Underclocking TI4200 while not gaming?

rp · Post by rp » Sun Feb 08, 2004 5:55 am

I've bought myself a FX5900XT for my gaming rig, and am thinking about using the TI4200 it replaces in my workstation. I seldom play games on the workstation, but since my gamerig is 100% dedikated to racing sims, its not possible for me to play FPS type games on it.

I use a GF3 TI200 right now, but its getting a bit old. Call of Duty just works, but Far Cry and so on would be impossible.

So I'm thinking, why not use Powerstrip to make 2 different performance profiles. One @ stock or whatever OC I would like, and one thats waaaay down, to minimize power and heat during normal 2D work.

I've underclocked CPUs with great success before, but has anyone experienced problems doing it with an gfx card? Sadly Powerstrip can't go way down in clockspeeds (the TI200 bottoms out at 145 / 337), but I'll be damned is this can't be tweaked in the registry.

So, should I face any problems, running a TI4200 at say 50% of its rated speed, on both core and mem? Cooling would consist of either a Zalman heatpipe, or a custom made sink from an old CPU cooler (works like a charm on my GF3). Then when I needed to play a game, I would just turn on my front 120mm fan, or maybe a small 60mm below the card.

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:27 am

If you're not going to game you can probably just unplug the fan. I think it would be fine with just 2d work and no fan. I few people have pulled the fan on their cards and still use them for gaming. I pulled the plug on my fan and mounted an 80mm panaflo to point to it on my game rig until I buy a new card. Here's the post I made on the topic:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10228

rp · Post by rp » Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:53 am

Found me a heatsink. Used to cool my CellyT @ 1.466 with some 7v fan. I cut off 3 fins at each end to make room for the holes.

If this doesn't cut it, I'll try placing a Intel boxed fan close to the back of the case running at 5v. I did a test with this fan, and I can't hear it at all.

Think this sink is enough to cool the card without direct air flow?

[/img]

wheredoibegin · Post by **wheredoibegin** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:24 am

i have a similar heatsink as rp's hanging off a geforce 4 mx 440 and it will not run games without being underclocked (it locks up otherwise) but whist doing 2d it is barely warm. This is without a fan. It might just be poor installation on my part but the heatsink gets hot when the card is working so i'd say a fan would be a must. You don't realise how important good airflow is until a 60mm^3 lump of Au gets beaten by a little card fan that is like what people have on their northbridge

rp · Post by rp » Wed Feb 18, 2004 7:40 am

fan at 5v it is then... Havent done any tests yet, but I did experience something similar with my TI200. Even though I replaced the original OEM heatsink (similar to many gf2 mx cards, 40x40x10mm and no fan) with a 60x50x25 it still got oh so hot without air flow.