Mod my old ti4200 or get a new card?

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:37 am

Seing I still haven't gotten around to replace my old video card with a new one I can now see on the invoice that the waranty has expired on my ti4200. I've been wanting to quiet it down for ages but I never got around to it.

Seing the waranty has expired, would I be better off getting a new card and see if I could make a few bucks selling the old one.... or simply putting a passive cooling solution on my old card?

I'm considering the passively cooled radeon 9600XT from Sapphire.

I have only a few demands for a new card:
1: Performance must be at least on par with my ti4200
2: It must be passively cooled (stock that is... no modding)

Are there any other real options around the 200$ mark except the 9600xt ? I don't want to buy online by the way.

SometimesWarrior · Post by **SometimesWarrior** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 11:33 am

I think you should mod the card with a quiet or passive cooling solution. There's no warranty left to void, and if you sell the card in the future, the aftermarket cooling will make the card more valuable.

I think upgrading would only be worthwhile if you really want better 3D performance, not just a quiet video card. A 9600XT won't give you enough performance increase to justify the expense, IMO. A better deal would be the 6600GT, which in the U.S. costs $200 (only $25 more than the passive 9600XT) and can double the performance of the 9600XT in many applications. It's not passively cooled out-of-the-box, but it can be made quiet or passive for an additional $25 or so. I'm also seeing a passive Gigabyte 9600Pro for $105 at Newegg. I don't know if you'll be able to find something like that on the retail market in Denmark, but if you keep your eyes open maybe you'll get lucky.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 12:19 pm

i agree with above.

fool around with it as its not worth much. you could try buying some thermal epoxy stuff and stick a big heatsink on it (perhaps an old copper CPU heatsink u have lieing around). the fan on my ti4200 was very small so i dont think it will need much cooling, as long as you have a bit of airflow in there.

if you want graphics performance sell it for £20 or so and buy 6600GT

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 12:39 pm

Thanks guys.

Yeah I should probably just spend 25$ on a passive cooling solution. I'm not really looking to boost performance right now. The last thing I really played was FarCry and that ran just fine for my taste.

Maybe once I feel like getting more performance there will be more passively cooled options around... I hope

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 1:33 am

Well after careful consideration

I decided to get one of the passively cooled zalman heatsinks. The ZM-80C is the cheaper option of course and it should do just fine (I have fairly good case airflow).

My question.... is it worth the extra 10$ to get the ZM-80D? I'm mainly thinking for when I do eventually get a new card.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 5:25 am

Boomerang Rapido wrote:Well after careful consideration I decided to get one of the passively cooled zalman heatsinks. The ZM-80C is the cheaper option of course and it should do just fine (I have fairly good case airflow).

My question.... is it worth the extra 10$ to get the ZM-80D? I'm mainly thinking for when I do eventually get a new card.

it seems to me that the only difference between the 2 is the D has a fan. so, the D is for higher spec cards which get hot, so i would say no, you dont need the D as you wont need a fan, as your card wont produce that much heat.

worse case scenario, you card gets too hot with just passive cooling (very unlikly as low spec card, so long as you have a bit of airflow in your case) then you can fit your own fan to it for less £!

just email the retailers and make sure that it will be compatable with your card, as your card is pretty old.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:17 am

No, the difference is the D has two heatpipes.

With the D, you'll have a higher chance of overclocking, reusing it on a new card, or turning down your case airflow.

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:51 am

Well it's too late now. I picked up the C model on the way home today. Installation took some time but it wasn't difficult.

I was worried cause it took me three attempts to boot the machine once I had installed the card. I haven't tried pushing it yet so I have yet to see how it will perform under load.

Mathias... that was exactly what I was thinking when I asked. But I guess with the price tag on these things, it doesn't make much difference getting the D version if/when I get a new card.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 2:50 pm

oh, well, on overclockers the D had a pic with a fan on it.

IMO the ti4200 wont produce enough heat to cause any problems, and if it does just a second heatpipe wont make much difference.

if you do get probs (unlikly to happen unless you have very poor airflow in the case) then putting a fan across the 2 heatsinks running at 5 volts (silent! just spinning) should fix the prob with no detectable noise increase.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:54 pm

IMO the ti4200 wont produce enough heat to cause any problems, and if it does just a second heatpipe wont make much difference.

That wasn't my experience. the Ti4200 runs HOT, whereas the 9600 series (vanilla, Pro, or XT) run extremely cool.. the Pro and vanilla are trivial to passively cool with something as basic as a simple 486 heatsink. You can see proof of this by browsing the newegg product images for this GPU family-- many of them are passive out of the box.

And just FYI, the 9600 pro performs at about the same level as the GeForce4 Ti4600. It performs better than the Ti4600 on DX9 games, which I guess you'd expect since the GF4 series can't do DX9 in hardware.

I sold my Ti4200 and Ti4600 as quickly as I could on eBay. Newer cards perform better and produce a lot less heat.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:43 am

oh, really? i wasn;t aware of that. if you look at how small the heatsink is on the TI 4200 + its a cut down version of the 4600, so it wont produce as much heat as the 4600.

i guess we will wait and see how hot boomerangs gets.

the 9600 pro is expensive still, the ti isn;t worth much so its worth trying to cool it silently and save the money. i know the 9600 performs much better, its a much newer card, but the performance increase wasn;t required in this situation

mr pink · Post by **mr pink** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:31 pm

I went from a ti4200 (dropped outside in a puddle) to a 9600 pro and really wasnt too impressed with the difference on the games I play (ut2004 and well thats about it).

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 2:09 pm

freak_in_cage wrote:
i guess we will wait and see how hot boomerangs gets.

Well the first small test came out like this....

I have apparently misplaced my FarCry DVD so I tried NFS Underground (I had to try something). I played continuously for about 45 minutes. I DID see some graphics distortion-ish stuff but it was very "consistent", meaning that it would always be at the exact same spot on every lap, so something tells me this is a game problem more than anything else. I had no hang ups, no crashes, no slow downs, no white dots, and the bottome heatsink (the one one the GPU side) was barely warm to the touch.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:53 am

Boomerang Rapido wrote:
freak_in_cage wrote:
i guess we will wait and see how hot boomerangs gets.
Well the first small test came out like this....

I have apparently misplaced my FarCry DVD so I tried NFS Underground (I had to try something). I played continuously for about 45 minutes. I DID see some graphics distortion-ish stuff but it was very "consistent", meaning that it would always be at the exact same spot on every lap, so something tells me this is a game problem more than anything else. I had no hang ups, no crashes, no slow downs, no white dots, and the bottome heatsink (the one one the GPU side) was barely warm to the touch.

sounds encouraging m8, so long as the distortion is a bug in the game. keep us informed m8

Boomerang Rapido · Post by **Boomerang Rapido** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:12 pm

Well I just played one hour of FarCry and one hour of NFS Underground 2. No problems or slowdowns of any kind and still the heatsink is only slighty warm to the touch.

So I'd say the installation is a success. Now let's see how long I stick with it before I'm "forced" to upgrade

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:57 am

Boomerang Rapido wrote:Well I just played one hour of FarCry and one hour of NFS Underground 2. No problems or slowdowns of any kind and still the heatsink is only slighty warm to the touch.

So I'd say the installation is a success. Now let's see how long I stick with it before I'm "forced" to upgrade

ideal dude!!!! if your lucky u can wait until u upgrade your system to PCI express, and maybe even when the next generation cards come out, meaning you can get a prev gen card cheaper!

well worth modding your ti4200 IMO!