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My 9800XT mod increased fps & reduced heat

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Titan2782

Registered
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Ok, this might sound crazy to some, but here is what I got before my tweaks. This is for my

ATI radeon 9800XT 256 8x AGP card.

I used power strip to over clock my memory/engine speeds, i bumped them up as far as i could

go. 450 engine/415 memory. Default is 412/360. Now, after doing this, I was getting the card

about 90 degree's plus running anything video intensive. I was running Doom3 in 1024x768

mode with high quality textures (not ultra high) and I was also using the ATI Tool 'Find max

memory' option which tested the card and pushed it to 90 degree's.

Well, seeing as how I'm broke due to... well, many reasons, and also seeing as how I have an

unquenchable thirst for more performance from everyhting, I decided to take apart and play

with my $520 video card ;-)

Tool List
======
1. handful of screwdrivers, all sizes philips/flathead
2. 150-200 grit sandpaper
3. Silver arctic thermal paste
4. The nerve to destroy an expensive video card even though you have no money to replace it

What I got afterwards was a 209% boost in performance and a drop of 15-20 degree's at heavy

usage!

What I did
==========
1. Removed the stock cooling unit from the card. To do this, I used my screwdrivers, this is

very easy, but be careful anyway.
2. Next, after all the peices were removed, I took the top part (which has the fan) and

removed the main plastic cover which the fancy sticker on it. Next I removed the fan.
3. Then I cleaned the vents of dust/hair. Mine was VERY dirty. Be sure to remove all of the

thermal paste and thermal tape from the copper. DO NOT REMOVE THE 4 THERMAL TAPE PADS ON THE

BACK COPPER PEICE!!!!
4. Next, I took my sandpaper and I sanded down the small square area where the thermal paste

was, this is where it connects to the processor. Sand it down until it's a shinny copper

color.
5. Next, sand down the two areas where the thermal tape was for the ram. Again, sand it

until it's a shiny copper color.
6. Be sure NOT to remove the plastic sticker things that are on the copper plates. This

protects from shorts
7. What we did was expose the copper areas a little better and cleaned all the existing

thermal paste away. Reinstall the fan and set aside
8. I did not put back on the plastic cover just as a test, but I now know I wont be putting

it back on.
9. Now, on the back copper plate, I removed a small square area from the each of the 4

thermal tape pads. I did this because I wanted to have better heat xfer from the thermal

paste, but the thermal tape pads are needed because the copper plate wont connect directly

with the ram chips without them. So, cut a small square from the center of each thermal tape

pad, I used a small flathead screw driver.
10. You will see a little bump that goes to obsorbe heat from the back side of the core

chip. I sanded down the tip of this. For good measure, I sanded down the opposite side of

the back copper peice, just to expose the copper a bit better.
11. Now, the crazy part. I took my sandpaper, and I sanded down each of the 8 ram chips. I

made sure to do it evenly. I sanded them down until the text on the chip was just starting

to fade.
12. Clean the thermal paste from the core chip, it's all nice and shinny! LEAVE IT ALONE!
13. I put a drop of thermal paste in each of the cut out areas on the thermal tape pads.
14. I reinstalled the back copper plate. Notice if the thermal paste spreads out or not,

mine came out a bit after i pressed the plate down.
15. Now, we are going to reinstall the top copper plate/fan. Spread thermal paste on the top

four ram chips and on the core chip. Not too mcuh, but make sure it's enough.
16. Put the top copper plate back on the card in place.
17. Reinstall the cooling unit. Make sure everything is tight and fits right.
18. The card is ready to go back into your computer.

Basically, the steps I did arent really needed, but they help. The main thing is taking off

the plastic cover, it dont help! Just removing this will help decrease heat.

Next, I ran tests and I saw the heat was not going above 72 degrees. I thought this was a

fluke, but I watched it for a while, and it started at 59 degree's and rose to 69 pretty

quickly, but it never reached 73! I thought maybe I massed up a sensor (i dropped the card a

few times and was sloppy with my sanding!!) but it seems to be correct.

So, with my doubts of my mod actually working, I went to overclock it. I bumped it to the

max after playing with it, and got it to 450/415 with no problems. I was getting 28 fps avg

on the 3dmark03 "Battle of proxycon". I remembered my nforce board like the fsb/mem speed to

be in sync. So I dropped my core speed to match my mem speed at 415/415 and I went from 28

fps on the 3dmark03 scaore to 37.6 fps avg! I was blown away! For good measure, I dropped it

to 412/412. My avg fps for battle of proxycon is now 36+ @ 1024x768 with 2x AA & 8x AF. With

the ATI tool, the 3D window was running from 72-91fps. After I was getting 175-191fps!! not

too bad.

Conclusion
==========
If you dont want to go through all the stuff I did, then simply do these steps to gain a

nice boost in performance and a NICE drop in heat.

1. remove the plastic cover from the HSF
2. Sync core and memory speeds using PowerStrip 3.53.

Thats about it!

Reasoning
=========
Sanding the copper plates: I have never seen copper rust, and it looked like the copper

plates had a coating on it. So the chip and the copper plate was not getting 100% direct

contact. So with the coating gone, there was better contact.

Sanding the ram chips: I read once about a mod for my GeForce 2mx 400 card. It was how to

put a bigger ehat sink on the core. It talked about sanding the top of the chip down to help

get heat out of the chip faster, obviously by reducing the thickness of the housing. Anyway,

I figured it couldnt hurt.

Anyway, this may or may not work for you, and I take NO resbonsability if you mess up your

card. I'm assuming these will work on any of the 9600/9800 pro/xt with the big ol HSF unit

on it.

I'm still trying to figure out memory timings that are stable at higher memory speeds, but i

cant figure it out :-( oh well.

Thats it. I hope you can understand my instructions. I would have taken pictures, but I

didnt know if my mods would work or not.
 
Very nice, good job. I would imagine you can prolly do this on the X800 also (or any Vid. Card in that matter). The sanding and all the fine detail work will no doubt make any card perform better. I may actually consider doing this eventually.

Good job, once again!
 
Thats funny, i noticed on some dividers of core/mem you can get massive boosts of performance. I was trying my friends out, found one great spot for the core/mem, but if i went higher my score decreased!

Nice job. You could do with a new cooler on there, really.

~t0m
 
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