GF4 Ti 4200 - Overclock results

[Megatomic]

I have a VisionTek GF4 Ti 4200 SE 128MB (250/444 default). For the past 4 months I have run the card at 275/550 (I reprogrammed the BIOS to those speeds as default settings). Yesterday I used coolbits to set the card to run at 300/600 and it has been running at that speed wonderfully. All night last night, while I was sleeping, the card was subjected to an unending loop of 3DMark2001 SE default setting benchmarks. It was still running perfectly when I awoke this morning.

Should I be leery of pushing it any further? I am only using the stock GPU cooler and some ramsinks that I used Arctic Silver epoxy to attach. What do you all think?

 

[CraigRT]

that's a really nice O/C
I maxed out my sliders at 315/560 on my Ti4200 128MB (MSI)

I wouldn't be leary. push more. if it doesn't go any farther, you're done.. the only thing you need the extra cooling for is if you want to push more.
the reason it becomes unstable alot of the time is because of the heat, so it becomes unstable when the stock cooler can't dissipate the heat fast enough.. no big deal. put one of those Thermaltake copper GF4 coolers on it if you wanna really hammer it. You can also get copper memory sinks.

 

[billyjak]

I just picked up a MSI GF4 Ti 4200 running at 280/ 554 right now, didn't go higher yet will test it out.
I replaced it with a GF3 because I'm building a setup for someone so this is a freebie. The GF4 is much nicer.
Will be getting a newer card very soon.

 

[titanmiller]

You guys are lucky, I can only get my 4400 to 305/660 and retain stability with no artifacts.

 

[fluxquantum]

Originally posted by: titanmiller
You guys are lucky, I can only get my 4400 to 305/660 and retain stability with no artifacts.

you should feel lucky yourself. i modded my albatron geforce 4 128MB with the thermaltake geforce 4 cooler kit and i can't even reach 300/600 without crashes. the stock speed is 250/513. the best i can do is 280/580 thermaltake

 

[Shimmishim]

i've never seen an "artifact" what does it look like? linky anyone?

 

[Megatomic]

I don't know either to be honest. I just keep my eyes out for so-called shimmering textures or pixels that don't look right.

 

[sep]

I have an Albatron ti4200 128MB (non-turbo) with homemade ramsinks. I can get the card to run@315/600, however my games don't like the 315 setting so I scale it back to 305. In battefield I get artifacts with the ram set to 600...3dmarks2001SE doesn't show any only the games did.

I'm using 41.09 drivers. I might go back to 40.xx drivers to test with artifacts. I don't remember getting them then.

Pushing: Yes! Next steps would be to confirm the games you have or want are playable! Then benchmark the games...Isn't that the real reason your overclocking to findout if your games play faster/higher res/smoother/etc.? Once you reach the limits then apply some AS on the GPU heatsink and try it again. Then try different drivers. Once you max out at overclocking....you start to see atifacts or your system locks...scale back 5 on GPU and 15-20 on memory. Just to be safe.

fluxquantum: How good is your case cooling? What mb & os are you running? Is your card OEM or RETAIL?


Artifacts: The artifacts I get are white unstraight slashes ramdomly in the screen. Others could be little while dots ramdomly in the screen. You have to keep an eye out for them. With my g2pro I saw these in the 3dmark2001se dragon (forgot what game test) fly by with the girl when I overclocked the ram too high. If I get a chance I'll capture one this weekend and post...oh yeah!

Post your Nvidia drivers & how well your case is cooled.

 

[Megatomic]

All of my games are playable at 300/600 fortunately. I only play Morrowind and UT2003 currently but I did test it out on Quake III, Serious Sam SE, and Dynomite . The performance seems to have scaled properly with the clock increases.

Re: Cooling

I have an Antec SX840 with 2 x 80mm case fans placed to exhaust out of the back of the case. My case is a steady 32C. I have seen it as low as 28C but that was when the house was really cold due to a problem with the air handler in the HVAC unit. When the house is at it's normal 72F (+/- 2F) the case is at 32C. This Antec seems to breathe really well.

Re: Drivers

I am using the 30.82s still. I like them better than any of the 4x.xx drivers I have tried.