[Kosmic]

I picked up a BFG 6800GT today and I'm overclocking it with powerstrip. Drivers are 61.77. The max core speed on it so far is pretty underwhelming, considering that BFG has the reputation for using the best chips, not to mention the monster overclocks I've seen people getting with them. I had reboots 3dmarking at a core of just 395, but I've also had good runs at that speed with my agp case fan cranked up a bit.

ANYHOW, I'm thinking of pulling the heatsink and replacing whatever paste is on the core with AS5. But before I do, I'd like to hear from anybody out there who has done it. The heatsink has what looks like strips of 2mm thick thermal tape on the ram, and I don't want to RIP that stuff off only to have no way to re-establish contact between the ram and the heatsink.

Here's a pic I took before putting the card in that shows the tape:


Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kos

[Kosmic]

p.s. Even though that stuff looks solid in the picture, I just poked at it with a very thin knife and it's definitely squishy like a thick thermal tape.

Other system info: Asus P4P 800E, P4 3.2c (currently fsb is only oc'd 10 mhz for video card testing) 1 gig corsair xms 3200xl @ 2226 -- I had the thought that maybe a new mobo bios is needed for the 6800s...I'll look into that, although I think it's pretty current

Also...I've been doing ATI for a while now, so I'm not really up to date on nvidia overclocking. If anybody has any driver advice, or anything that they think could help, please share. Thanks.

[Kosmic]

Oh yea, I do need to run drivercleaner...I only uninstalled my old ati drivers from the control panel. Not sure if that really has an effect on the OC though.

Also, the power supply is a 550 watt super flower, and the card is on its own dedicated power line, so things should be ok there.

[bobmanfoo]

might want to check the OC, when i installed the GT it threw my OC off, had to bump up the voltage a bit or lower my speeds a little for it to be stable, Rivatuner seems to be the best for OCing, the test button works really well and is dead on when detecting stable speeds unlike coolbits, might wanna play with fastwrites

[Kosmic]

Well at the moment the CPU oc is way lower than it can go...3.2c @ 3360 just 'cause it's hot lately and I don't want to push the chip too hard. But it is watercooled and can do 3.75 stable and can 3d mark at 3.9.

I'll try rivatuner. Thanks for that! I hope it's just a powerstrip problem. As for fastwrites, they should just be off, right?

Thanks.

[Kosmic]

I've tried a variety of drivers, making sure to run driver cleaner after uninstalling. Currently using guru 3d's forceware 61.76 -- No matter what the driver I've tried, rivatuner tells me that I need to update it because the driver is newer (riva tuner is version 2.0 RC15 with latest patch)

I set all system params to stock to eliminate any psu voltage issues. No matter what, rivatuner says that even at 380 that "the drivers failed to pass internal test with the clock frequencies you are about to use"

If I exit rivatuner and use powerstrip to set the clock to even 395, it's not stable. 400 results in a freeze up.

All my PSU rails are a little bit over their required levels, except for 12v, which is just a *tiny* bit under 12, but it never fluctuates.

This is driving me nuts! Does anybody know what driver revision works with rivatuner? I still think it's a driver thing...I really hope this BFG isn't just a dog that can't even go 10 mhz higher than it comes out of the box when EVERY other 6800gt I've seen in here goes over 400.

[BigAl2]

Once you get your card where it will oc, turn fastwrites on. It got me about 500 points in 3DMark03, when I turned them on.