Turning a standard Geforce 3 into a Ti 500...

[Steven J Gore]

I have a standard Geforce 3, running at 200Mhz/460Mhz (default).
As far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong) the Geforce 3 Ti 500 runs at 240Mhz/500Mhz, and has the same cooling as the standard Geforce 3 (memory heat sinks and gpu fan).
Therefore is there any reason why I cannot simply increase my clock speeds to "produce" a Ti 500? Heat cannot be an issue, otherwise surely the Ti 500 would have larger heat sinks and/or a better fan? I was thinking of settling for something inbetween, maybe 220Mhz/480Mhz, and I am currently testing 210Mhz/470Mhz for temperature/stability issues.
Anybody any thoughts on the matter?!

[Mictlan]

THe new GeForce 3 Ti is made a little different from the normal GeForce 3. With this new type of chip you can reach higher speeds.

As for the memory, the new GeForce 3 Ti 500 has 3.5 ns memory modules (at least the nVidia Reference Card) that can be clocked higher than the old 3.7 ns used in the other modules.

You could oc your GeForce up to Ti levels and higher, providing adecuate cooling and maybe some voltage mods.

[Placid]

The newest members of the GeForce3 family—GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 Ti 200—bring two new features to end users: shadow buffer technology and 3D textures.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforce3

[Mictlan]

Originally posted by Placid
The newest members of the GeForce3 family—GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 Ti 200—bring two new features to end users: shadow buffer technology and 3D textures.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforce3

But if you had a GeForce 3 and installed Detonators XP, eren't this features anable also?

[Placid]

No they are physical hardware changes.
They probably wont be used for awhile yet and are not a good reason to upgrade from a GF3 to a TI they are there and I posted to point out that there is more to the TI cards than just higher gpu memory speeds.

[Steven J Gore]

Placid, the two new features you mentioned are available on a standard Geforce 3 from driver Detonator XP 21.85 and above. It is not new hardware for the Ti 200 and Ti 500, it is a driver-software thing. I read this on both NVmax.com and MaxReboot.com, and I will post links to this info when I find exactly where I read it...

Steve.

[Placid]

If you are right thats great.
I just am using what nvidia is saying.


NVIDIA's GeForce3 Ti Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are changing the face of lighting techniques for PC graphics by being the first to bring HARDWARE acceleration for realistic shadows to consumer PCs. NVIDIA shadow buffer technology closes the gap between PC gaming and cinematic-style special effects for realistic, real-time shadows.

If newer drivers can give the GF3 hardware shadow buffering thats a good trick.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=feature_shadowbuffers

NVIDIA 3D textures can produce the following effects:

Volumetric Fog—provides depth and density to fog effects, rather than just height and width
Imposters—allow for the perception of correct look and orientation when the camera moves, without excessive calculation
Functions Lookup—functions such as depth-of-field effects and BRDFs can be stored in a 3D texture, saving both time and effort
Procedural Textures and Noise—explosions, lightning, or plasma effects can be created with NVIDIA's 3D texture technology.

This one sounds like newer drivers could give the same results as there are no specific hardware changes mentioned.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=feature_3dtextures

[Morphoius]

Note: Come on Placid, your smarter than that. there is no intelegence in blindly quoting press releases.

Here is the real deal:
1. the new titanium cards are using the same memory becuase it is cheaper. the reference card had better memory, but manufactorers are using the old memory. your memory on your GF3 is rated for about 520 mhz. you should be able to clock to 500 easy.

2. The new titanium cards GPU underwent a die shrinkage to get to the new cards. these chips are smaller and this cooler, cheaper, and clock higher. your old GF3 might make it to 240 as mine did, but it is not the same chip. the odds are against you that your GF3 will be able to make the 2140 mhz clock.

3. NVIDIA is claiming to be intruducing those new features now, but the reality is that they were always there and using newer drivers allows there use on every GF3. NVidia can claim this becuase it was not available at the introduction to the regular GF3 and thus comparing introduction circumstances it was first available on the titanium.

4. To reach the clock speed of the newer GF3 Titaniums you may have to increase the cooling of your chip. Some people have used pentium 3 heatsinks to this end. i use a watercooled pelter on my GF3 and it allows me speeds higher than 260mhz clock however i have yet to test the full potential of the chip under this circumstance.

5. I do not know of any way to hard wire the speeds into the chip so you may have to instruct windows or another program to apply the speeds after you start up if you intend to run at those speeds. It seems to me that any GF3 is more than enough to run any game that i am currenty playing so i only overclock it when i am showing off, i think you will find the same true.

NOTE: When overclocking make sure you have good air flow around the grafics card. overclock the core to as high as it will go until it freezes while leaving the memory at default(stress testing to test stability), then doing the same for the memory. Then put your highest core speed and memory speed together and test for stability. This should be your best overclock.

NOTE: the memory heatsinks are poorly attached and if you were to use artic silver to reattach them or larger heatsinks you will have a much higher ability to overclock the memory. As in my circumstance the larger heatsinks allow for the memory to not heat up and thus not freeze, but they do not have enough voltage to run well at say 570 or 575 mhz so you get artifacts as you have never seen before.

