Cooling advice for a 9800 pro

Hey gang,

Well I bought a refurbed Saphire 9800 pro 128meg card for x-mas and thanks to some great advice from some members here I have tested it out to make sure it is ok.

But with the stock fan and no ram sinks I can only OC the card to 387/346.5 (from 378/337) before I get artifacts. I am sure that the card can do more but I will need to add cooling to it.

Can anyone recommend good ram sinks and/or a good cooler unit to add to the card?

Thanks for any advice guys!

tat is incredibly low overclock even for stock coolin and no ram sinks.. I guess is that ur gpu and ram is not getting the volts they are supposed to...

moonman said:

tat is incredibly low overclock even for stock coolin and no ram sinks.. I guess is that ur gpu and ram is not getting the volts they are supposed to...

Click to expand...

^ agreed. what kind of memory is it? samsung? if it is it should be able to do 350mhz easy.

i'm gonna pick up a Vantec Iceburq4 tomorrow along with some mushkin pc3500 lvl2

The iceburq can get you a good OC if your card is up for it. i've seen people hit around 450-460mhz with it.

I thought that the OC was pretty bad, but I really didn't know for sure. I looked at the memory chips on the card and they say "Samsung 316". Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I have a Saphire made card on the black/green PCB.

Any advice on what I should do to get a better stock OC? I keep moving the speed up until I see artifacts and then back off. I use Mother Nature in 3DMark to test for artifacts. I usually see little white dots appear on the screen.

Maybe I need to take off the core cooler and reset it? Does it have a shim?

There is a shim on the gpu, but I wouldn't remove it if I were you. Shouldn't really be needed. But, that OC is really low. With stock cooling, you should be able to get it to run at least 10% faster before you see artifacts.... Where did you get the refurb from? If the source was questionable, I'd check the P/N on the white sticker on the bottom of the card for validity. Sounds like you may have gotten a 9700p or 9800np softmod.

But if it is 100% legit, you may want to try to lathe the HSF over the gpu. Also, it'll be a good idea to invest in some AS3, as well as some Ceramique(sp) thermal glue so you can attach some heatsinks to the ramships on the card. Thirdly, you may want to check your PSU, because another possibility was pointed out: Your card may not be recieving the voltage it needs. Should be at, or very near, 1.5v. Check it in the Bios.

white little dots AKA "Snow" from my experience come from too high of a memory speed.

what i do is, bump up my ram until i hit its max(in my case 385mhz is max) then do the core.

to get a better OC on stock cooler should really not be too hard.. i don't think your card is up for it. you could also remove your stock HS and add a better thermal compound on it.(AS3 or AS5)

you can also try a different program to OC your card:
1)powerstrip
2)rivatuner
are the 2 that i have used, and they work great(using rivatuner for my 9800pro)

to hit 385mhz i use some heatsinks i cut up from the thermaltake copper ram cooler kit, they get nice a hot.

you should get some kind of cooling on the ram.

oh, and don't bother to remove the Shim if you don't need to. People remove the shim on cards when coolers they buy don't touch the core of the GPU, due to the shim being higher then the core.

Ludivous_Kain,
I got the refurb from Newegg (where else) and the little white sticker on it does say 9800 pro. The volts may be an issue though. Since you have an Asus MB as well, can you direct me where to check in the BIOS?

BLIssID,
I OC'ed the card the same way you suggested, moving 1 item up at a time until I saw "snow". Even at stock speeds though the ram is very hot. I wonder if the way this card runs is the reason for the return and it being a refurb?

I am going to do the following:
- Check the volts it is getting in the BIOS.
- Try a different OC utility
- Remove the card and verify that the stock HS is set solid. Maybe replace the thermal compund on it.

Long term I plan to:
- Get some ram sinks on there (soon I hope)
- Maybe replace the stock cooler (Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer?)

As far as ram sinks go, does it matter much if I get them with thermal tape (easier to install and cheaper) instead of getting some with thermal compund and adhesive?

**EDIT:
Something else I find odd. My card uses the same power cord that you plug into a 3.5 floppy drive (forget the name/voltage) and not the big boy plug that you use for a HD. Is this an issue? I have a Sapphire Card with the green black PCB.

thats really weird that you have to use the floppy power connector to power your card... i didnt think that the 9800's used that (at least mine doesnt).

i used the thermal tape that came with the kit. i just cut it to match the size of the sinks i cut up.

its fine to use tape on video ram.

also the power connecter is fine, since you have the green PCB.
Its the same connecter used in the 9700Pros, it just depends on the make of the card.

