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In the Forums... |
Posted: February 23, 2000 Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy Units supplied by: The Card Cooler Observations The test environment means a lot in this article, so here's some info on my system: Pentium II 450 CPU 128 MB PC100 SDRAM Abit BX6 Motherboard Mid-Tower ATX case w/ dual 80mm blowholes on top Sound Blaster Live! Value Nvidia GeForce 256 DDR reference board (3.68 drivers, VSYNC disabled, all options set in favor of visual quality) 250 watt power supply (no problems at all with these fans!) Room temperature: 71ºF Overclocking Results:
This table is a bit hard to follow, so I'll explain. "Default Speed" refers to the card's default clock speed -- no overclocking involved. "Original Cooler" is the highest stable speed I achieved with the card's normal heatsink/fan. "Extreme Cooling" is the highest stable speed I achieved with the two 120mm fans, slot cooler, and Honeywell fan. "Percent Increase" is the clock speed increase from the extreme cooling vs. default speed. As you can see, the extra cooling helped support a high clock speed increase and the system remained stable. (Note - I know some GeForce 256 cards have been overclocked much higher, but I doubt one of the original reference boards has...) Temperature Comparison:
The extra cooling gets the job done! Even after an hour of playing Quake3 and Unreal Tournment at 147 core / 349 memory, the temperature is still 35ºF cooler than the default speed with the heatsink fan. That's a lot of air! Framerate Comparison:
For the framerate comparison, Quake3 Arena was used on "High" graphics settings. The resolution was set to 800x600 for the first test, and 1024x768 for the second test. VSYNC was disabled and the test was run until the hard drive did not read. Using the maximum clock speeds reached above, the benchmarks show that the extreme cooling did a bit for the framerate. At 800x600, the framerate barely moved at all, but at 1024x768, it jumped a whole 16.4% from the default speed. At higher resolutions, the framerate would have probably increased even more. Conclusion Most people aren't going to spend nearly $100 on cooling for the GeForce 256 or any video card for that matter. And nobody wants to hear how loud this puppy gets with all the cooling. Remember, 242 CFM from the case fans and on top of that, the Honeywell fan, not only uses a lot of power, but it also is damn loud. Oh no.. I only have about 5 hours of sleep now before I have to wake up. Well, that was fun. Thanks for reading! :) And thanks again to The Card Cooler for supplying this kick-ass gear! |
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