Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey!
Alright,
So I am venturing into some MILD OC'ing for my BFG GFX 5700 Ultra.
I enabled coolbits.
My core speeds are 475/906.
Right now, I am running stably at 492/942.

I tried 501/1000 and ran 3dmark3 340 patch and the trolls lair started showing strange objects and whatnot...not good...escaped out....gpu temp was around 58C. after 5 minutes, was down to 48C.

I read a review of the exact same card as mine and they got it to run stable at 522/1000. So are there any suggestions for possible passive cooling without too much effort on my part. The review didn't say they had anything special goin on(cooling-wise)....can I stick my vornado on the side of my case or something, lol...

How do you get your GPU temp?

It's a tab in my Nvidia display settings right underneath the "clock frequencies" tab, I think. It shows the core temp threshold, the current gpu core temp and ambient temp as well as a little color meter. I have the 52.13 drivers so maybe it's only with those.

Oh damn...
that's a 'cool' feature...

I like it...just found it yesterday....it's "cool", but I need the card to be "cooler"....Andre 'Ice Cold' 3000 COOL.....I want to get this puppy operating at 5950 speeds if possible.
Anyone?

Can I put my pc in a mini-fridge? Kidding....maybe open the side panel up and stick an industrial strength fan on it....

I'd rather have something quiet then something fast. The amount of cooling you're gonna have to add in order to get FX5900 speeds could prolly amount to the price difference between the 5700 & the 5900.

You can try putting a 80mm fan on the side, blowing air straight at the card.

Or get one of those :

lol....that fan is overkill, gotta love it.
I think I can get relatively close...I'll try getting a fan to blow directly on the card itself, thanks....
If the reviewers can get 522/1000, then I think I should be able to as well, hehehehhehe

What you need to remember is that reviewers often get a card "hand-picked" that's very stable & OCing friendly. Nothing says you'll get the same.

I though about that...but it was the retail version...same box that I opened, same everything....I don't think this one was hand-picked(but since I am an idealistic *******, you're prolly right ;o)

I know I can't get those speeds though...I have one of those compact H-P cases...little room for anything in there...I'm sure they had a full size tower with plenty of airflow, etc.

But I did get a noticeable increase in 3dMark3 after I OC'd the card up to 492/942...anything higher and the scores would just get progressively lower.....I think I found the sweet spot...fun.

Check out games rather then 3Dmark. You could get a 1000 point increase & not notice anything in games. If it's not noticeable in games, it's not worth it. A higher score in 3Dmark isn't worth the extra stress you're putting on the card & its components.

I know man...I'm just screwing around a little....I place little to no importance on 3Dmark or any other benchmarks...I'm just doing it to see what happens.....

i recently had a gforce3 in my old pc and the small fan on top shagged out on me, it was of no use to me or anyone else to that matter as it needed a new fan, so one day i got creative as i was bored and bodged on an 80mm case fan!! i screwed it into the heat sink and it coverd the whole heatsink too! im sure my bodge job has made this a better card( maybe? but it looks a mess!) but it is now running in a mid-low range setup and is working like a beast!!!

how much does that fan cost??? fricken beast

Blue ORB makes a nice heatpipe...but thats a killer

a gd idea for graphics overclocking are those bracket mounted fans which you can mount in the PCI slot next to the graphics card.
btw - on a 5700 ultra you might get to 5900/5950 speeds (as in clock speeds) but you will NEVER get 5900/5950 performance because the 5700 ultra uses a 128bit memory bus as compaired to the 256bit bus used on the 5900/5950 so the memory bandwidth will always be half that of its higher level siblings
the 5700 ultra is a powerful card in its own right - and goddamnit i want to replace my Ti200 with one

Steg

Yeah, if you got a free PCI slot, you could always throw those slot fans in there, just like the previous said.

Its funny, I've seen someone throw a swiftech on his graphics card... dang, can that even hold all that weight on there??