buying a GF3 Ti200, which one?

[Thrlskr]

are they all the same? Is the leadtek better then the gainward.. Do they run at 89mhz FSB.
Hoe doyou put a orb on it?

lots of questions.

Thanks

 

[Furor]

Most of them will be the same..and orb will just fit in with the original heatsink/fan

 

[dakata24]

ymmv, but my gainward gf3 ti200 golden sample i got from newegg does 255/565 stock cooling. out of the bunch, gainwards seem to be the better overclockers.

 

[Thrlskr]

newegg has the leadtek for 155 with freeshiping andthe gainward is 149 with 7 shipping so they are a toss up as far as price.

so no orb needed huh?

 

[jfunk]

Seems like the gainward performs the best, but I personally would recommend whatever one you can get cheapest. Performance isn't going to differ that much.


j

 

[loafbred]

I picked Gainward Golden Sample for a relative about a month ago. It has 4ns memory, and default clock is 200/450. He's using it with a PIII-733, so there wasn't much reason to overclock it. From what I've seen other people claim, it's typical to run minimum of 230/500. I didn't like the Leadtek's one piece heatsink with a thermal sensor sandwiched on the gpu. Here's one of the articles I used:

GF3 TI 200's

 

[Thrlskr]

thanks loaf, that was a great article. A little long but good none the less. Well it looks like it will come down to money since they are all just about neck and neck performance wise.
now to find out who is selling them cheapest.

Thanks.

 

[Nighthawk69]

I bought a Gainward Ti200 from NewEgg.com about a month ago for $156.00 and it was an awesome buy! This card overclocks like champ and looks awesome too!

I highly recommend this card....

 

[loafbred]

You're welcome, Thrlskr. My brother-in-law is very happy with his Gainward, and I think it's a bargain since it will probably overclock to TI 500 performance. I'd wait for a few more recommendations before picking one, as there may be many who've had consistently good overclocking experiences with cheaper cards.

 

[chickendinner]

visiontek,,, you can get it for around $100 ar. thats what i got mine for. they have a 30 mir through the 31.

 

[Kraid2xd]

Becareful about visiontek tho... some of the cards made before week 41(around that time) have 4.5ns memory instead of the standard 4ns we see today.

As for an orb, it would help if you're gonna o/c beyond the 230/530 range... but personally, I have a gainward gf3 ti200 and it o/c's stable to 230/525 on stock cooling... I put a crystal orb on it and got it up to 245/550, but since my CPU is a crappy pIII 733, it doesn't really help...

If you want an orb on your card, I reccomend a crystal orb... they're pretty easy to clip on to the card and cool great... you probably want to mount it with a little arctic silver II or III in between to get optimum cooling...

 

[Thrlskr]

Well, I bought a Leadtek Ti200 but the card I picked was the one without heatsinks on the ramTi200 instead of the other Ti200 they have..Ti with heatsinks. I bought a Corb for it, do I need to return the card and get the one with the sinks on it or will I be good to go, I'm not planing on O/Cing it.

 

[loafbred]

The one you got should be good since it has 4ns memory, plus it has two good games included. I'm curious as to why you bought another cooler for it, though, since you said you're not going to overclock it.

 

[Thrlskr]

Just so I can say I have it...You know, bragging rights..

 

[cmdrdredd]

Some have better software bundles...some faster memory. gainward is IMo the best card you can get. The orb is easily put on...pop the old fan off...pop the orb on with the push pins. As far as your FSb they will run fine.

 

[loafbred]

I can tell you from experience with several video cards that the most important thing you can do to get the most out of it is to rig up an 80 or 92mm fan to blow across the bottom of the card (coat hanger wire is perfect for this). In my opinion, the main advantage to using RAM sinks is that all the chips stay at a more equal temp, which can be important to all the chips staying in perfect phase when being pushed to their limit. I made tall, individual sinks for each chip on my old GF 256 DDR, carefully glued them on with Arctic Silver epoxy, and it didn't help at all. I also glued an Intel retail cpu cooler (came with retail boxed PIII 550 fcpga) to the gpu on that card, and that did help core speed quite a bit. It also blocked access to the top two PCI slots. I would recommend that you get a breeze blowing on it, set it at 200/450, and enjoy it.

 

[Nighthawk69]

My Gainward Ti200 runs at a max of 230/520, but it easily goes to 250/540 when I run games in 1024x768, but I like to run Ghost Recon in 1600x1200x32 which gives me artifacts and locks at those higher speeds, so I had to drop to the 230/520 setup for Ghost Recon. I'm wondering if replacing the heatsink/fan with a Crystal Orb would allow me to go much higher...? Thoughts? (sorry to change the topic )

EDIT: My card's stock HSF almost looks like it IS a crystal orb... hmm!

 

[Thrlskr]

So just having some cold airblow across them will be good? I just picked up a Cheiftec case ,but no fan mount in the door, so I found a place in Canada to get the door with the fan mount from. Where do I get a o/c utility for my card from?

 

[loafbred]

You want to get the heat OFF of the card, so I like to mount a fan at the right end of the card (the end nearest the front of the case) blowing toward the back of the case. Air is moving from front to rear anyway, so this takes best advantage of available cool air. Right now I'm using a low rpm Antec 92mm fan, hung by coat hanger wire from the top of my Antec 840 case, positioned to blow half under and half over the card. With my motherboard, I can run my GF2 Pro core at 250 if I run I/O voltage at 3.45v, but my Corsair memory will run much higher fsb using 3.3v I/O. With 3.3v, I can only run it at 230 core. A few newer motherboards allow AGP voltage to be adjusted independently.

 

[loafbred]

For adusting clock speeds, I just use the Coolbits menu hack for nVidia reference and beta drivers. It also enables a couple of other things in the standard menus, like v/sync in D3D. You can get it from 3dchipset.com