Need help testing video card heat and stability

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Okay, I have an Asus AGP V3800 Ultra Deluxe. That's right. It's the nVidia TNT2 GPU at its finest! 32MB of raw power!

As you might imagine, this thing is ridiculously slow. All I want to do is run in 1280x960 mode on my 19" CRT--no games, just video playback and web browsing--but, as Eric Cartman might say, it's hella slow. So, I thought I might overclock it.

The V3800 comes with a nifty Asus overclocking tool. I can push the stock 150MHz GPU clock to 190MHz, and the 183MHz SGRAM speed to 220MHz, both in 1MHz increments.

So, how do I figure out what's a safe speed? How do I test for stability?

One more kink in the rope: the cooling fan is gone, so all I have is a passive heatsink.

Suggestions?

 

[speckedhoncho]

can you put a newer fan on it like one that requires a case bracket to take up an additional slot?

 

[speckedhoncho]

I'd be more worried about the fact that you only have 256MB of main memory. 2D applications don't use the rendering pipeline - just the memory.

 

[Laminator]

Play some old games on it, I guess. Quake III and Unreal Tournament will probably do fine. Also, there are still reviews of the TNT2 Ultra online, so you might be able to see what typical overclocks are for that thing that way. With the fan gone, I wouldn't overclock that thing at all. I doubt it'll actually make a difference.

What ^^ said - your GPU will not accelerate video playback or web browsing. I'd put another 256MB of RAM in that thing.

P.S. I've played DVD's just fine on my 500MHz Pentium III/128MB/TNT2 Ultra set-up.

 

[bigsnyder]

My V3800 ultra deluxe was not a good overclocker. I don't remember clock speeds, but it was not what other TNT2 cards were achieving. Remember, the TNT2 ultra is already "overclocked" so the headroom is limited anyway. I believe the numbers you posted seem pretty good. To test stability, I would download 3Dmark2000 and just let it loop. If it runs a few hours without major artifacts or crashing, then it is probably fine. Some might suggest something more rigorous. "ATI Tools" has a good artifact checking utility and just might work for that card as well. It will stress the card more than 3Dmark2000.