Benching 7300GS on the cheap

[zakelwe]

After benching the 7300GT I had hoped to bench the 7600GT but the 80nm XFX 7600GT at 700Mhz gpu and 1.1ns memory only seemed to be a limited trial run and their latest card seems to be a passively cooled Fatal1ty job which I will not buy on Pr1nciple ;). So in the meantime, and waiting for 8300GT to come out I decided to bench the mighty nvidia 7300GS.

The advantages of this card is it is a) very cheap and b) puts the emphasis on the card not the cpu, even in 2001. This thing has a whole 4 pipelines straining at the leash :woot:.

Even though it just has 4 such is the power of the modern gpu that it can still easily become bandwidth limited on the memory front and so this is the main thing to aim towards before picking the card. A bit of time and effort spent on the selection of the card will make getting those highly desired 7300GS #1's in all 4 3dmarks a damn sight easier. Ignore the gpu just make sure the memory is above the norm. You can forget GDDR3 at this level but some nice smokin Samsung DDR2 will be just what the doctor ordered.

Luckily for me I have years and years of bottom feeding video cards so have an uncanny ability to sniff out the best uns ;) . At this level the manufacturers do not often put up the memory speed but you can have other clues, for instance most cards at this level are half height cards as the PCB is cheaper. That's a no no :nono: But check out this beauty I found

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=317788

Full height card, pretty good heatsink for something so cheap and those memory chips look fast even at 110x90 pixels ! :D

Bought two. They came in the post two days later.

At this point cue the violins and get your hanky out as the story takes a heart rendering turn for the worst :(

I should have checked the website out.

http://www.pointofview-online.com/default2.asp?content_id=135

Yep its a flippin half height card. Even worse the memory is rated at 3.7ns which is 270Mhz or 540Mhz effective ..it's not even Samsung, it's CCL or CCI or CC1 or something I have never heard of. Years of bottom feeding video cards and I am still f*cking it up ..will I never learn ?

:slapass: :

The one good thing is that there is nothing in the world that a good beer cannot fix and so as the first can popped I contemplated the task ahead......

To be continued.

Regards
Andy

[tiborrr]

Return for a refund.

I've also fooled myself once when i bought Gainward's edition of GeForceFX5600. I though i bought the ultra version of the card (the name of the card was Gainward XP 'blabla some numbers' Ultra) and even the package was the same as on the real ultra. Hell, even on the retailer's website they had the picture of FX5600Ultra board.
The next day as i opened the post packet i realized i've bought the GF5600XT version of the card although the name was litteraly the same - the 64bit TSOP 5ns DDR edition instead of 128bit 2.2ns BGA equipped edition!

Someone should prosecute those Gainward bastards.

[zakelwe]

5 beers later it's time to roll. Literally.

Here's a picture of the cards with original heatsink removed and some potential low cost replacements

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/7300gs2.jpg

The actual chip is tiny

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/7300gs1.jpg

not much surface area to stick the Artic Epoxy to but then again not much heat coming off it. I decide to go for the MSI gold heatsinks off some long forgotten cards ( MX440 ? :confused: ) rather than the silver northbridge heatsinks. Thought the gold colour would look nice next to the black, hey and I was not wrong -

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/7300gs3.jpg

and

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/7300gs5.jpg

Very easy volt mod on the Intersil 6549CBZ, that thing has bigger metal legs on the IC than the Golden Gate bridge, which is great

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/7300gs4.jpg

Used a bit of duct tape and double sided carpet tile tape to stick it all together. Can't have things looking too professional.

Now at this point I started testing the memory overclock expecting the worst. Rated 540Mhz only I edged it up

560...pass
580...pass
600...pass
620...pass
640...pass.

At this stage I was getting bored, so, with my invincible beer cape glowing mightely I stuck it up to 700 expecting the dreaded black flashing triangles or no screen or artifacts in 2d .. and it passed.

750...pass
800...pass

oh gobblers 1000 ... pass :eek:

Check this out

http://www.aocb77.dsl.pipex.com/ram.jpg

1080Mhz or 100% overclock on the memory :toast: Unless of course it is actually 2ns and not 3.7ns after all , can anyone tell me what that CCL memory chip is, I haven't a clue apart from what it claims on POV's website which is 3.7ns.

Anyhow fantastic result considering! To cut a long story short I banged 1.49-1.55v through the volt mod for gpu and got 740/1050 for the SLi pair and got all 3dmark records, all for £80 :woot:

2001 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9135585
03 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5174688
05 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2591395
06 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1063798

Anyone else fancy having a bash at this? Good fun for small outlay.

Regards

Andy

[Hystrix^]

Very, very nice benshing :up:

[tiborrr]

Very nice, zakelwe! ;) Nice ram clocks, probably relabeled 2ns chips. The 2.5ns Samsungs on my 7300GT didn't go stable higher than 980-990 @ 2.2V (GPU was cooled with cold water) so this calls for celebration! One more beer, please :D

P.S.: We've opened an english subforums on [url[/url] , they're opened for your OC achievements :D

[aspstein]

Haha really nice cards there Zakelwe. :toast:

Maybe you should try some dice or phase on the gpu and give it 1,7-1,8v :D

Would be nice to see 1000/1000, a couple of more beers should do it? :P

[tiborrr]

I think it's too late since he epoxied heatsinks to the GPU. That wasn't the best idea if you ask me ;).

[Inteleron]

Ohhh man I wanan do something like this so bad too a 7100GS. Where I work they go for 52$ and I need to build up my vmodding confidence.

