sc1ence

I recently purchased a 7900GT with a zalman vs700 cooler. I got this off of EBay for 110 bucks. I am considering doing a voltmod on it.

http://endeavorquest.net:8880/7900GT_VM/index.htm

anyone have experience running a voltmod like the one in the link above on a 7900gt?

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sc1ence

I got my 7900 gt today. it overclocks on stock voltage to 550mhz core. I am not messing with the memory clock due to the heat generated in some mofsets on the back of the card that control voltage regulation of the memory.

I will be stepping the voltage up to 1.4 from 1.2 and seeing how high I can get my core speeds up without artifacts. my goal is to run the gpu stable at 675 MHZ. I have a zalman vs700 cooler on the gpu and heatsinks on the memory. I will keep people posted.

the definitive thread on modding the crap out of this card can be found here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=94177

if you are going to mod it up to 1.5 you will need to do a bit more to compensate for some voltage regulation issues.

unfortunatly, I cant use nibitor to mod the voltage in this card.

for reference, with a bios voltmod (using nibitor) and overclock on my old 7800gt, I was getting about the same 3dmark scores than the reference 7900gt settings for the evga 7900gt card I just installed. 4100 3dmark06 for the Overclocked 7800gt and stock voltage 7900gt. with the 7900gt OCed to 550Mhz I am getting 4500 3dmark06 scores.

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sc1ence

After reading a few horror stories about fried cards with the voltmod, I decided to stick with stock 1.2 voltage. I am able to obtain a stable overclock of 590mhz core and 1.54 mem. Reference timings are 450mhz and 1.4 mem. My 3dmark06 score is now 4730. Considering that most people are able to obtain 650 MHZ core overclock with 1.4 voltmod, I am quite pleased.

card is an evga 7900GT with a zalman vf700 cooler. Heatsyncs are on the memory which are actively cooled by the gpu fan.

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jonan_

Oh dude don't let other peoples failures stop you. Their tech levels could have been low. For every failure there are probably a dozen success stories. I say you go for it.

Peer pressure

sc1ence

the other thing is to do the volt mod, i need a 20$ conductive pen. to raise the mhz another 60 mhz im not sure its worth it.. raising it above 60mhz just can not be done safely without adding some resistors to control voltage regulation, at which point i would have to solder the board, considerably raising the risk of failure and crushing any kind of ebay resale i may get.

considering i can play with settings on high and antialising on and get a solid 60 fps in my game of choice 2142, im happy.

and yes, im saying all this not to convince you, but to convince me

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jonan_

Smart man. but... once a new more intensive game comes out... then I don't see that you have a choice

sc1ence

I will reevaluate when quakewars comes out.

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Anospa

I've heard quake wars is gonna be very unintensive hardware wise. Can't remember where, but was quite surprised.

What'd you OC with? I'm getting frustrated with the Nvidia control panel options, they aren't agreeing with me.

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sc1ence

nvtweak to unlock settings in control panel. I moved the gpu overclock down to 575 for stability. I would get artifacts on rainy maps where the rain appeared as black streaks.

still too afraid to do voltmod. in fact, i have purposely stayed away from radio shack. if I go into the shack, I am for sure getting the conductive pen...

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Anospa

Heh, if you're happy with what you have, don't change it. Though I know its not all that dangerous if you take your time. My tech site I use for everything: www.diy-street.com

I had thought I had nvtweak setup, but I think I didn't bother after hearing stuff about .netframework issues, or something and stupidly didn't install it. Giving it another go now and see if it works any better.

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Anospa

Well, just got it up to 549 core and 1.55 mem. with stock cooler. I'll settle for that for now, too hot in the summer to try and go further. Hopefully I do decide to go water in the next month or so, just gotta finish painting my case (I'll start/show a worklog in the next week or so I think).

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