Forums have moved

Hello People,
As you may have seen in a past post I had the chance to get another 9700 pro card for dirt, literally $30 *LOL* after selling my msi 4600ti. The reason I did this is I have heard the dx9 and 3.0 drivers have been working good together, also mainly did this because when the NV30 comes out the resale on the 9700pro will be higher than the 4600ti I had hehe. The card I have is a built by ati oem card.
First impressions, it looked just like every 9700 pro card I had previously "ugly", unless you have an msi board or soyo fire dragon. Plugged it in and ran it on my system for a day or so to make sure it was stable, could crank out an overclock of 351 / 688 using powerstrip, not as much as I had been able to overclock the previous versions. Anymore on the chip and it would lock up quick, any more on the ram and had goofy artifacts. One cool thing is the latest drivers running DX9 seem to work flawless so far and I have had no problems with all my games! SWEET! Kind of surprised me! Finally an ati card working in my system. The control panel seems to be easy to use now as NVIDIA with a few more options. So kudos to ati for finally making a card that is working for me without me having to find fix after fix to play a game.
On to the whole point of the article, if you have a 9700pro you know ATI is kind of retarded, well someone is over there. The card suffers from the same sunken chip as most of the other r300 cards. I stuck a perfectly straight piece of aluminum across the shim and poof, could see an air gap between the chip and the aluminum, used a ruler and also a flat heat sink and confirmed this air gap. This is probably why they stick that wad of yellow crap on the bottom of the cheesy stock sink. The reason I was looking into this is because just like the 3 other 9700 pro cards I had, this one runs hotter than the hood of a black car here in Arizona in the summer time. Touch the sink after playing a game and you will probably pull back with a blister, same goes for the ram but I have not addressed that yet! Well to make a long story short I browsed the net and found pretty much nothing when it comes to aftermarket heat sinks for it to help tame it down. Took a drive over to the local fried electronics to see if they had something I could make a sink out of on the shelf when I came across a Zalman ZM80A-HP passive heatpipe heatsink. Right away a smile came to my face because this baby was HUGE! I do not mean kind of big, the package was heavy! Annoyed by the thought of a passive cooler I thought old Zalman had made a good looking product and I could see modification potential. I took it home and started to install it right away, note that I had to goop a huge amount of artic silver on the chip to make sure it made good contact with the base heat transfer plate thingy whatever. Long story short, the product was good, installed with ease. Please note the photo that I have with the back heat transfer plate thing is wrong, I have it on backwards because I do not read instructions that well, actually I did not ready them at all can ya tell I am a tool guy..?? haha. Anyways both arrows on the base plates should point to the pci slot when installed.
SWEET! Got it all done, installed it and it works! And please note that the heat pipe does transfer heat well on this item, after running games for an hour the top was a little warm!! I placed an 80mm fan on the back over the chip side to help cool, defeats zalmans idea of a noiseless heatsink but who cares, I sure don't! I want performance baby! Well after running UT2003 for awhile and also ww2 microcrap flight sim3 I felt the bottom sink and it was actually cooler than the top by a tiny bit! Reached in and felt the bottom plate that attaches to the chip and it was cool also! The the real test. I started overclocking the chip, and overclocked it and then overclocked it some more! Finally I found a point were the actual chip started to cause some artifacts but it did NOT lock up! Woo hoo! So I backed it off a but and ran a test, first try at 392 / 688 I scored 14,942 on 3dse not bad! As soon as I get the ram cooled I am hoping to break 15,000+ without overclocking my processor! Anyways this setup works, cools the ati chip to a comphy temp and puts a smile on my face! Again congrats to ati for finally fixing the drivers so they work good, and ati... fire that guy who measured the shim vs. the chip!
[img][/img]

More pics...

And some more pics, if you wanna kinda see an order of install go from the bottom up! Soon to come, a ram sink upgrade when I figure it out and get the parts

NICE!

how about the ram sinks?

Like I said, the ram cooling is soon to come! I have to make some peices hehe

AI has finally succumbed to the temptations of the dark side.


It was nice knowing you AI.

LOL


i have an ATI Rage Pro in my old machine
and still have a spare Geforce2 MX200

and using a Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb

im in a little of both worlds

Hey cik, read why I go tthe ati *LOL* I got it because it will have higher resale value as soon as the nv30 comes out hehehe..

I guess if there is anyone that can get that piece of junk to work it'll be you AI.

Until then, prepare to do battle my old friend. :P

*LOL* nerd :P anyways the card really is working well under DX9 and the new catylist 3.0 drivers or whatever there called. Kinda suprised me! Just cannot wait for the nv30 hehe