs seem to cap out around 68C under load now too.

Also, good tip on using RivaTuner to monitor the various temps. I used to use it back in the Ti4200 days, and just figured it had fallen by the wayside lately since I hadn't heard anything of it.

FYI, I'm using an HR-03 on the card and like it. It's mounted facing over the top of the card, so the fan's not giving any airflow to the RAM/surface components, though. Card seems to like hitting load around the high 50's or low 60's, depending on the room temp.
 
I'm more of a silence freak so I usually run it at 621/999 MHz and drop the core to 1.225 volts.

I was playing around with it some more today and to run 649 MHz in ATI Tool and remain artifact free I do need 1.30 volts. I don't need 1.30 volts when gaming but ATI Tool is a pretty aggressive test.

I think memory speed is more important than a small percent increase in core speed so if you have extreme heat issues either get an HR-03 and a good fan or sacrifice some core overclocking.

Post#188 shows another user and their undervolting results:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=121654&page=8
 
unclewebb said:
I'm more of a silence freak so I usually run it at 621/999 MHz and drop the core to 1.225 volts.

I was playing around with it some more today and to run 649 MHz in ATI Tool and remain artifact free I do need 1.30 volts. I don't need 1.30 volts when gaming but ATI Tool is a pretty aggressive test.

I think memory speed is more important than a small percent increase in core speed so if you have extreme heat issues either get an HR-03 and a good fan or sacrifice some core overclocking.

Post#188 shows another user and their undervolting results:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=121654&page=8
Click to expand...

I agree with this post.
 
did some testing with this last night, for whatever reason, if I lower the voltage to anything below 1.4, running the card at 600/900, it crashes. Even just with the 3d test mode in ati tool, it crashes. The card I have is a diamond branded 1950xt 256mb..

Is tehre any way to test to see if theres something messed up with the card, or if its just because its one of the first 1950xt's they made, did they maybe revise/change the ram used for it? I'm just wondering how everyone else seems to be able to run overclocked at 1.2-1.3 with no problems, and mine wont run at stock at less than 1.4
 
The best way to find out what memory Diamond used on your card is to pull off the cooler and have a look.

My Sapphire X1950XT uses Hynix 1.0ns memory which means it should be good for 1000 MHz. Overclocking this card from the 3D default of 900 to 999 is a piece of cake.

It's hard to say what's holding you back. Not all cores are created equal but usually the variation from core to core isn't that great. If you pull the heatsink, post whatever numbers you find for the core and for your memory chips.

When I installed my Zalman it almost seemed that the core wasn't perfectly parallel to the video card. The heatsink seemed to rock back and forth a little. I tightened the hell out of it and it's working OK but I think if things were perfectly square it might even run a little better.
 
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