Aopen ti4200 running stable at 330/490...weird?

[fliplyricist1]

Hello all. I recently purchased a retail regular 128mb ddr Aopen ti4200 from Newegg. I knew going into it that it had 4ns Samsung chips, and knew it wasn't a GREAT overclocker, but not a terrible one in the same token.

So when I got it, I started tinkering with the settings using Rivatuner and the 41.30 Drivers on a celeron 700@860 (83mhz bus) system. I easily got the core up to 330mhz but the memory only got up to 490 before it started giving artifacts. However, after about 3 days now I can up the memory to 510 (haven't tried higher) without it freezing on me, but the artifacts still come up at the 490 + threshhold.

I currently have the stock cooling on the card (no ramchips) with no modifications. I also have the agp set to 4x in rivatuner. Do you think lowering the system fsb or the agp transfer rate would give me any better results? Or do you think burning my card in constantly will get me to the golden point? (I really want at least 550mhz memory).

Anyhow, it's a boggling overclocking situatoin, with great core and bad memory. Thanks for your suggestions and comments.

 

[baqai]

Welcome To Forums

I thought i was the only one around with Aopen ti4200, well i haven't tried overclocking it yet but yeah now definately i will try it out, what's your score with the card? with my rig (see the signature below) i get 8203 3dmark 2001 SE score

 

[fliplyricist1]

Thanks for the reply man Glad to see a fellow ti aopen'er in here...we seem to be a rare breed lol. I'm still a bit confused why the card seems to overclock so well on the core but not the memory...but I've been burning it in all day and will continue for the next week and then try and bump it up again.

Definitely try and overclock it man...can't really hurt unless you accidentally put it up in huge mhz increments. With my vid card at default speeds and a celeron 700@~870 (83mhz bus) on an iwill vd133 pro and 512mb pc133 mem (@83 ) and a maxtor 30 gig 7200 rpm drive, I attained a highest pcmark score of 6,972 . I haven't done a 3dmark test with the card overclocked...but I'll do that soon. Needless to say, my cpu and bus speeds are my biggest bottleneck I shall wait until next week when there are hopefully big price drops to pick up a nice cheap xp/mobo combo.

Please keep me updated on your o/c results and good luck!

 

[CrystalMethod]

Glad to see that some of you are open minded around here when it comes to brand names. I always feel that Aopen gets the short end of the stick. People fail to realize that they aren't all that bad of a company. Like any other company some of their products perform well beyond expectation. I built 2 systems for a client with the ti-4600 128meg version of the card. The benched 10200, 3Dmarks. At stock speed, no OC on the GPU mem or CPU. All things considered that's not too shabby. I wan't overly impressed withthe GPU coolers that came withthe cards though. I thought they could have been made a little bit better quality.

 

[dstorrow]

I am definitely no expert on ocing, but I have been in to it the past 2 months. I myself have a GF4 Ti4200, but its from OCSystem (www.ocsystem.com). I wish I could get my core that high the damn thing maxes out at 295 and it is supposed to run at 320 out of factory maybe it was poorly constructed. Anyways, it doesnt surprise me that you can only get your memory to 490. w/ out RAM sinks I could only get mine to around 500. I would reccomend picking up some RAM sinks. The ones I have on my vid card now are tin-coated copper ram sinks and I can get the memory up to 640 (amost a 4600) and thats with 4 ns chips. I think Thermaltake sells a package which includes a copper GPU cooler and aluminum RAM sinks for 20 bucks or less. But it sounds like you wont even need the GPU cooler--anyways, guess you could search around and maybe buy some Ram sinks online.

Hope I was helpful,
Daniel

 

[fliplyricist1]

I am definitely no expert on ocing, but I have been in to it the past 2 months. I myself have a GF4 Ti4200, but its from OCSystem (www.ocsystem.com). I wish I could get my core that high the damn thing maxes out at 295 and it is supposed to run at 320 out of factory maybe it was poorly constructed. Anyways, it doesnt surprise me that you can only get your memory to 490. w/ out RAM sinks I could only get mine to around 500. I would reccomend picking up some RAM sinks. The ones I have on my vid card now are tin-coated copper ram sinks and I can get the memory up to 640 (amost a 4600) and thats with 4 ns chips. I think Thermaltake sells a package which includes a copper GPU cooler and aluminum RAM sinks for 20 bucks or less. But it sounds like you wont even need the GPU cooler--anyways, guess you could search around and maybe buy some Ram sinks online.

