Disappointed with Palit GTX260 Sonic oc ability

C

Camberwell

Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
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I have just picked up a slightly used GTX 260 Sonic to replace my crappy old 9600GT, and I was expecting good things as far as overclocking it higher than it's stock speeds. I know that every card is different, but I get such a small oc compared to some of the reviews I have read.

Many mags seem to get around 720/1450/1300, but mine craps out over 680/1420/1120, and although the core and shader clocks are reasonable, the memory clock seems very small at only 20MHz over stock. The annoying thing is that when it fails, it drops the clocks to 400/800/250, and I have to re-boot in order to get the stock clocks back!

Anyone else had this sort of thing with this card (or the Gainward GTX 260 GS, I understand it's pretty much the same card)?
 
Core 192 or core 216?
I'm sorry, but it's much harder to check from a cell phone.
Also, if core 216, 55nm or 65nm?

May you post a gpuz screenshot?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Have you checked temps? Default fan profile is pretty useless for overclocking in my experience. 70% duty is still fairly quiet iirc. I've had two vanilla EVGA cards (65nm, 192sp) and both were capable of 756/1512/1260 with the fan at 100% (admittedly fan noise is an issue then). Obviously all cards aren't created equal, but that does seem a pretty low OC (especially on the memory). To mitigate heat issues you can also try lowering the voltage (not sure if your card has supported voltage controller though). I can reach 783 on the core with just 1.06v and 810 is stable at 1.08v, yet stock voltage is supposed to be 1.125 (mine doesn't change voltage/clock states and is 1.06v at windows start-up). Voltage makes a big temperature difference, and I observed temperature thresholds getting lower as clock rates increased - 90c is okay at stock speeds, but 756 core reliably crashed for me as soon as the core temp broke 65c (100% fan couldn't cope with prolonged FurMark, but I moved on to an MCW-60 which certainly can)

EDIT: I see this card uses a custom HSF, but it's still worth checking fan duty to see how high you can push it with tolerable noise levels.
 
This is a 216SP 55nm card. The default fan profile gets up to 48% fan speed at 76C, and that's where it stays under stress testing. As soon as I go over the clocks mentioned above, even with the fan set faster, it still crashes. Unfortunately the bios with this card does not allow voltage tweaking (no Volterra voltage regulator).

The fans in this card are actually noisier than the reference cards, another suprise for me. The stock speed is 40%, which is pretty loud. I have them manually set to 30% so that I can't hear them, and at idle clocks and the normal 3D clocks this is fine. However, as soon as I exceed the above OC clocks, the crashing happens even if I leave the fan speed to be controlled by the bios. I don't mind the higher default fan speeds at 3D clocks since I can't hear it over the game, but even if the fan is above 70% (very loud!), and the card temp is only 76-77C, it still crashes. Guess I just have a bum card... :( but it's still way faster than my old 9600GT, and it will do me until Fermi is released :)
 
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