A brand spanking new gainward GF4 Ti4400 but some questions.

rossco

Member
Jul 10, 2002
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Hi there,

As it says above i have just got hold of my new card and fitted it. It is a golden sample card. although what difference that makes really i dont know. It has gone into my 1ghz athlon system with 512 meg ram. I have some questions which due to living out of the country i am having some problems answering.
Firstly

1)I dont know how hot my system should be now, seems very warm. it runs at 50c for the mobo and 60 for the processor when underload. i dont know if this is too hot. i know this is not strictly a video card issue. but i think the new card has pushed up the temp. is it worth adding an exhaust fan to help cool the thing down? At the mo i have the sides of the tower off.

2)I had some probelms with my drivers when installing. its a gainward card and when it was all installed the utility with it seemed to conflict with dx8.1 resulting in some games like il2 and morrowind not running. once i removed the utility and installed nvidias reference 28.32 driver, things seemed much better and i can overclock with rivatool. will i still get the best results this way or with the utility that the card shipped with?

3)I have 3dmark2001, but i dont seem to have an option on it to check the card. am i looking in the wrong place?

4)is is worth upgrading from 28.32 to 28.42 drivers?

5) i am not sure what speed to push for on my card. its just humming along at the moment at 280/580. its fine. But if i try and push it wont it raise the overall tempreture of my system? see point one.

6) is it worth adding a ups aswell to stop power spikes. i think i could get a small one for free from work.


Thanks to everyone for giving me any help. Its much appreciated. I am only feeling my way along her as you can probably tell.

Cheers

Rossco
 

Emultra

Golden Member
Jul 6, 2002
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I have a Gainward GeForce 2 Pro 64 MB DDR Golden Sample (phew). Golden Sample editions have better overclocking abilities.

1) Seems a little hot. You should get a better cooling device. If the temperature won break the hardware right away, it will shorten the life span of it.

2) Try getting the latest Detonator drivers (29.42) and then install the utilities. The in-box utilities for Gainward cards make it easier to overclock and so on. For example, I am running at Enhanced Mode so I don't have to think about how much to overclock the memory and/or core.

3) Don't know about that one.

4) You mean from 28.32 to 29.42, yes, I would say so.

5) It will raise the temperature. Use the in-box utilities to apply a set overclocked speed optimized for your card.

Glad to help. :)

6) Don't know about that one.
 

rossco

Member
Jul 10, 2002
37
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0
Thanks for replying mate.

What do you understand as enhahanced mode? Does it just run the card as fast as it can. When i clicked on this option it just upped the speed a little. Its just i have not installed this utility as for some reason i have problems with directx. for instance as i said i cant run il2 or morrowind. yet when i uninstall it the games using directx seems fine.

its all rather confusing. this cooling lark seems like an arse aswell.

Rossco
 

Barrei

Senior member
Mar 21, 2002
514
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Enhanced mode is the maximum overclock that Gainward will allow and still keep your warranty on the card , however the card will overclock above enhanced mode . Uninstall gainwards utility and use Riva Tuner instead , it will allow you to set your clock speeds and won't cause trouble with your games.
 

rossco

Member
Jul 10, 2002
37
0
0
thanks for the replies.

Thats exactly what i have done. I am using the riva utility now, no probs. I have some cooling issues to be resolved before i really push the card. At the moment is is running at 300/605. No problems at all. I thought i would leave it there though until i have my cooling sorted, i wonder how high it will go?

How fast has anyone else got their 4400's

Thanks

Rossco
 

snow patrol

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2000
8,377
0
76
FYI I was able to bench the memory of my Ti4400 for a full loop of 3dmark at 700mhz. But there were slight artifacts. I just run it at default at the moment, until doom 3 / UT2 / UT2003 etc :D