Thinking of voltmodding my 4870

[error8]

I know what I need ( a 50 Ohm pot and good soldering skills) and I would like to know if any of you anandtechers have any personal experience with this. Don't link me to the xtremesystems forums, since I already read that.

If you've done your volt mod, what temps are you getting and the most important thing, how far did you got your core frequency and at what voltage.

 

[Hauk]

Hmm, haven't seen anyone here talk about it. I'd point you to another site but you got that covered. You're determined, that's for sure...

 

[error8]

Yeah. I just need someone to give me one last push to do it.

 

[masteryoda34]

Do you have watercooling or some other high end air cooler for it? If you're just using the stock cooler, then voltmodding probably isn't worth it, because you wont be able to handle the extra heat anyways.

 

[error8]

I will just increase the fan speed. From what I've seen, the gpu should stay bellow 65C, to reach the highest overclock. I don't think that by increasing the voltage from 1.26 V to 1.3 V it will increase the heat output so much, that the stock cooler can't handle. I know that 1.4 V or more it's impossible on this card on air, but even if I had water cooling, I wouldn't push the voltage that high.

 

[SSChevy2001]

I did a little reading up on this myself over at xtremesystems. From what I can tell there's still a chance even your not going to get that much out of voltmodding. Biggest thing you should look at 1st is really good cooling. The better the GPU and VRMs cooling, the higher the overclock, even with stock voltages.

Now the question becomes, is it worth the money and time to get a little a more FPS while also decreasing the lifespan and increase case temps, or do you just go CF?

Now you can't do CF with that board, so you might want to give it a voltmodding a shot, but don't expect anything more that 850mhz or a 4% increase in core clock which isn't much. The people that hit 900mhz usually are watercooled and have a good oc even with stock voltages ( 850 - 880 ).

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
The people that hit 900mhz usually are watercooled and have a good oc even with stock voltages ( 850 - 880 ).

I don't like what you've said here. :laugh:

For 850 mhz, volt modding doesn't worth at all. That would be only 35mh over what I have now. For 900 mhz, it could really add some performance.

Speaking about cooling, the best way to do it is water cooling, since every air cooler out there is not able to cool down the VRMs as it should, under load and by increasing the voltage, that could kill them very fast. The stock cooler, is very good if you increase the fan speed. I mean at 100% it gives 37 C in idle and around 50 C under load. Now, running at that speed, it's extremely noisy, as you might know, but at around 50-60% is still tolerable.

Now, I'm starting to have second thoughts about this. If only I can find someone who did this on stock cooling and reached 900+ on core....

 

[cmdrdredd]

Don't bother. What are you going to do...go from 80fps to 85fps?

Just buy a GTX280 if you want something faster.

 

[error8]

cmdrdredd, if I had money, I would have bought a GTX 280, no doubt about it. But I don't, so I'm trying to get the most out of what I have now.

I remember that my 7600 GT, was a totally different card after volt modding it. Taking it from 560 mhz to 740 mhz, gave me quite a bit of extra performance. My 8800 GT, was also a beast after volt modding. Managed to squeeze an extra 200 mhz on the core and 500 mhz on the shader. It was very close to a stock 9800 GTX.

But it looks like I'm not going to see the same improvement with this card. So maybe I should reconsider!?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: error8
cmdrdredd, if I had money, I would have bought a GTX 280, no doubt about it. But I don't, so I'm trying to get the most out of what I have now.

I remember that my 7600 GT, was a totally different card after volt modding it. Taking it from 560 mhz to 740 mhz, gave me quite a bit of extra performance. My 8800 GT, was also a beast after volt modding. Managed to squeeze an extra 200 mhz on the core and 500 mhz on the shader. It was very close to a stock 9800 GTX.

But it looks like I'm not going to see the same improvement with this card. So maybe I should reconsider!?

You won't see gains like that out of a 4870. The performance difference when overclocking it is not large. I had one and even when I was running 810/1120 it wasn't as fast as I wanted. So I went for a GTX 280 because it handled what I wanted.

The 4870 is a good card, but you're looking for miracles when the card is stretched to the limit pretty much anyway. It's up to drivers at this point.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd


The 4870 is a good card, but you're looking for miracles when the card is stretched to the limit pretty much anyway. It's up to drivers at this point.

Well, I guess that is the sad truth after all.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Problem is it's not worth the trouble to voltmod and watercool just to get a small increase in performance, that you still might not see. It's really up to ATi to get better drivers out the door, though IMO the performance isn't that bad.

Sure FC2 has problems, but the game is broken just like GTA4. It's not ATi's fault ubisoft can't get with the program. How long has it been out and still they haven't fixed widescreen support, let alone the stuttering.

