7900GTO Thread

[Nandro]

I didnt remove mine specificly because people are having a hard time with the spacing, and i would imagine you need the right thermal pads to put it back.

 

[ProBoner]

The pads didn't get damaged when I removed mine and are still providing very good cooling for my ram but I really screwed up the GPU because of not only spacing but more importantly the fact that I snapped one of the screws in the cooler
Now I can barely go over 670mhz core before artifacting... what's a good aftermarket GPU cooler for these cards? Preferably one that covers the ram too but I guess I can look for ramsinks too.

 

[Dan0512]

The pads didn't get damaged when I removed mine and are still providing very good cooling for my ram but I really screwed up the GPU because of not only spacing but more importantly the fact that I snapped one of the screws in the cooler
Now I can barely go over 670mhz core before artifacting... what's a good aftermarket GPU cooler for these cards? Preferably one that covers the ram too but I guess I can look for ramsinks too.

Maybe the Zalman vf900 fits

dan

 

[myndlessdayz]

I have mine running at a nice stable 700/800 right now although I did clock it up to 725/830 for testing. I honestly think my MB dosent allow me to OC anything as well as it could on a good board which will be my next aquisition as soon as I can get this stupid tree to grow money instead of grapefruits.

At least you get grapefruits I get pine cones

 

[Nandro]

Yea, both are pretty worthless though.

 

[Dan0512]

Well guys just wanted to announce that I'm now experimenting with a memory v-mod, and so far, results seem to be quite promising. Stay put

dan

 

[Max0r]

^_____________^ would this apply to the GTX as well Dan?!??

 

[Nandro]

Great Dan.... Just after I fried some memory and a MB... There is something inherently dangerous of people who have no fear of a soldering iron.... I'll be right there behind you....

 

[Dan0512]

Great Dan.... Just after I fried some memory and a MB... There is something inherently dangerous of people who have no fear of a soldering iron.... I'll be right there behind you....

Don't worry, it's a pencil mod

I'll post the guide once I get back from school. Did some extensive testing yesterday, got 3 hours of spleep

dan

 

[wundi]

Well, I just found another feauture that might be enabled with the flash as well. I can now control the fan speed with Rivatuner, which was available with the GTO BIOS, but didn't have any effect.

Hey Dan, many thanks for your flashing instructions -- I am a proud new owner of a 7900GTX!

My main motivation for the flashing was to get control over the fan speed. Indeed in RivaTuner Hardware Monitoring three new graphs appeared, called "Ambient temperature", "Fan speed, RPM" and "Fan duty cycle, %". With the GTO bios I only saw "Reference fan duty cycle, %" which still remains at 100%, due to it being set to 100% in the firmware (according to Nibitor).

The graphs report a fan speed of 49.80% or ~1160RPM. However, no matter what speed I set it to in System tweaks, the speed won't change one bit.
Any ideas?
I did reinstall the drivers after flashing, and I have basic understanding of using RT. I like to set up the fans in my system to change in speed automatically according to monitored temperature. This worked flawlessly with my previous card, 7800GT.

For reference, my MSI card clocks at ~690/860 (haven't tested extensively and not at all with GTX bios). I'm using RivaTuner 2.0 RC16.2 and ForceWare 93.71.

 

[Dan0512]

Hey Dan, many thanks for your flashing instructions -- I am a proud new owner of a 7900GTX!

My main motivation for the flashing was to get control over the fan speed. Indeed in RivaTuner Hardware Monitoring three new graphs appeared, called "Ambient temperature", "Fan speed, RPM" and "Fan duty cycle, %". With the GTO bios I only saw "Reference fan duty cycle, %" which still remains at 100%, due to it being set to 100% in the firmware (according to Nibitor).

The graphs report a fan speed of 49.80% or ~1160RPM. However, no matter what speed I set it to in System tweaks, the speed won't change one bit.
Any ideas?
I did reinstall the drivers after flashing, and I have basic understanding of using RT. I like to set up the fans in my system to change in speed automatically according to monitored temperature. This worked flawlessly with my previous card, 7800GT.

For reference, my MSI card clocks at ~690/860 (haven't tested extensively and not at all with GTX bios). I'm using RivaTuner 2.0 RC16.2 and ForceWare 93.71.

No problem! Glad you could use it.

To control the fan speed, you have to go under the ¨low level settings¨ (customize right beside the pipeline/memory information) section, and you'll see fan section there.

Now my report on my v-mod experiment.

From reading other people's results, I was thinking I could get the chips to run @ their rated speed (900mhz), but that's not the case with my card.

Stock voltage for the GTO's is around 1.81-1.82. With this voltage, I was able to reach around 840 Ati-tool stable. I slowly raised the voltage, up to 2.03 volts, and I couldn't get the memory to break 860 mhz. Details-

Voltage Max. Ati-tool artifact free frequency

1.81 (stock) 840
1.87 ~850
1.92 ~850
1.95 ~850
1.98 ~780
2.03 ~759 + artifacts in desktop

I wrote ~ behind the frequencies because they aren't exact, give or take a few mhz.

This memory is rated up to 2.00 volts. AFAIK 2.15 is the standard voltage for the GTX... Wonder how my memory would play @ 2.15

The last two results are in italics because they are most interesting. After around 1.97 volts, the memory actually reached a lower frequency. And 2.03 would give me artifacts in the desktop.

Well, I guess I just got a card with binned memory. Maybe 7900gto's are gtx's whose memory wouldn't function @ 2.15 volts... I guess they couldn't produce 2 sorts of gt's with differents voltages.

And there's also the chance that some gto's are good gtx's that were undervolted and labeled as gto's to make room for the GF8 cards. These are probably the ones that do reach 900mhz (this was as they said it... don't know if it's atitool stable).

