Topic: Smoke's low budget sli gamer

[Smoke]

ext cables came so new psu is in.omg i really need to do something about all these wires once and for all.thinking about hacking this 900 case up a bit so i can run cables behind the motherboard.

[anomaly]

sometimes thats the only way.

[Smoke]

i've decided to sell 1 of these gtx 460 cards.if anyone is interested it's $200 and that covers insured shipping.paypal or money order.it is the 1gb galaxy gc version.has hardly been used at all since i couldn't get sli going on this motherboard.original box and all accessories come with it.

[mephisto_kur]

200 BUCKS LOL I CAN GET ONE FOR A DOLLAH

[Smoke]

then what u waiting for?i love mine.

[Draconiko]

200 BUCKS LOL I CAN GET ONE FOR A DOLLAH

I GIVE YOU TWO DOLLAH FO TWO?

[Smoke]

so i started thinking of flashing my gpu bios with a modded version,this is going downhill already aint it?basically i wanted my pc to startup with 800mhz core on stock volts with the voltage cap removed.that's a 100mhz over stock clock without adding any juice,but 125 over the reference design of a 460.found a good thread on a site that had a bunch of modded 460 bioses and on i went.tried to flash twice and although it said it was successful nothing changed.after digging around all day on the web i found a thread on that same site talking about the same issue.turns out my card is one of a few that has dual bios,2 seperate chips.1 on front and 1 on back.this dual bios is suppose to be a good thing in case your bios gets screwed you have a backup.but what it really does is prevent you from flashing a bios to it,pretty lame if you ask me.so with 2 bios chips whats 1 less gonna hurt?yep i took a pair of cutters and ripped the one off the back.went ahead and pulled heatsink and applied some better compound while i was at it.threw it back in and fired it up.opened gpuz and sure enough those bios flashes were successful.ran heaven all the way through so good to go.got on the ki css server and man it ran like shit.lag,lag,lag and driver crashed at least 4 times in about an hour.so i flashed the original bios back onto it and all back to normal.that modded bios was way optimistic with mem clock,volts and core voltages.so i modded my own bios which is a confusing ordeal and still dont mostly know what the hell i was looking at.but i figured enough out to raise my core clock to 800 and move the core voltage limit to 1.2 from1.087.which was all i wanted from start.tomorrow i'll make sure it's stable then start upping everything till i probably blow the damn thing up.with the exception of voiding my warranty it's been a fun day lol.

[Neocorteqz]

Still don't know why people insist on overclocking their video cards, seems like more work than it's worth for a FEW fps more. And that's all it will net you these days. Driver support is where the main Issue is when it comes to high FPS. You ever wonder why they came out with Omega drivers and whatnot. Because reference(aka manufacturer) drivers suck, plain and simple.

[mephisto_kur]

Stock drivers do not suck.  They are meant to be stable and safe.  AMD and nVidia don't control the quality of components, the card makers do.  So the drivers are made to be sure to be stable on the most basic of components.

What is nice is that ATi's CCC software allows you to tweak speeds and voltages right in the driver, but you have to click past a warning, and it flags the card for manufacturers that don't allow OC to protect their warranty process.  My only nVidia cards are older, so I have no idea if nVidia has something similar in their drivers.  The fact that smoke ripped shit off his card suggests the nVidia drivers do not have this level of control .

[mephisto_kur]

Holy crap, the CCC lets me mess with the CPU as well, now.  When did that change happen?

[Smoke]

i dont believe that was an option when i had the 5770 cards or its just for amd cpu owners.and as far as i know nvidia doesn't supply any utility for o'clocking within the driver package but offers it through download from their site.i used afterburner.but once i get done modding and flashing my gpu bios i won't have to fool with any software.gpu will boot up with oclock settings.and neo depending on game,app or card gpu oclocking can yield pretty good results.especially like i'm doing with getting more speed with no extra power added to the card.when i'm done with the bios it will run identical to galaxy superoclocked card which was about $40 higher.

[Neocorteqz]

Stock drivers do not suck.  They are meant to be stable and safe.  AMD and nVidia don't control the quality of components, the card makers do.  So the drivers are made to be sure to be stable on the most basic of components.

What is nice is that ATi's CCC software allows you to tweak speeds and voltages right in the driver, but you have to click past a warning, and it flags the card for manufacturers that don't allow OC to protect their warranty process.  My only nVidia cards are older, so I have no idea if nVidia has something similar in their drivers.  The fact that smoke ripped shit off his card suggests the nVidia drivers do not have this level of control .

I do not agree with this statement when it comes to nVidia, in my experience I have never upgraded a driver untill at least 2 week or more after they are released (need i bring up Fried cards that one released driver did). It's been a long time since I have played with CCC, so i don't know what to say about them, and no it's usually 3rd party that allows you to do most of the voltage tweaks and clock speeds. EVGA and MSI and ASUS ring a bell.

[mephisto_kur]

The nVidias that burned cards were not WHQL certified drivers.  The ATi stock drivers and ATi stock Catalyst Control Center that comes with those drivers allows OC, even has sliders for ease of use.

Stock drivers are written specifically for generic low end capacitors and crap like that.  nVidia learned their lesson from that idiocy, too.  They now are more clear about which drivers have been fully certified and which drivers are considered 'beta.'  The driver that killed cards, while an official driver, was NOT meant for general use.  If you stick to WHQL drivers for either company, you are fine.  One of the few things that Microsoft does well is driver certification.  WHQL drivers are rock solid, and far more reliable than 3rd party drivers the vast majority of the time.

Also, the 3rd party drivers are not written from scratch.  They are tweaked and modified STOCK drivers.

[anomaly]

man smoke, thats hardcore.

i just use evga precesion. it does work on non evga cards and runs at startup so you dont have to worry about  it after you get a nice stable OC. (just set it and forget it). lol

evga also has a voltage tweaking tool also. as long as you have a regestered product with evga i think you can download any of their software.

im running my 260s around 23% over the stock clocks (702/1404/1188) and i totaly notice a diference when palying demanding games @ my native rez (1920x1080).

[Smoke]

it's not that hard at all.if it weren't for my card having 2 bios chips it would have been simple and pretty quick.the part where mine got screwy after removing the chip was it was an untested bios.noone could test it because all the galaxy 460 and most of their other cards have the 2 chips.and noone would do what i did.