New 9700 Pro

[Ron Jeremy]

Hey people, I need your help. I just picked up a brand spankin' new Radeon 9700 Pro as an upgrade from my GeForce4 Ti4200.

Installed it last night, but realized I could no longer use Powerstrip to overclock my card. So what is the best ATi Radeon overclocking utiility? I know of Rage3d, but that's it. Are there any others?

I've decided to leave the stock HSF on the card, as I'm not going to overclock it too heavily (maybe up to around 350/650), but I want to put AS3 on. So I pulled the HSF from the card and used an ex-acto to scrape away the stock thermal pad. I've cleaned the heatsink base with alcohol, but now I'm looking at the GPU and surrounding the outer edge of the processor is a metal square that's level with the height of the die. Should I put AS3 on this metal square as well as the die?

Also do you 9700 Pro owners use ramsinks? If so, what are some efficient ones, preferrably copper.

Any suggestions, cooling ideas, hints, tips or tweaks that I as a long time Nvidia fan, first time ATi owner should know are greatly appreciated!

Thanks people!
- RJ

 

[pip]

you can use powerstrip to OC why'd you think you couldn't

 

[Ron Jeremy]

Because it's ATi.....I thought Powerstrip only worked for nVidia based cards. Wow, this puts a whole new spin on things! So what would you recommend?

 

[ptwearnhardtfan]

So what would you recommend?

Selling the Ti4200 to me dirt cheap, hehe.

 

[pip]

Because it's ATi.....I thought Powerstrip only worked for nVidia based cards. Wow, this puts a whole new spin on things! So what would you recommend?

you could use Rivatuner, Rage 3d Tweak, or powerstrip

find rage 3d here, www.rage3d.com, rivatuner here, www.guru3d.com

 

[Ron Jeremy]

Very cool, thanks Pip! Sorry ptwearnhardtfan, I gave the Ti4200 to my uncle who's been busy wondering why BF1942 won't run on his computer. Opened his case up this weekend only to find a GeForce2 MX200!

 

[Anaxagoras1986]

Selling the Ti4200 to me dirt cheap, hehe.

And you sell me your GF3 even more dirt cheap .

Ron that metal square is, I assume, the shim. If you remove the heat pad and put AS3 you want to remove this shim so your HSF can still get good contact with the GPU, otherwise you may overheat. I believe this is how it goes...any R300 owners want to confirm this?

 

[ptwearnhardtfan]

Very cool, thanks Pip! Sorry ptwearnhardtfan, I gave the Ti4200 to my uncle who's been busy wondering why BF1942 won't run on his computer. Opened his case up this weekend only to find a GeForce2 MX200!

Oh well, ya win some, ya lose some. I hope your uncle enjoys MY card, lol.

I might have traded even up for my Gainward.

 

[Ron Jeremy]

Does anyone have advice or even a guide for the safest and most proper way to remove the shim from the 9700 Pro?

 

[Xevuhtess7]

put your card in an antistatic bag and seal it. put it in your freezer for like 20-30 min and then use a thin knife or sumtin (i used a utility blade) and just slide the knife underneath the shim and pry at it. be patient, it's quite tough but it will eventually pop off and fly like 2 feet in the air. mine almost hit my friend in the head who was leaning over my shoulder watching boy that would have been beautiful! i also put gigantic ramsinks on my ram chips cause they get mad hot! ramsinks arent any different from card to card, just chop up a heatsink or you can buy premade ramsinks, and you probably know the rest for applying them. you might want to lap your hsf while it's off, i did that, you mind as well, yuo nkwo what i mean? good luck, and be careful with that shim!

 

[Cheesy Peas]

Does anyone have advice or even a guide for the safest and most proper way to remove the shim from the 9700 Pro?

here ya go.
http://overclockers.com/articles714/

 

[Ron Jeremy]

Thanks everyone!

 

[batboy]

I'd like to thank everyone for the info too. I just got my brand new ATI Radeon 9700 Pro today. I was already thinking about removing the heatsink, lapping it, and reinstalling with AS3. Didn't know about the shim thing until I read this.

