eVGA 9600GSO Dual-Slot volt mod?

[quadomatic]

I'm looking to volt mod my eVGA 9600GSO Dual-Slot Edition card. It's the one that went on sale for $34 ($31 if you did Live Search Cashback) back in September. The card doesn't follow the reference model, so I took the cooler off and took some pictures of the bare card.

It seems like I can overclock this card quite a bit. Without the volt mod, it runs at 752 mhz core/1806 mhz shader/1050 mhz memory. No problems as of yet. When I took the cooler off I found that the memory chips are Samsung, not the qimonda chips that were mentioned as being questionable earlier (though I don't know anything about the Samsung chips).

For $31, it definitely seems like I'm getting my money's worth. Fallout 3 runs beautifully, as does most every other game I've tried (Crysis is a bit questionable, but that's to be expected).

So, if someone could have a look at these pictures and tell me what I can do for a volt mod, I'd appreciate it:

Back:



Zoomed (Left, Center, Right):


Front:



Zoomed (Left, Center, Right):

Thanks a bunch!

[sniperbob]

Kinda off topic, but thanks for posting the pictures of the card. I have two of these exact same cards and am looking into water-cooling options, so these stripped pictures are pretty valuable to me as to how to plan my liquid attack! Good luck figuring out the voltmod and sharing your clocks. My cards are set to 651 core/ 1842 shader/ 853 memory with fan speed cranked to 100% all the time. I use my rig for folding so they are under 100% load all the time and i have yet to have any problems with my clock. I may try bumping my cards up more after seeing your mem and core clock settings.

[quadomatic]

There, they've been uploaded to Imageshack...I had to reduce quality of the images from 89 to 85 in GIMP though.

Back:



Zoomed (Left, Center, Right):


Front:



Zoomed (Left, Center, Right):

[panzerchaos47]

I have the same cards. Trying to find a voltmod to overclock them higher than 1800 (folding) but overclock.net has the early rev. If you can post the names of the those chips (back of the card 1 in the left and 2 in the mid right of the card). It might help.

[quadomatic]

Not sure what you mean by mid right, but on the front is an RT8802A, and that regulates the core.

As for the one on the back left, that's AJ-AA UCP...I can't read it. It's so tiny.

[panzerchaos47]

Oh never mind didn't know the chip was on the front. Just wait for someone that could help.

[quadomatic]

Infrared on TechPowerUp found the data sheet for the chip. Based on what he found, he says that by removing certain surface mount resistors, the voltage can be raised by certain amounts, by which the voltage to the core can be raised.

[panzerchaos47]

Thanks!! I think I got it.
If I wanted to get 1.25v I have to cut VID 0, VID 1 and VID 2? That's what he was saying.

[quadomatic]

Not sure, but here's the thread:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...t=53910&page=3

Scroll towards the bottom and look at infrared's posts.

Also here's the chip's datasheet:

http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datashe...K/RT8802A.html

I'm not sure what the default voltage of the card is. Do you know?



I'm looking at that picture to determine default voltage and which resistor connections go to which pins.

It LOOKS like VID1 and VID6 are the only pins that don't have resistors, so those pins aren't connected to anything (meaning 0 I guess?), so I guess the default voltage is 1.11875V.

So, it looks like in order to raise voltage, do you not remove resistors and bridge gaps, but just make gaps?

UPDATE: I think this is the proper layout:

[panzerchaos47]

Looks like when I was trying to mod the bios the highest voltage is 1.1v
I might try it out but there is no actual measure points unless you know the accurate one.
---
Updated on Nov 17 13:29
If you want the pencil mod
If you look to the upper left chip and 4th pin (Find the FB pin on datasheet. You trace to the resister and measure it you should get 3.92 kohm. Shade that resister about 3.70 kohm. The temperature will increase by 6 - 7 C

GPU0 without pencil mod is 56 C max on hwmonitor
GPU1 with the mod is 62 C

I tested with folding which is inaccurate (Looks like easier to test the shaders for me if there is a good test)
GPU0 is clock at 680 / 1800 / 1000
GPU1 is clock at 680 / 1860 / 900 stable for 22 mins so far

I used this guide http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/hardw...mod-guide.html
Ill try to find that vcore measurements.