NEW NOTE: Apparently core and memory speeds can be hard coded into your grafics cards bios through spacific programs. Only do this if you are apsolutly sure your grafics card is stable.

[Steven J Gore]

Morphoius, thanks for the detailed information and advice!

I have fairly good cooling in my case, a 90mm fan at the front blowing in, and a 90mm fan at the rear blowing out, and so I reckon to have fairly decent air flow around my Geforce 3.
(I also have a CardCooler XT but it is not being used at the moment due to the noise!).

I will try overclocking the core first, and then the memory as you suggested, to see how high I can get...

Hard-coding the clock-speeds into the Geforce 3 BIOS sounds cool, although obviously anyone would need to be double-sure that their card was stable at the new speeds before doing it! Do you know of a program that does this?

Placid, I haven't found those links yet! I am working on it though and I am convinced I read it in at least two different places... (or did I dream it?!!!) Of course, I am willing to accept defeat if you can prove otherwise in the meantime!!! I read your links and I think that nvidia are being deliberately vague and not saying either way!

From an overclocking point-of-view, I don't suppose it makes any difference, although I would be interested to find out more...

Steve.

[Placid]

Steven J Gore you are right, I found this at Toms hardware.
Nice, I was thinking my GF3 was lacking the hardware shader, and as Tom says its confusing.

DetonatorXP was also able to finally take care of some rather old bugs of GeForce3. When NVIDIA's new 3D chip was ready for its introduction in March 2001, some white papers contained feature lists that included 'volumetric' or '3D' textures as well as 'shadow buffers', while some other white papers didn't. After researching this confusing situation I was told that GeForce3 does NOT support those features.

In reality, the feature support had been there, but the driver support didn't quite work. This has changed since 'DetonatorXP' was released. Now all GeForce3 cards are able to use 3D textures and shadow buffers. NVIDIA hadn't been able to market those features so far, so it seemed practical to make it look as if the new GeForce3 Titanium500/200 cards are the first to offer those features. This is not correct. Here's the original comment of an NVIDIA spokesperson about this issue: "We are marketing Shadow Buffers and 3D Textures as new features because they are newly enabled in the software drivers. Honestly, these features are available on the original GeForce3 as long as one uses the Detonator XP driver, but we don't spend time marketing last seasons products.....we market products that we are selling now."

http://www4.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q4/011001/titanium-03.html

[Morphoius]

I have never altered the bios of a grafics card and thus have no idea how to do it, but there are programs and websites that have the infornmation and as i recall there was a thread recently dealing with some of that.

Case air flow is important, but you should also put a fan on your memory chips just as you do the GPU and CPU.

[The Overclocker]

Originally posted by Steven J Gore
I have a standard Geforce 3, running at 200Mhz/460Mhz (default).
As far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong) the Geforce 3 Ti 500 runs at 240Mhz/500Mhz, and has the same cooling as the standard Geforce 3 (memory heat sinks and gpu fan).
Therefore is there any reason why I cannot simply increase my clock speeds to "produce" a Ti 500? Heat cannot be an issue, otherwise surely the Ti 500 would have larger heat sinks and/or a better fan? I was thinking of settling for something inbetween, maybe 220Mhz/480Mhz, and I am currently testing 210Mhz/470Mhz for temperature/stability issues.
Anybody any thoughts on the matter?!

if i used that idea i could turn my geforce2 mx into a ultra

[BigRed]

hmmm so the Geforce3 didnt have some of the features working at the release of the card but new drivers will make them work?
sounds like nvidia pulled an ATI ;)

[Genis B]

if Morphoius can only make the core up to 260mhz, then i disagree with wat u ppl had mention about good cooling can o/c more, as u can see from mine sig, i can run mine over the standard of the Ti, and i have only got the Blue ORb that came with the card and no ram sink at all, until recently i add an extra fan to cool it down as i dun think itz healthy to run it at dat speed the whole time. :D :D :D

and to the original question, yes the GF3 does have the protential of turning into the Ti IMO.
i had got an arugement with mine friend few dayz ago about this, he can alwayz back him up by saying: yes, maybe ur card haf the protantial of turning into Ti500, but i am sure the Ti 500 can o/c better than urs as itz standard speed is nearly ur max.

:mad: :mad: :mad: eventhough i dun like it but i haf to admit it is probably the truth, until someone has got one of this card and find out they cant o/c as much as mine.

does anyone out there haf one of this?

[Genis B]

BTW wat do u pplz think is the bottle neck of mine card? is it core or mem? coz i am going to ship a huge amount of easily breakable copper from China, and mount it into the ram, and i have got a spare 1.2Ghz T/B approve HSF, probably gonna mount dat onto the core as well, so wat do u pplz think i should o/c the most?

[RangerJoe34]

did you all know that the abit siluro geforce 3 is the highest overclocked geforce 3 with stock cooling (according to Hard OCP) this is what im getting, so just think of what you can do if you get better cooling it would rock, they got it to above ti500 speeds in the test also

[Morphoius]

I was only able to get 260mhz to work on my card by using a bong cooled pelter keeping the back of the card at about 18C. Before moding my card still went a hefty 240/540 so a voltage mod is in order for higher speeds.

