GF4 Break-in

[Player0]

Well, Im still mad at myself. I should know better not to buy the first type of any product out on the market. I preordered my Visiontek Ti4600 from Best Buy and got it right away. Its literally 3x faster than the Hercules GF2 Pro I had.

So, I have it in the cube now, all water cooled. The added heat from the video card and the northbridge (along with the extra miles of tubing) have really impacted my cold water temperatures, which now are about 8c. 4c over the previous system. I think I can get that back down with some tweaking.

On a side note, the Black Ice Xtremes are awesome. They blow away the AquaCoil. My hot water temps stablize around 19-21c over ambient. But its been hot and humid here lately, which is why hot water temperatures are now at 40c instead of 25c. But the radiators are very quiet with my Panaflow L1As. The machine on low power mode is no louder than a standard PC. The machine on high power mode is as loud as a small osscilating fan on low. Basically, I can talk on the phone again near the thing. The whole thing is quieter than ANY athlon PC ive ever built for myself. No more deltas or dustbuster YS Techs :) Anyway, IM off topic. Just very pleased.

Back to the video card, I played a little with it last night. Like I was saying before, NEVER buy the first product that came out. Revision 1 of the GF4 4600 doesn't overclock NEARLY as good as later versions. My previous overclocking results with the stock Ti4600 were 310 CPU, 710 Ram.

Last night I was able to get 340 CPU and 730 RAM. This is just with the added waterblocks. No voltage mods on this Ti4600 yet. These are just preliminary results, and im not even sure of 100% stability, although it did play through 3dmark demo mode (i was also testing the new sound card).

Im not sure those results are worth all the extra money, time, or cold water heat gain. Cold water temps shoot up 1-2c degrees when running 3dmark loops, although im not sure if this is the CPU or the Video Card or the combination. What I do know is that it takes an awful lot of heat power to raise my cold water temperatures at all ;)

I desperately need to get some thermsistors hooked up to the video card for temperature results. I am concerned that the waterflow through the 1/4" ID line is stranglingly low. The video card may be running hotter than it should. I will also do the voltage mod now, maybe this weekend. I really want to hit 350/750 if I can.

I havent tried more than a handful of frequencies yet. But neither 350 nor 750 is stable yet :)

[Pistol]

I have a question here,I have one of these 4600's and wanted to know that when you boot up your comp the first screen that shows up is about your vid card but for some reason after installing this card there is no read-out in the first screen on boot,is that normal?another thing I was wondering is that it allways wants to install a default monitor,is this also normal?thanks for any imput

[Player0]

Uuhm...thats a good question Pistol. I should have the cube running again tommarow. I honestly dont remember ever seeing the 4600 BIOS or not. My 19" monitor usually takes a while to warm up, so I usually dont see that anyway.

If there was no video bios at load up, I would be surprised however. I dont remember one way or the other, but I think I would have noticed if something was out of the ordinary, but perhaps not. I should think you should see something at post.

Could it be your monitor just doesnt flash the bios? Perhaps it doesnt show on reboots, only cold starts. Like I said, ill have the cube running tommarow, ill make a note of taking a look :)

As for default monitor...have you tried installing the proper drivers for your monitor? Which OS is this for?

Are you assigning an IRQ to the video card in BIOS? You must do this.

[mdzcpa]

Hey Pistol:

Good to see you.

I tried to do a reboot for you on my machine which has a 4600, but the mobo actually boot's all the way to the Highpoint BIOS routine before my picture comes up. The CPU speed shown on first boot up is there for only a flicker, if at all.

Now it does that even when I "pre warm" the monitor (by having it on first). So I might be able to assume the card itself is not coming up at all until that point.

But to be honest I'm not really sure if it is the mobo being really fast or the vid card at this point. But, either way it seems to run fine.

I agree with Player0 that you likely need to install some moniter drivers to get that auto install routine to stop.

Can you see your whole boot up screen? At what point do you get any video at all?

[Pistol]

I have a Ultra that I have been useing and I see the bios splash screen for that card when it boots,as soon as I install the G4 that screen no longer comes up
I do have the right driver for the monitor,this was on a kt7a-raid board,I didnt have the kr board as of yet,but when I was setting the new MB up it does the same thing,no bios screen and allways comes up with the default monitor,one being the monitor that I'm useing which is a IBM P70, I think thats the one,I'm not at work right now,no matter what I do it keeps on installing a default with the P4,so I have two all the time,could this be because of the extra plugin for TV?
I didnt assign a IRQ in bios,it did it on its own and its IRQ 11 ( shared only with ACPI IRQ Holder)

[Pistol]

I just fired up this comp and the first screen I see is the highpoint screen which doesnt last very long,then I did a reset and the first screen which came up very fast was the bios screen,but there is no way that you could get into bios at that speed unless your holding the delete key before hand,then I did a restart and the bios screen was there a little longer,never did see the video bios screen lol,I did try to delete the default monitor from both regular mode and safe mode but when windows boots it keeps puting it back in

[JaFFa]

i have a ti 4400, and I had never seen my video bios until I used it with a TFT monitor, it seems my 19" cant warm up fast enough to catch it, the tft instantly comes on so i even got the pleasure of seeing it count up the RAM :)
So it is def there on mine, the mon just aint quick enough to catch it.

[DexterHolland91]

P0 - You'll probably need the voltage mod to hit 350mhz for the core. But once you mod that sucker you should be able to aim for 360-380mhz range with that awesome cooling you have. :D

[Player0]

Id like to get that high, but I doubt it with this A2 core :) 350 maybe :) Some people with the A3 core get nearly 350 just stock :)

Ill be doing the voltage mod next week I think :)

[calantak]

it's a screen thing, ^pistol, some screens do it and some don't.

on my ilyama, I only see the boot screen a sec, and the rest is black
on the nokia I see it all.

[DexterHolland91]

P0 - Is there any way to tell the stepping of GF4 core without taking off the heatsink? I heard someone say something about RivaTuner telling you the stepping.

[Player0]

Dont know Dex. I had to remove the heatsink to find out on mine :)

[DexterHolland91]

See that's the problem, the block is held on using a simple but time consuming system of hook-up (will write a guide later) and basically i'm too lazy to the block off. :D

[Player0]

You mean the standard HSF? I dont know...seemed easy to me. Throw the card in the freezer, remove the pins, pry with a razor blade and pop...hsf comes off :)

[calantak]

rivatuner tells you the stepping in the opening screen, top half, it describes your card and the stepping is between brackets
like this : geforce 4 ti4600 128 Mb (A3)

[Player0]

Just installed RivaTuner...I like it. Yep, shows my shitty A2 stepping. How depressing lol. Especially after $150 worth of upgrades and mods. Ah well, theres always NV30 :)

I think I may replace NvMax with RivaTuner, seems to be better.

[DexterHolland91]

P0 - No, I am watercooling the GF4. Wcpuid also shows your stepping, under your graphics adapter stuff. GARG It appears I have an A2 stepping as well... but I am currently hitting 357mhz on the core which should be a good sign for you. And I don't think that is maxed out. :cool:

[LiquidRulez]

im curious to know how one goes about doing a voltage mod on a G4 Ti series card??
i could really stand to see if i can break it :D