It sounds like you got a 9700pro. 9700s have floppy drive connectors. NOw as for cololing advice i would get an Arctic Cooling VGA silencer. Its a monster of a heatsink, and will allow for awesome OC on the core freq

Sentential said:

It sounds like you got a 9700pro. 9700s have floppy drive connectors.

Click to expand...

i've seen 9800 pros with floppy connecters.
heres 1

i've also seen sapphire use them in some of their cheaper versions of the 9800pro

Yeah, I heard somewhere that the green/black PCB cards were not good overclockers, but a lot of people said they were fine. So I took the chance on a good priced refurb.

I checked the card yesterday to see how the heat sink looked and noticed two things...
1) the fan is hardly moving any air on it at all. And what it is moving is extremely hot.
2) I could cook meat on the metal HS that the fan sits in and/or on the memory chips. All were too hot to touch.

So to protect the card, and see if I can push it a little more I am getting a new cooler and ram sinks. We will see how they help.

sapphire decided to cut costs so the new revisions of the board and use 9700 pcb, the one with floppy connector. older boards that use "true" 9800 pcb are much better deal if u can find one(guy i know has the same board with floppy connector, doesnt overclock good at all, maybe it's coincidence but i belive that greater pecentage of 9800 pcb boards will oc better than it's 9700 pcb counterparts). i myself would rather go to different manfacturer than settle with "cut cost" product(im talking strictly about myself). before i changed fan on my 9800pro i examined how hot the card can get, the heatsink was warm but definitly not as warm as you describe in your post. both of mine cards are built on 9800 pcb and clock well(sapphire 9800, powercolor 9800pro now with zm80c).

I use water cooling on my 9800 pro. I currently have it clocked at 411.75/355.55 Powerstrip.
Not sure how long it will hold up but it is worth trying out for abit. My entire system is running at 33 celcius at normal usage and hitting a hiugh of 38 celcius after running games like sof 2 aao bf1942, etc. Ran prime 95 for over 72 hours and no errors or warnings and temp hit a high of 39 celcius. water cooling is the way to go for now.
BTW, I asm new to ocing video cards, any good sound advice to measure temps on the video card? aslo, is this a safe oc? I have not installed ram sinks yet.

Herer is my current bechmark and had to lower the settigns a little bit to 398/348

AMD based | AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+ | 2204@2274 MHz | 1024 MB RAM | Windows XP | ATi | RADEON 9800 Pro x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE
(Enter the name of your project here)
6964 - XSMARKS Scene 1 Scene 2 Scene 3 Scene 4 Scene 5 Scene 6 Scene 7 Scene 8 Scene 9 Scene 10 Scene 11 Scene 12
1152x864
32bpp
1/3/2004
17:33:08 MIN 169 136 116 31 124 n/a 99 194 107 74 124 198
AVG 240 170 196 63 164 n/a 157 226 141 104 154 226
MAX 287 202 254 64 409 n/a 208 268 166 179 212 258
SUMMARIES 7636 6202 2540 7651

Skydiver, you should be able to push the core way higher on watercooling. Mine 9800pro is running at 432 right now and its max is about 440 and all I have for cooling is the VGA silencer. Push it until you start seeing artifacts and then back off just a bit.

enio,

I appreciate your feedback. But since my card was a refurb and the 15 day limit is past I will just have to keep it. Besides, even at stock the card is scoring 5900+ in 3DMark03 so it is not like the card is horrible. Plus I will look at it as a challenge to see if I can get this card to OC like the non-"cut cost" products.

Maybe I am just a little to optimistic, but I think my little 9800 is solid and just waiting the be properly cooled so that it can take off. I will let you know how it turns out.

I'll bet a new artic cooler will help tremendously. But temporarily, you can try using a large 80mm or 92mm fan to cool the card and see if you max overclocks go up.

for my 9800pro there is no way I can get past 403 (core) with no dots appearing.. I already made sure it's not a heat problem so either it's not havin enough contact with the heatsink (stock) or it's not gettin enough volts.

the heatsink is fairly warm to slightly hot when gamin before my mod, now it just runs warm.

heres the little mod I did to cool my 9800pro to fairly cool temps
-dual 92mm 48cfm fans..

Mustanley,
I have ordered a Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer and some ram sinks. I will hopefully get them on this week and give it another try. We will find out if the heat is the problem or not!