With DX11 coming soon I would say just hold off and save your cash.

As far as the GTX280, I wouldn't touch one right now. So far the rumors are there's no GTX290 coming out and the only card you'll be able to stepup to is a GTX295 which is dual GPU card.

 

[error8]

Ok, so now I'm pretty convinced to give up my volt modding idea. Maybe there is a reason that nobody on anandtech did this on a 4870.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
Problem is it's not worth the trouble to voltmod and watercool just to get a small increase in performance, that you still might not see. It's really up to ATi to get better drivers out the door, though IMO the performance isn't that bad.

Sure FC2 has problems, but the game is broken just like GTA4. It's not ATi's fault ubisoft can't get with the program. How long has it been out and still they haven't fixed widescreen support, let alone the stuttering.

With DX11 coming soon I would say just hold off and save your cash.

As far as the GTX280, I wouldn't touch one right now. So far the rumors are there's no GTX290 coming out and the only card you'll be able to stepup to is a GTX295 which is dual GPU card.

You wouldn't buy a GTX 280 JUST because you can't step up to a new card? That's a pitiful argument. The GTX 280 remains the fastest single GPU card to market. For those who want more than a 4870 or GTX260 can offer but don't want to bother with SLI or crossfire scaling, the GTX280 is the clear choice.

Just because you can't step up to a new card in 90days doesn't make it a bad buy. Actually, it's the card that will have the longest life out of the currently available models. It will be at least as fast if not faster than the next mid-range cards from either company, and the current Mid-range cards will be dwarfed in comparison.

You mention DX11 but remember how long it took DX10 to catch on? Not to mention DX10.1 that nobody has even used yet? You'll have a card newer than the first gen DX11 cards before games use DX11.

 

[Tempered81]

go for it error8, i want to see 900 / 4400!

 

[SSChevy2001]

@cmdrdredd

The GTX216 black edition will keep it's own against a stock GTX280, which is more than enough right now. Later you have the option to get a nice 55nm GTX280 next year, where GTX280 owner might only have GTX295, which some might not want SLI. Why not take advantage of the stepup offer?

Personally I'm more than happy with my 4870. I was going to CF because of the cashback deals, but I really didn't need it for 1080p. L4D, COD5, Fallout3, all ran fine even at 8xAA. FC2 sucked, but played just fine on DX9 at 4xAA. Dead space I haven't tried yet, but it should play fine. GTA4 is broken and CPU limited ( Bad port ).

All I'm saying is right now isn't a good time to buy if your games play fine. Wait it out for the 55nm GT200s or 40nm rv870. I'm not doing anything till next xmas more than likely.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
@cmdrdredd

The GTX216 black edition will keep it's own against a stock GTX280, which is more than enough right now. Later you have the option to get a nice 55nm GTX280 next year, where GTX280 owner might only have GTX295, which some might not want SLI. Why not take advantage of the stepup offer?

Personally I'm more than happy with my 4870. I was going to CF because of the cashback deals, but I really didn't need it for 1080p. L4D, COD5, Fallout3, all ran fine even at 8xAA. FC2 sucked, but played just fine on DX9 at 4xAA. Dead space I haven't tried yet, but it should play fine. GTA4 is broken and CPU limited ( Bad port ).

All I'm saying is right now isn't a good time to buy if your games play fine. Wait it out for the 55nm GT200s or 40nm rv870. I'm not doing anything till next xmas more than likely.

If you buy the GTX260 black edition from XFX there is no stepup, xfx doesn't offer a program like that.

The 55nm GTX280 BTW may not be anything special. It may overclock better but I don't believe it's going to be faster by default and nothing I've read leads me to believe such. So holding out for that when you can have a GTX 280 today for $360 shipped, well I don't see the point in waiting if you want it now. I had a 4870 and to be honest I wasn't happy with it for what I was playing. I did have the 512MB version so to be fair it limited me a bit in newer games at 1920x1200 resolution with AA enabled.

For most people a 4870 is fine, so is the GTX260. I'm just pointing out the fact that a GTX280 is the fastest single card you can get and some people want just that. Forget about factory overclocked black edition high bin parts in the GTX260 lineup, the average vanilla GTX280 can overclock pretty decently and opens up the gap a bit more at that point depending on the resolution and amount of AA applied.

 

[shangshang]

good that you decide to give up the volt mod! If volt mod is such a miracle, then rest assured that the ATI engineers would have already done it! Also rest assured that many makers like Vistiontek would already have done it to cash in.

I think volt modding is a hack job that ultimately does not provide you any real apparent improvement in your gaming experience. Why bother!