Geforce256 OC any good?

[maha_x]

Ive been looking around for articles about OC'n my geforce256 DDR. All the articles Ive found are old and state that OC'n geforce gains nothing. Now I could imagine that today with more T&L enabled apps there could be some use to OC. Is it worth the trouble?

 

[Placid]

Should not be hard just use coolbits.
Will you see much gain? Try it and find out.

 

[M@€$†®Ö™]

Where can you get coolbits ? I have a friend that has the very same question.

Maestro

 

[maha_x]

If I remember right, coolbits is a register hack for the nvidia drv to "unleash" the OC control in the display properties. I think I might try some of those 3rd party utils like nvtweak etc.

Here's a URL:

http://www.3dchipset.com/utilities/nvidia/overclocking/coolbits/

 

[UnseenMenace]

I have an Elsa Erazor X2 which is a Geforce 256 card, it is modifed to Quadro specifications and overclocked with a Blue Orb.. I was also told that the gains from overclocking the 256 was poor and this is pretty close to the truth from my experience. When overclocking my card I did however obtain minor gains and when overclocking the card further than this point the gains did not increase. If the Geforce has a fan on it that obtains its power from the graphic card itself I would relocate this to ease power consumption through the AGP port. As for tweaking the coolbits registry tweak does not work without modifications on the latest drivers and as such I use NVmax

Tweakfilesdescription get tweaks from here.
Tweakhardware get the quadro modification from here

If you do want to use the coolbits, you can get them from tweakfiles and details of how to modify them for use on the latest drivers can be found at Wild Andy - C's website

 

[Pinky]

I agree, the card doesn't gain much... the actual design of the card pretty much maxxed it out as-is. I've heard 1-2 fps gain, maybe 50 3dmarks.

 

[maha_x]

I find it peculiar... Allmost anything gains from OC, so why not GF256? Is there timing trouble? Mayby I could investigate...

 

[UnseenMenace]

maha_x (Aug 01, 2001 02:53 a.m.):
I find it peculiar... Allmost anything gains from OC, so why not GF256? Is there timing trouble? Mayby I could investigate...

I think that you can only gain from overclocking up to a limit and unfortunately the Geforce 256 is possibly close to this limit from standard, the GPU also pushes out a great deal of heat which effects stability when you overclock. The majority of card fans draw the power from the Geforce itself which increases power consumption through the AGP port and just add to the problems you must overcome.

 

[Mord-Sith]

Well I can get over 2000 3dmark2001 score (default benchmark) with my oced geforce 256 ddr so I would say ya its a good ocer. I have a celeron 2 processor clocked at 700Mhz (for the bench) and its clocked at 160/345. Im going to be water cooling it as soon as I can get a radiator, At these speeds it does however artifact quit a bit but at 145/333 it does fine. Im using a golden (yes golden) orb as a gpu cooler and I have no sinks on the ram as of right now. There are two blower fans blowing across the card. one above and one below.

I can play max pane at 1240x780x32 with full detail (no aa) with no problems

I still dont know why they started making the mx geforce 2 cards when a g1 256 ddr will blow it out of the water.

 

[Über~PhLuBB]

Bah, dont even bother overclocking it. You'll get artifacts and texture problems with a mere 5MHz increase. (At least I did) Even if you can get 20, hell, even 50 MHz (Which I doubt is even possible), it wont stand a chance against a leter card like a GF2 GTS, Pro, Ultra, GF3, etc. (Not MX's.)

Just break down and get yourself a GeForce 3. Mine's on the way now!

 

[crAss]

You can overclock the card too high...
I got an Asus V6800 Deluxe in May and the card rocks. Since I don't want to rip the default heatsink/fan I just placed an 8cm case fan blowing on the card and I was ready to go. First I must say that not all unofficial drivers overclock as much. For directX 7 (3DMark2K) you should use dets 11.xx whereas for directX 8 (3DMark2K1) you should use 12.90 which are the fastest around.
Here are some results to show you that you can get even a 25% increase through overclocking. The card is clocked at 120 core 300 memory. I use Riva Tuner to overclock cause it permits me to go over 150 MHz core. So the max I got out of my card before the image quality became trash was 172MHz core and 372MHz memory. After this I get 3152 (2K1)with my PIII 1000@1027. When it is clocked at default it gives about 2500 3DMarks2k1.

http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?1299419

Geforce256 DDR is a great card and I got it by chance. I was off to get a geforce2 MX and a TV tuner with the video in (I didn't need the tuner just the video in) and I found the deluxe card I got on sale for 175$ (prices in Greece are too high...the Asus 8200 Deluxe-geforce3 is 465$). The funny thing is that the Asus deluxe with the MX chip was about 40$ more expensive...I love my card..

crAss

PS. I was thinking of one more parameter to the overclocking of the geforce256 DDR...We assume that all cards are the same. We know that the memory modules differ but we say that all nvidia chips are the same. They aren't cause they are produced same way as CPUs. They have steppings and as the production goes on the chips that get out of the production line are even better as far as quality is concerned and thus they should overclock better. The card I have was manufactured on April 2001 and so for me there is a possibility that it overclocks better than the same card that was produced over a year ago...
System specs
CPU: PIII 1GHz@1027 FCPGA on a slocket
MB: Soyo 6BA+III (BX chipset, AGP 1.0) with the latest BIOS
RAM: 1 dimm 256MB-->133MHz CL3
HD: WD 40GB 7200 ATA100
VGA: ASUS V6800 DELUXE
Sound: Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (Vortex 2)
Modem: 56k rockwell chipset int winmodem
ISDN serial modem
DVDROM: Hitachi 2500 BX
CDRW: Plextor 8432T
5 fans, 3big and 2 small
300W atx power supply (specifically 160W +5V, +3.3V combined)
OS:Win98SE, DX 8.1

 

[maha_x]

Obviously the later geforces go higher, atleast according to your results. I got the mem quite high (370, some artifacts), but the core didnt get higher than 150. 155 was rather ugly... I got my OC results under different branch "Geforce OC anygood? test results". Check if your interested.