Certainly your GF3 Titanium GPU will be able to overclock more than the regular GF3 but the memory will clock at about the same.

[Steven J Gore]

RangerJoe34 and Genis B, your quoted overclock speeds have given me more confidence that I can get my Geforce 3 to Ti speeds and above! (I am fairly new to overclocking, BTW!)

This evening I attached a 120mm fan to blow air over my Geforce 3 memory heatsinks, and have now managed to overclock my memory speed to 500Mhz, which is the Ti speed!
My core is still only at 220Mhz though, and I intend to leave it set at these speeds for the weekend to test it for stability and temp over a long period. A weekend of playing Operation Flashpoint should test it well enough!!

One more question... Would replacing the standard geforce 3 heatsink and fan with a Blorb make much of a difference? (I have a spare Blorb lying around...)

Steve.

PS. My case is beginning to sound like a vacuum cleaner!

[Genis B]

why not giving it a try if u haf one lying around, i meant it doesn't hurt and it could possibly do, as i am using Blue orb as well.

[batboy]

My OCZ Titan3 I bought last month shipped with copper RAM sinks and a Blue Orb. A couple reviews claimed it was the worlds fastest GF3, but that was before the Ti series was released. I have benchmarked it with 3Dmark2001 overclocked at 250/590 (default clock settings are 215/515 which is higher than most GF3 cards). Sounds like my card is still faster than most of the new Ti cards, especially since I'm using 21.81 drivers. Cool.

ADDED: Ok, I checked at 3D Guru and it appears there are new drivers I didn't know about. So, I'm downloading the Detonator 21.83, 21.85, and 21.88 drivers to try out and benchmark this weekend. More tweaking, more fun.

http://www.ocztech.com/images/titan3.jpg

[Genis B]

i am not sure y but mine blue orb looks different to urs, urz is perfectly round as mine ish.... i dunno, perhaps abit too strach out to the side, r they the same?

[Genis B]

Originally posted by batboy
My OCZ Titan3 I bought last month shipped with copper RAM sinks and a Blue Orb. A couple reviews claimed it was the worlds fastest GF3, but that was before the Ti series was released. I have benchmarked it with 3Dmark2001 overclocked at 250/590 (default clock settings are 215/515 which is higher than most GF3 cards). Sounds like my card is still faster than most of the new Ti cards, especially since I'm using 21.81 drivers. Cool.

ADDED: Ok, I checked at 3D Guru and it appears there are new drivers I didn't know about. So, I'm downloading the Detonator 21.83, 21.85, and 21.88 drivers to try out and benchmark this weekend. More tweaking, more fun.

http://www.ocztech.com/images/titan3.jpg

BTW dun d/l any other driverz i haf got them and they suckz, 21.81 ish still the best

[DarkInferno_IV]

I HAD a ELSA GF3 at 258/548 using watercooling. Perfectly possible. Until my PSU blew that is- read "Oh crap..." in the general hardware section.

[batboy]

Ok, I've now benchmarked the following drivers: 2181, 2183, 2185, and 2188. At default clock settings, 2183, 2185, and 2188 all beat the 2181 drivers on my system by over 750 points in 2Dmark2001. The 2188 drivers did the best, but only beat the 2183 drivers by 7 points. The 2183 drivers were next with the 2185 drivers only 2 points behind it. Soooo, really all three of the latest drivers are all in the same ball park. When overclocked to 240/580, the 2183 drivers edged out the others slightly and were 15 points higher than the 2188 drivers. The 2185 drivers did worse overclocked than the 2181 drivers. I'm going to try the 2183 drivers for a while, especially since they are certified. As always, your mileage may vary. Oh yeah... Genis, both of my Blue Orbs does appear perfectly round. I have one on my old Hecules MX vid card too.

[Steven J Gore]

I am using the 21.88 drivers, and find these to be better than 21.81 (which crashed my system randomly) and also 21.83 and 21.85. I have only ever tried overclocking with the 21.88's so I have no comparison.

This afternoon I tried to fit my Blue Orb to my GF3, but I hadn't realised that the heatsink/fan was glued on as well as held on by those black pin things with springs on them. I noticed that the holes on the Blorb are precisely the right distance apart for my GF3, but I haven't got the courage to rip a heat sink of a £300 gpu!! Anyone else done this? I heard that twisting them off was the best way of doing it, but even so, sounds risky...

The Blue Orb is more or less the same size as the green standard heat sink, and the fan blades look more or less identical... is it worth the risk? Maybe the Blue Orb fan has a higher RPM and the heatsink is more efficient at removing heat from the gpu?

Steve

[funnyperson1]

the blue orb does have a higher speed fan....i would however(unless you care about how nice your card looks) get a spare socket 7 or 370 heatsink that you have lying around and use that(performance will be much better).....to take the heatsink off either get it really hot (coupla hours of gaming) or really cold (freezer-plastic bag) and it should wiggle right off(youll have to take the pins out with pliers first)....ivbe done it to my geforce2 and its fine.....

[Morphoius]

Just put you card in the freezer for an hour or overnight and the heatsink will come off easily. Be slow and cardfull though.