GeForce4 Ti and MX Overclocking Guide - Page 5

GeForce4 Ti Overclocking Procedure

The procedure for upgrading the GeForce4 Ti 4400's cooling system will be extremely similar to what we did to the MX 440, except that we will not be swapping the heatsink for another.

For better heat transfer between the GPU and the heatsink we applied some Arctic Silver 3 thermal grease, but to do so we need to remove the heatsink. Once again, remove the push-pins from the two holding clamps, and then just push the clamps upwards, toward the GPU. As with the GeForce4 MX, the specific brand and design dictate whether you will find basic heatsink compound or a thermal pad underneath.

If it is thermal compound, this will be come quite evident when the first clip is pushed out, so take extreme care in keeping the HSF from sliding loose. If it is a thermal pad, some pressure may be needed to fully remove it, as well as scraping off (plastic or fingernail only) the excess material that is left behind.

As with the GeForce4 MX 440 procedure, the heatsinks were affixed using Arctic Alumina epoxy. After mixing it into the appropriate 50/50 concoction, very small amounts of the epoxy need to be carefully applied to the center of each BGA memory chip.

A small amount of epoxy is critical as if there is too much it will leak over the sides of the chip as you press down on the heatsink that could damage your expensive new board. Keep the board totally flat and each application of the epoxy should be given at least five to ten minutes to harden before using the board. To be on the safe side, take a 15 minute break after the task is finished.

Overclocking Results

The method used for increasing the core and memory speeds of the GeForce4 cards is totally up to you. Most simply update their system with the Coolbits registry addition, thereby giving access to the overclocking settings through the Detonator reference drivers. Many retail boards ship with their overclocking features auto-enabled and there are many other utilities like RivaTuner and NVMax available as well.

Before we finalized our maximum GeForce4 MX 440 and GeForce4 Ti 4400 overclock levels, we ran ten loops of 3DMark2001 SE to make sure the system would not crash. We also ensured that no artifacts or other visual anomalies were produced during any of the runs. When overclocking, sometimes a graphics card will produce visual anomalies such as little dots or flashing textures, rather than crashing outright.

This is most common with overstepping the boundaries of your card memory, while jacking the core speed into the outer limits is far more prone to a heat-related, hard crash. The frequency and severity of the artifacts can most often be attributed to the level one overclocks. To demonstrate what artifacts look like in games, here is a screenshot of Quake 3 taken after we overclocked the GeForce4 MX 440 a little too high. Take note of the little black dots present in the image, especially along the left portion fo the screenshot.

Our final overclocking results for both cards were somewhat of a mixed bag. The Ti4400 (stock speed 275 MHz core and 550 MHz memory) was a bit of a disappointment. The memory heatsinks didn't seem to help overall cooling that much, nor did the presence of AC3 thermal grease. Our maximum overclock (302MHz core and 655MHz Memory) still exceeded the Ti4600 at stock speed, but not by much. While this is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but prior to any extra cooling, we could still achieve 300 MHz on the core and 640 MHz effective DDR with the memory.

The VisionTek GeForce4 MX 440 actually did quite well with the enhanced cooling power provided by the Crystal Orb cooler and the memory sinks. The stock speed for the MX440 is 270MHz on the core and 400MHz on the memory, and with the active cooling we were able to squeeze out 305MHz on the core, a full 35MHz faster than the stock speed. This exceeded the more expensive GeForce4 MX460, which has a stock core speed of 300MHz.

We were able to get the memory on the VisionTek GeForce4 MX 440 up to 520MHz effective DDR, which is a full 120MHz (DDR) faster than what the 5ns memory is rated for. Before the extra cooling was applied we could achieve 295 MHz on the core and 510 MHz DDR on the memory; and once again we see that the memory heatsinks did not do all that much for the memory only allowing us to gain an extra 10 MHz. The core speed increase may have only been 10 MHz over standard cooling, but this represents a much higher percentage jump (from 295 to 305 MHz) compared to the memory (510 MHz to 520 MHz).