No multiple clock/voltage modes on modern nVIDIA cards

They make noise, too.

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edh
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No multiple clock/voltage modes on modern nVIDIA cards

Post by edh » Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:29 pm

I've recently got a 9600GT and am disappointed to find that it runs the same 650MHz core at 1.1V all of the time. This seems like a step backwards for me from earlier cards which used separate 2D, 3D (and throttle) clockspeeds and voltages.

I can obviously introduce separate 2D, 3D and throttle modes in NiBiTor, I've done so previously for a 5600, making it much better (where better does not mean the typical overclocker definition of hotter, louder and less stable) than when it left the Leadtek factory, but I'm just wondering, why have they got rid of the separate modes? Is there something else the card does that does not rely upon the BIOS to regulate clockspeeds and voltages in different usage situations?

Vicotnik
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Post by Vicotnik » Sun Mar 23, 2008 5:02 pm

It seems to me that nVidia thinks that the power consumption of the 9600GT is low enough already, and that there's no need bothering with several clockspeeds and voltages.

It's like with the 7900 series - 7900GTX was a hot card with different voltages in 2D and 3D, later came the 7950GT which didn't run so hot and had a set voltage.

AMD/ATi seems to be more "green" at the moment. I hope that nVidia jumps on the bandwagon soon and improves the idle numbers for the next generation of cards.

zoob
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Post by zoob » Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:19 pm

Part of the reason why I'm using a Radeon for this generation, even though performance isn't quite as high. :|

edh
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Post by edh » Mon Mar 24, 2008 1:51 am

Vicotnik wrote:It seems to me that nVidia thinks that the power consumption of the 9600GT is low enough already, and that there's no need bothering with several clockspeeds and voltages.

It's like with the 7900 series - 7900GTX was a hot card with different voltages in 2D and 3D, later came the 7950GT which didn't run so hot and had a set voltage.

AMD/ATi seems to be more "green" at the moment. I hope that nVidia jumps on the bandwagon soon and improves the idle numbers for the next generation of cards.
The 6600GT I have does the split modes and works very well for it, if only they'd also changes the fan speed down too.

Looking at the figures in this other thread there's probably 10W to be saved by underclocking/volting in 2D. I'll give it a go and see what comes out. My system currently idles at 80W which isn't that low.

line
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Post by line » Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:14 am

Hmm. I haven't heard of this before. I would very much like to hear about your results. You may want to take care not to hard-code too low voltages into the BIOS unless you can experiment with them in a way such that rebooting the system will reset the card to safe values.

edh
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Post by edh » Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:06 am

line wrote:Hmm. I haven't heard of this before. I would very much like to hear about your results.
Here's what I did to my old 5600, some of it is relevant to the 2D/3D modes discussion:
http://techangel.co.uk/forums/showpost. ... stcount=11

Alpha60
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Post by Alpha60 » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:30 am

Anyone successfully added a 2D underclock mode by flashing their 9600gt?

edh
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Post by edh » Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:57 am

For anyone interested, you'll need nvflash 5.63 or later for 9600GT cards. I've not yet got a bootable USB DOS pendrive to work from but am getting there. I'm first going to try without extending down the voltage table, just choosing the lowest voltage in the supplied table for 2D (1V).

Alpha60
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Post by Alpha60 » Fri Mar 28, 2008 6:59 am

According to this review at sweclockers.com the Gigabyte heatpipe 9600gt has different speeds for 2d/3d. (In swedish)

http://sweclockers.com/recension/?id=6049

picture:
http://sweclockers.com/imagebank/200803 ... tor001.jpg

Alpha60
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Post by Alpha60 » Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:00 pm

I bought myself a gigabyte fanless 9600gt and can now confirm: They do indeed have separate frequencies for 2d and 3d.

edh
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Post by edh » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:22 am

If this BIOS has not already been uploaded on MVKTech, it would be good if you could.

line
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Post by line » Sat Apr 12, 2008 3:33 pm

edh, have you been able to flash your 9600GT with a modded BIOS?

edh
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Post by edh » Sun Apr 13, 2008 2:26 am

I've just flashed it. As much as I despise Winfox for being one of those nasty programs supplied with computer components which fails to stick to any interface guidlines, has annoying noises and likes sitting in the taskbar for no reason whatsoever, it has a built in BIOS flashing program which I used.

I reprogrammed the BIOS in NiBiTor to give these 3 performance settings:
3D 650 1625 900 1.1V
Throttle 600 1500 900 1.1V
2D 300 750 900 1V

I've not had the time to test it thoroughly yet but it works OK. GPU temp might be about 3C lower at idle now but 'Powermizer' (nnnnrrrrhhh...) has taken control of the clocks under Linux which it wasn't before. More testing to come and then I'll push it further down.

edh
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Post by edh » Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:25 pm

Looks like for some reason the card has chosen to do 500/1250/500 all of the time. Obviously this round of reprogramming hasn't worked. Again, if anyone has a Gigabyte 9600GT that changes clocks, please upload the BIOS to MVKTech.net.

edh
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Post by edh » Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:13 am

Just to remind the GeForce 9 series mainly work with the Extra mode which is different form all the previous series and don't include a 2D and 3D mode. Now as soon as you start applying a 2D and/or 3D mode you are no longer able to work just fine with the Extra mode which is the main level. So just don't play around these series are no longer using really the 2D and/or 3D mode except one special card from Gigabyte where they added an extra electronic logic to be able to use 2D and Extra mode.
http://www.mvktech.net/index.php?option ... 3&id=51481

Doesn't sound good.

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