I got another question. The vid card I got is "built by ATI", but I've seen "powered by ATI" and "all in wonder" and Sapphire also makes a Radeon 9700 Pro. I know Radeon makes the chipset, but what's the difference (if any)? Is one better than the rest?

 

[Xevuhtess7]

it's pretty much the same deal with all of nvidia's cards and their 3rd party companies. sapphire makes radeon cards with the gpu's just like say... gainward does for nvidia's gpus. it's the same for nvidia, so usually the variation is in cooling, and memory, though for the 9700 pro there is not as huge of a range of memory, most stick to the reference design. built by ati means that ati actually put teh card together like sapphire would. it's as if nvidia took their gpu and built the card for it like gainward would have done. they do this to get into part of the market, not by just selling the gpu's to 3rd party manufacturers buta ctually making a few cards themselves. powered by ati means just that the card has an ati gpu. so for example, sapphire's box would probably say "powered by ati" because they built teh board, and it has an ati gpu on it. it might seem confusing to you at first, but ati is taking the same road that nvidia is on, having 3rd party manufacters make cards for them.

 

[Anaxagoras1986]

Batboy, dont get me wrong at all by this post because I dont mean any offense, but how did you miss the Powered and Built thing when you have been here for so long and with all of those pretty blue stars?

 

[Yodums]

Batboy, dont get me wrong at all by this post because I dont mean any offense, but how did you miss the Powered and Built thing when you have been here for so long and with all of those pretty blue stars?

Hmmmmm, Batboy's expertise is being an Intel geek, and I think this is his first ATI card since his previous cards were nVidia so he's just trying to get some things straight.

 

[batboy]

Yo Yo is right. I was a GeForce guy until just now and spend most my time in the Intel section. Trying to get educated a little before I roll up my sleeves and start modding this thing. Wanted to make sure I got something decent. I'm going to download some Cat drivers, DirectX9, and 3Dmark2003 tonight, then benchmark my old GF3 while I pull the heatsink off the 9700 Pro. Having lots of pretty blue stars don't mean I know everything about all computer components.

 

[bafbrian]

LOL

That is honesty for ya guys and girls.

 

[Anaxagoras1986]

I know the blue stars doesnt mean you know everything, but having all of them does mean you have been here for a while. I just figured you would have heard someone say somethign about it in that time.

You have alot of expierence in Intel? Ok, I do not and I have been arguing with my friend about this, could you give me some facts to shut him up? . He thinks that the reason why the P2 had such a large heatsink is because it was an "overclocked Pentium 1". I responded and said the P2 was a completely new chip in comparison to the P1. It has a much more advanced cache architecture that makes it more effecient and powerful. Then he said the the P3 was a completely new design and I said that if any chip was, the P3 was an overclcoked P2 with minor archectural improvements until the later models (Coppermine and Tualitin) came out. Am I on the correct path about this?

 

[batboy]

Yikes! Well, the Pentium 1 and the Pentium II are completely different designs, no doubt about that. The P-1 was a socket 7 and the P-II was a slot 1. The cores were completely different too. The P-III actually came in two different flavors: Katami and Coppermine. The earlier P-III did have some common ground with the P-II, but the Coppermine FC-PGA (flip chip) was a new design and had 256k on-die cache running full speed compared to the P-II's 512k cache off-die that ran at half the processor speed. So, I guess you're more correct.

Anyway, getting back to the topic... I pulled the heatsink off my 9700 Pro last night and got it all cleaned up. That yellow thermal gunk was hard to clean off. I also finally got the shim pulled off. It was stuck on pretty good. I'll start lapping the GPU sink tonight (unless I decide to put something else on). I have an extra Blue Orb, but I'm not convinced that will cool better than a lapped stock sink installed with Arctic Silver 3.

Did a bunch of measuring of the core and RAM chips and scrounged around in my computer junk boxes. I found a nice blue heatsink that when cut down will fit nicely onto the RAM chips, but the blue color sort of clashes with the red card. I'd like to buy some copper RAM sinks. So far, the only RAM sinks I found are too long (at 2cooltek.com), but I guess they could be cut to fit. Any sources for good RAM sinks or is everyone just cutting down existing sinks to fit?