I've tried a bunch of BIOSes, reinstalling drivers, etc, but it still won't budge over 855. This is with GPU @ 650mhz and 715 mhz.

I'll the directions once I get home.. need to take some pics of the card.

I'm still not done experimenting though, maybe my GPU needs more voltage... or something that I need to adjust.

I'd be cool to have someone else try this mod out, so we can compare our results and come to some conclusions.

I haven't tried anything between 1.81 and 1.87... maybe there is a ¨holy¨ voltage point where tha RAM might reach it's rated speed...



dan

 

[wundi]

No problem! Glad you could use it.

To control the fan speed, you have to go under the ¨low level settings¨ (customize right beside the pipeline/memory information) section, and you'll see fan section there.

Woah! I wasn't aware there was such a "low-level" way of changing the fan speed. It seems my understanding of the software is even more basic than I realized..

Anyway, it works and I'm happy. Thanks again! I'll post in if I notice a change in my max OC due to the GTX bios, I'll have more time to test this weekend.

BTW, what ForceWare version do you recommend with this card? Ie. is it that the newest official, 93.71, is not the best (fastest) one?

 

[Dan0512]

Woah! I wasn't aware there was such a "low-level" way of changing the fan speed. It seems my understanding of the software is even more basic than I realized..

Anyway, it works and I'm happy. Thanks again! I'll post in if I notice a change in my max OC due to the GTX bios, I'll have more time to test this weekend.

BTW, what ForceWare version do you recommend with this card? Ie. is it that the newest official, 93.71, is not the best (fastest) one?

Well, I'm using the latest NGO tweaked driver, and it performs just as well as the 91.47, but gives a nice boost in Oblivion. I haven't tried 93.71 though.

dan

 

[Dan0512]

^_____________^ would this apply to the GTX as well Dan?!??

I don't know

dan

 

[squeekyMop]

is there a winflash version hehe, my floppy is screwed up

 

[electronpn]

I thing its a board ?

Hi ! I have MSI NX7900GTO-T2D512E (flashed 7900GTX bios) 690/800 but my results are:
3DMark03 20100
3DMark05 9060

With the stock bios results were at 690/750 max stable
3DMark03 20600
3DMark05 9160

So looks like I gaind nothing with 7900GTX bios but it doesent matter. I wander:
Why do I get those results at the first time (stock bios) when your results are much much better. For example your results Dan0512.

PC I have : Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9-RH
AMD Athlon 3000 Venice 244x9 (2.20 MHz)
Kingston 512 cl 2.5 PC3200
Corsair 512 cl 2.5 PC3200
MSI GeForce 7900GTO (flashed GTX) 512MB 690/800
HDD WD 120 & 160 IDE 8MB
Samsung CD/RW & DVD/RW
Floppy Sony
Chieftec 420W
Modem Lucent 56K -----

P.S. I red something that it might be board like it has slower PCI-E. What do you think folks. Thank in advance !!!

 

[Dan0512]

Hi ! I have MSI NX7900GTO-T2D512E (flashed 7900GTX bios) 690/800 but my results are:
3DMark03 20100
3DMark05 9060

With the stock bios results were at 690/750 max stable
3DMark03 20600
3DMark05 9160

So looks like I gaind nothing with 7900GTX bios but it doesent matter. I wander:
Why do I get those results at the first time (stock bios) when your results are much much better. For example your results Dan0512.

PC I have : Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9-RH
AMD Athlon 3000 Venice 244x9 (2.20 MHz)
Kingston 512 cl 2.5 PC3200
Corsair 512 cl 2.5 PC3200
MSI GeForce 7900GTO (flashed GTX) 512MB 690/800
HDD WD 120 & 160 IDE 8MB
Samsung CD/RW & DVD/RW
Floppy Sony
Chieftec 420W
Modem Lucent 56K -----

P.S. I red something that it might be board like it has slower PCI-E. What do you think folks. Thank in advance !!!

Hmm, maybe it's throttling @ 800 which might be causing the lower score.

Well, there are a lot of factors when it comes to comparing scores. My rig was fully tweaked for those runs.... 1 week old Win Install, card @ 730/850... and everything pushed to the limit.

I can tell though that your CPU @ 2.2ghz is holding you back a bit.

dan

 

[Neural Net]

My card doesn't seem to want to play at high memory clock rates. Perhaps it's the voltage, I don't know.

I can run my GTO at 729/756 core/mem, that's auto optimising using Ntune, and rivatuner doesn't seem to want to work, do the two conflict? I'm running the latest forceware drivers. Anything higher produces artifacts. I also don't know how to up the voltage on the card, maybe that will help gain higher stable memory clocks?

I get 11220 in 3d Mark 05 though.

 

[Dan0512]

My card doesn't seem to want to play at high memory clock rates. Perhaps it's the voltage, I don't know.

I can run my GTO at 729/756 core/mem, that's auto optimising using Ntune, and rivatuner doesn't seem to want to work, do the two conflict? I'm running the latest forceware drivers. Anything higher produces artifacts. I also don't know how to up the voltage on the card, maybe that will help gain higher stable memory clocks?

I get 11220 in 3d Mark 05 though.

Could be. I just posted the guide on the first page! Good luck!

dan

 

[electronpn]

i will be back !!!

Thanks for replay dan. I'm getting asus a8n-e on wednesday. So i will let you know what the scores are. I managed to get 272*9=2454 stable (prime95 for couple of hours) and results are:
3dmark05 9750 much better. Thanks. Board is the low one for sure. But let hold on 'till wednesday.

P.S. Regards from Balkan.