more cooling for my 5900se?

[joon82]

I have PNY 5900se flashed to 5950u. Right now running 475-985 stock cooling(45-60'c). I tried going around 500/1000 but i get artifacts. If I get better cooling will artifacts go away? And what is the best fan/heatsink combo for my card?

[theflyingrat]

Truthfully, they may or may not.

Sometimes artifacts are caused when the GPU's operation is being affected in one way or another by the heat generated in the overclock. It happens sometimes - some get lucky and it will fire up and work again once better cooling is applied. But don't bank on it.

Most of the time, however, you're just hitting the architectural limits of that particular GPU. Only more voltage (and sometimes even better cooling) can usually make this go away... but even if you overvolt the bejeesus out of it and cool it with a phase change unit, you still may not budge one single extra MHz over where it was artifacting before.

[br0adband]

Originally posted by joon82
I have PNY 5900se flashed to 5950u. Right now running 475-985 stock cooling(45-60'c). I tried going around 500/1000 but i get artifacts. If I get better cooling will artifacts go away? And what is the best fan/heatsink combo for my card?

joon: Take a look at these two links and tell me which one looks more like the card you have:

FX5900 Reference (http://home.earthlink.net/~br0adband/GF_FX_5900.jpg)

or

FX5900SE Reference (http://home.earthlink.net/~br0adband/GF_FX_5900SE.jpg)

If your card looks like the second pic, you have a real FX5900SE card. It's a single slot solution, meaning it doesn't take up the AGP slot and block the PCI slot next to it.

If your card looks like the FIRST pic, however, guess what: You have an FX5900!!! I bought that PNY FX5900SE last Saturday and in the box I found a card that is the same as the first pic. It's really a 5900 card, not an SE model. This one is the dual slot solution. Putting it in the AGP slot also blocks the first PCI slot.

Stock speeds on the 5900SE are 400core/700memory, but on this card the stock speeds are 400/850 meaning it's got 2.2ns memory -- meaning it's a real 5900.

For some reason PNY was tossing real 5900 non-Ultra cards in the boxes to fulfill orders for the 5900SE. PNY doesn't even MAKE a 5900 card, they only sell 5900SE's and 5950 Ultras.

So if you got the first card, congrats and enjoy it.

br0adband

ps
Flashing that card to the 5950 Ultra won't do much for performance, it's freakin' fast enough as it is. I'm pretty sure you have a PNY FX5900 like I do because a real 5900SE won't flash to 5950 Ultra. Doing that would almost burn out the memory: The 5900SE *should* have 2.8ns memory on it, that stuff won't run at 1000, it'll burn up.


:D