9600XT - Overdrive or not!?

[asafsarid]

hi,
I have Sapphire 9600XT (Fireblade edition), but I don't have the OverDrive tab.
Do I need to have that OverDrive, cause well, my friend have the same card and he have an OverDriver tab.
is it different in some cards or I have to have it and something is wrong?
Thanks,
Asaf Sarid.

 

[nst6563]

your buddy got lucky on his Sapphire card then. Some Sapphire cards came WITH the monitoring chip that will enable the overdrive tab, and some didn't. Mine didn't. Kinda pissed me off too b/c the thermal monitoring would've been useful. I could care less about the o/c that overdrive does...it's next to worthless IMO.


I've been thinking about adding the missing parts to enable the monitoring, but need two cards that are exactly the same...one with the parts and one without.

if you look on your card where I have circled in red in my pic, you should see a similar spot of missing parts. this is where the chip is that enables thermal monitoring...I think it's an LM63 if I remember right.

If you have a good digicam that takes decen macro pics, photo both your card and his. Make two pics per side to get more detail. you can pm me with them if you like, or post them here.

I've been wanting to try this for awhile.

 

[asafsarid]

well ok, you say that it can be that I don'thave the overdriver tab and it is ok.
But I have another problem that is very annoying... well, in his vid card everything is woring great and he won't get artifacts when he put his core on 532 (the card is ready for that clock). And when I play the demo of Far Cry, I see like black things on the rocks and the died ppl, and trees, that happens always, even without OC. and when I put my core on the ready 532 clock I get artifacts even on some games, and I can see some artifacts on the Mother Nature test of 3dmark03.
So do I have a problem with my vid card or not!?

btw thanks for the reply nst6563

 

[nst6563]

almost sounds like you may have a problem with your card.

one thing to try before you return/rma it is to make sure the hsf is on correctly. taking it off will void your warranty, but you can make sure it's on just by looking and making sure it's not uneven.

If you don't care about warranty, then go ahead and take the hsf off, clean the core and hsf real good, put on some as3/ceramique/as5, put hsf back on and test again.

although you may just want to rma it so you get a good card and then go from there.

just for reference, without mods I could take my card from stock (500/600) all the way to 600/700. with vmem/vgpu I can hit 630/745.