[STEvil]

vmod the mems :D

[[XC] gomeler]

You have inspired me :) Never really thought of pulling the bottom of the barrel cards and whipping them around and pumping stupid high voltages through them, can't wait for the G80 and R600 lowend cards to start falling.

[flclisgreat]

i have a 7300le here. full pcb to. maybe i should do something similar?

[Inteleron]

We should have a 7100GS or 7300GS Challenge/Competition. You guys choose the card, call the shots and im in :cool:

[DrJay]

Good job Andy! Very nice overclock.:clap: Just out of curiosity, would you run the same overclocked settings with your cpu @ 4 Ghz? Just for giggles, of course...

[zakelwe]

Good job Andy! Very nice overclock.:clap: Just out of curiosity, would you run the same overclocked settings with your cpu @ 4 Ghz? Just for giggles, of course...

Hi Jay,

during early testing I ran the X6800 at 2400Mhz only and then at 3600Mhz, the scores were about 15500 and 16800 so only 8% score for 50% increase in cpu power.. therefore 4000Mhz would give me about 2% or about 4-500 points if that.

With the 7300GS it is nearly all video memory bandwidth. The chip is so weedy it requires a LOD of +5 in 2001 nature to get best score, up from the normal 3+ for most cards :eek:

Regards
Andy

[Inteleron]

So I bought an Asus 7300GS today, and i plan on vmodding it. I was wondering Zakelwe, is the mod u did for both vgpu and vmem?

[zakelwe]

So I bought an Asus 7300GS today, and i plan on vmodding it. I was wondering Zakelwe, is the mod u did for both vgpu and vmem?

Hi, No just gpu. The Intersil 6549 has a PWM for Vout1 ( gpu) and a linear converter for Vout2 which I would imagine is for memory, but I did not do this. If someone beats my scores then I might do the memory mod, but i am getting lazy in my old age :)

Good luck with your card.

Regards

Andy

[Inteleron]

Fired mine up and have been testing it at stock speeds. So far so good, its not a bad card at all, especially for me. I can play counterstrike source with everything on high including resolutions, and get 50-65 fps. Not a bad card at all, especially for a cheap CS:S lan rig. Only thing i can complain about so far are 1) the stock cooling sucks ass, and 2) cant seem to find any Asus 7300GS vmods.

[buttercup]

You can forget GDDR3 at this level

What about this (http://www.techfever.co.uk/products.asp?partno=0419)?

The Xpertvision website (http://www.xpertvision.com.tw/en/products/nv_pcie_7300-Sonic.htm) seems to confirm that it is indeed GDDR3.

I was going to buy one myself, but I don't have any money or a decent enough system to test it on. It would be interesting to see how far they can be pushed though.

[zakelwe]

What about this (http://www.techfever.co.uk/products.asp?partno=0419)?

The Xpertvision website (http://www.xpertvision.com.tw/en/products/nv_pcie_7300-Sonic.htm) seems to confirm that it is indeed GDDR3.

I was going to buy one myself, but I don't have any money or a decent enough system to test it on. It would be interesting to see how far they can be pushed though.

Nice find ... :clap:

Bit puzzled by the low price and the chipset being listed as the 7100 rather than 7300. Also the core clock claimed is too low at 500 rather than 575Mhz. Maybe some mess up on that site, not sure what you would get :confused:

However, still GDDR3 for 7300GS is excellent, these are Palit cards by another name I think. If someone could get a pair of these for benching they would have very nice results indeed.

Regards

Andy

[buttercup]

Bit puzzled by the low price and the chipset being listed as the 7100 rather than 7300. Also the core clock claimed is too low at 500 rather than 575Mhz. Maybe some mess up on that site

I think where they put 7100 instead of 7300 it's just a simple typo.

The Xpertvision/Palit website lists sonic versions of both a plain 7300 (which, going by the model number on the Techfever page could be considered an LE) and a GS. The LE is clocked at 500/1100MHz and the GS is clocked at 575/1200MHz and has the additional heatsink over the memory.

The LE is the one Techfever stocks.

[Inteleron]

7100 is and actual nvidia based video chipset. I know where i work we have the 7100's in stock in Asus and XFX flavours. I was about to buy one until i heard their based on the old 6200 graphics chip, and that they didnt suppord HDR which is a nice visual effect in CS:S, so i went with an asus 7300GS.

[zakelwe]

I think where they put 7100 instead of 7300 it's just a simple typo.

The Xpertvision/Palit website lists sonic versions of both a plain 7300 (which, going by the model number on the Techfever page could be considered an LE) and a GS. The LE is clocked at 500/1100MHz and the GS is clocked at 575/1200MHz and has the additional heatsink over the memory.

The LE is the one Techfever stocks.

Yeah I think you are right. This place lists it right and gives a more realistic price

http://web-systems.co.uk/?page=Products&pid=3270

Very tempting indeed, however I really must save my pennies for 7600GT 80nm and then one of the nvidia 8XXX range.

I'm such a whore for video cards, most unfortunate.

Regards
Andy

[DrJay]

Yeah I think you are right. This place lists it right and gives a more realistic price

http://web-systems.co.uk/?page=Products&pid=3270

Very tempting indeed, however I really must save my pennies for 7600GT 80nm and then one of the nvidia 8XXX range.

I'm such a whore for video cards, most unfortunate.

Regards
Andy

:D In this case, it seems you may be the john and the cards are the whores.
....and of course Nvidia is the pimp.:)