Hope I was helpful,
Daniel

Thanks a lot Daniel, very informative stuff, man. I think I'll go ahead and order some ram chips, since I've read some horror stories in here about taking off the gpu cooler and causing problems. Thanks again man.

 

[Matrix78]

and another Aopen to the list, i have one, see my sig below, i have it runny at 310/600 right now and i just got a score or 12600 in 3DMark

 

[Matrix78]

Thanks a lot Daniel, very informative stuff, man. I think I'll go ahead and order some ram chips, since I've read some horror stories in here about taking off the gpu cooler and causing problems. Thanks again man.

i just took mine off yesterday http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=137947 and let me tell ya whats under our AOpen HS isnt pretty... but i fixed that

 

[Samoyed]

I have a Gainward 4200. Remember that the ram on the 128 meg is slower than the ram on thr 64 meg. My 64 meg ram is stock at 514mhz and will OC to 565mhz w/out artifacts. It has 3.6 ns ram chips. The core will do 300mhz. All cooling is stock.

I would imagine that any 128 meg 4200 is not going to go as high because of the 4 ns ram chips used. 300 core and 490 ram is about a 20% OC which is consistent with the % Oc I get.

I have heard people say that ram heatsinks didnt help much. I do know that when I touch the ram chips on the card they dont seem that hot. What about U guys?

 

[fliplyricist1]

I have a Gainward 4200. Remember that the ram on the 128 meg is slower than the ram on thr 64 meg. My 64 meg ram is stock at 514mhz and will OC to 565mhz w/out artifacts. It has 3.6 ns ram chips. The core will do 300mhz. All cooling is stock.

I would imagine that any 128 meg 4200 is not going to go as high because of the 4 ns ram chips used. 300 core and 490 ram is about a 20% OC which is consistent with the % Oc I get.

I have heard people say that ram heatsinks didnt help much. I do know that when I touch the ram chips on the card they dont seem that hot. What about U guys?

I hear ya. Except I got 330 (not 300) on my core and 490 on my mem. Oh well, I guess maybe just my mem wasn't as great as my core . It's ok, I'll be completely satisfied when I upgrade my crap celeron 700 and everything will be smooth sailing.

Btw, I touched my ram chips after playing 3 hours of madden 2003...and they were warm to the touch. the gpu heatsink was faintly warm. (closed case, 1 case fan next to celeron)

 

[Samoyed]

So the ram heat really isnt a factor. Touch some other computer parts and u will burn your fingers. The core sink on my old Voodoo Banshee burned my fingers.

 

[baqai]

till now i am very happy with my card .. i won't lie i ordered the card via my computer vendor who was going to dubai (we don't get the good stuff here) and i ordered MSI but i ended up having Aopen, i was disappointed .. but i am very happy right now this monster is 1000% better than my old Geforce 2 Ultra, and i know for sure that my bottle neck is my cpu and ram so when i upgrade i will be able to get more out of my card even on the stock speeds i guess that was money well spended

i have seen people getting upto 10,000+ scores with their 4200's

btw guys if i change my cpu to XP2200+ and RAM to DDR 266 (512MB) how much difference will it make (everything stock) just curious

 

[CrystalMethod]

btw guys if i change my cpu to XP2200+ and RAM to DDR 266 (512MB) how much difference will it make (everything stock) just curious

If you mean a difference in your scores in 3DMark, you'll see a big difference.

 

[Matrix78]

Originally posted by baqai btw guys if i change my cpu to XP2200+ and RAM to DDR 266 (512MB) how much difference will it make (everything stock) just curious [/B]

before OC'ing my CPU i was a XP1600 (1.4Ghz) and my 3DMark score was around 6 - 7K currently i'm running it a 1.9Ghz and my scores are over 12K so i'd say there is a lil bit of a performance increase

 

[baqai]

oh good lord .. now i just can't wait to upgrade .. guys don't you wish at times money grow on tree's or something?