Serious cooling GF3 Ti200 - need advice

Hello guys,

I've just become a happy owner of Inno3D GeForce 3 Ti200. Stock frequencies of this baby is 175/400, but it's definitely for the simple-minded. I reached 250/530 t 1.7V AGP with some minor artifacts, but no more - and I DO want more. Wanna hit that 11000 mark in 3DMark2k1

The cooling is not bad but not good. A little blue HSF and little ramsinks glued to chips. As soon as the card behaves worse at 1.8 V than on 1.7, I assume it's overheating... I see three ways of taking care of this:

1) First, I see a Thermaltake Giant II (http://www.thermaltake.com/products/chipset/heatpipe.htm) at our shops. The guestions with this beast are numerous:
- will it fit on a GF3?
- isn't it too bad that my ramsinks will be locked under that massive plate and won't get any air circulation?
- is it worth $30 and loads of mess? :\

2) Second is to just buy something decent but not hardcore. The only thing qualified as 'decent' here is a Titan TTC-CUV2AB/DIY (http://www.titan-cd.com/english/product.asp?model_no=TTC-CUV2AB/DIY). Seems not too great but makes 10 CFM. 10$.

3) Maybe just take some Socket 7 heatsink, attach it to GPU somehow and use this hand-made construct with some serious fan? Or it's gonna be too hard to attach?

Which option is the best in this case? Thanks in advance for any tips. My specs are in my sig...

Dont spend too much $ on it.
I would take a cpu heatsink (dosent matter what socket) and thermal epoxy it on.
Shouldnt be too difficult.

That's what I did with my geforce 3 ti 200, before it died. But, the cooling worked wonders. Let me take the core up another 20mhz over where my blue orb would let it go.

Anyway, I'd do that and get your processor to around 2.4ghz, and you should be there.

I was almost there at 2.4ghz and my ti at 221/485. It wasn't a great overclocker.

"That's what" means which option of the three I suggested?

heh my gainward ti200 is supposted to hit like 220/480 stock or something in that experttool program and im getting artifacts at 190/480, (its the core, i get artifacts at 190/350) the stock cooler is a lightweight scrap of aluminum so ima strap a crystal orb on it and see what happens. if that doesent work ill drop a cpu HSF on there with some thermal epoxy and let the good times roll. lemme know how the new heatsink works out, those are some really nice speeds with your current setup there, whats the ram rated at?

also my ram is supposted to be rated at 500mhz, and it has trouble over 480....=(

I don't know about RAM rating Is there a way to find out without tearing off the ramsinks? Stock memory freq is 400, anyway.

Well, the speeds are decent, but I saw people make 12000 with GF3Ti and even a slower CPU tha mine... They hit some 270/570 or even more (one watercooled guy did a 300!).

they most likely had the voltage through the roof.

Well, I don't have more than 1.8 in BIOS and don't want to lose my warranty by damaging the mobo... However, if there is some nondestructive voltmod - I'd give it a try. But IMHO it is to be done AFTER a good cooling solution, right?

so, you were just raising the agp voltage? I wouldn't think that would help anything.....

Anyway, if your gonna Vmod it, then yea get good cooling first.

If not AGP, what voltage should I raise? Or the voltmod concerns modifications of videocard itself?

you would have to volt mod the card itself. i think the AGP voltage in the BIOS is for overclocking the AGP bus not the card. not exactly sure about it though.

back to the cooling topic, id suggest you get one of those low-profile copper coolers, and glue it with epoxy to your card, also you can get ramsinks at 4 bux a 4 pack at bestbyte.net , so it could come out for like 15 bux or so

Thanks. As we have already touched the voltmod topic: is there any sense to raise AGP bus speed (and AGP voltage)? Will it result in a performance increase? I assume that in my case the videocard itself is the bottleneck, so it doesn't seem logical to try to increase bus speed...

And yes, I did find a detailed instruction of how to voltmod my card - it involves some serious knowledge and soldering.