[quadomatic]

Looks like when I was trying to mod the bios the highest voltage is 1.1v
I might try it out but there is no actual measure points unless you know the accurate one.
---
Updated on Nov 17 13:29
If you want the pencil mod
If you look to the upper left chip and 4th pin (Find the FB pin on datasheet. You trace to the resister and measure it you should get 3.92 kohm. Shade that resister about 3.70 kohm. The temperature will increase by 6 - 7 C

GPU0 without pencil mod is 56 C max on hwmonitor
GPU1 with the mod is 62 C

I tested with folding which is inaccurate (Looks like easier to test the shaders for me if there is a good test)
GPU0 is clock at 680 / 1800 / 1000
GPU1 is clock at 680 / 1860 / 900 stable for 22 mins so far

I used this guide http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/hardw...mod-guide.html
Ill try to find that vcore measurements.

I found the FB pin. We are talking about the same chip as before right? The RT8802A?

By shading the resistor, that means shading all over the resistor so that the current passes over the resistor rather than through it right? You don't have to trace to the resistor with pencil do you? Just shade the resistor right?

Could you send me a picture of what you did?

Instead of using folding, try using ATITool artifact scanner. Use eVGA Precision Tools to overclock, and then run the artifact scanner in ATITool.

Are you sure you can't push core clocks more than that? Mine ran at 752 before even doing a volt mod. And so was memory not stable and you had to lower mem speeds? Maybe because whatever thermal material that was on there was removed when taking off the cooler?

Hmmm...instead of doing it through the FB pin, couldn't we just do the same thing through VID pins? Like, shade the VID3 resistor?

Then again I'm not sure if that's such a good idea. According to what you said now, based on the change in resistance, the voltage was probably 1.165V after you did that. Raising it to 1.32V might totally screw the card...but is that formula given in your link applicable to the pencil mod? Maybe the voltage is higher? Would GPU-Z tell you?

Does the increase in voltage depend on how much you shade the resistor?

Or wait...I don't think that mod would work. The idea isn't to shade over the resistor with the VID resistors but to remove them and make a gap in the connection. Right?

[panzerchaos47]

Red is the resistor that i shade the pencil
Blue is the measure the ohm starts 3.92 Kohm

I meant to trace it to find the resistor from FB pin since that time I didn't see option to save the picture until now. lol

I used your picture since it's the same and I don't have a camera that take a good picture.
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...opencilmod.jpg
Photobucket reduce the size of the picture.

Only problem is finding the vcore measure point. I think I'm close to finding it.

Here ones don't know if this is accurate though. Hope this helps.
For GPU0 I got 1.25 on idle and around 1.28v to 1.30v on load
For GPU1 I got 1.32 on idle and around 1.34v on load
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...asurepoint.jpg

[quadomatic]

Red is the resistor that i shade the pencil
Blue is the measure the ohm starts 3.92 Kohm

I meant to trace it to find the resistor from FB pin since that time I didn't see option to save the picture until now. lol

I used your picture since it's the same and I don't have a camera that take a good picture.
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...opencilmod.jpg
Photobucket reduce the size of the picture.

Only problem is finding the vcore measure point. I think I'm close to finding it.

Here ones don't know if this is accurate though. Hope this helps.
For GPU0 I got 1.25 on idle and around 1.28v to 1.30v on load
For GPU1 I got 1.32 on idle and around 1.34v on load
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...asurepoint.jpg

I see.

What exactly is GPU0 and GPU1?

[panzerchaos47]

I have two 9600 GS0 so I label both GPU0 without pencil mod and GPU1 with pencil mod. I wish I knew better measure point because I thought it was 1.118v was the default what you pointed out.

[quadomatic]

I don't think that's likely the actual point though, since it registers 1.25V on idle w/out pencil mod, and BIOS limits voltage to 1.1V by default, and based on the VID diagram I figured the voltage is 1.11875V.

Either way, it seems to accurately predict the change in voltage.

Based on calculations of resistance changes measured with the multimeter, the voltage change should be about +.07V...and 1.32V-1.25V=.07 So....I guess that point is at least reliable for measuring CHANGE in voltage.

Does the change in voltage using the FB pin depend on the thickness of the shading over the resistor?

Oh and did you try raising core clock speed more? You should be able to push it a bit more than that.

[quadomatic]

I decided to try the FB volt mod. It doesn't seem to be producing the desired effect. I had to lower clock speeds back on the memory. Maybe I shaded to thick? It seems like the gpu is hotter than it used to be...is 64 odd?

Maybe because I didn't reapply thermal grease properly? I just shaved off the dried paste that was on the heatsink before and threw it back onto the core. Probably has some burn in time, but still...

Maybe the added voltage requires a better cooler because of the extra heat?

[panzerchaos47]

I don't know I tested it again for some reason I think the my GPU1 did good with overclocks at 3.7 kohm so I did pencil mod for 3.4 kohm on GPU0. It got hot but not very hot around 60 C for GPU0 used to be around 54C. Couldn't reach more than 1800 Mhz on shaders while the GPU1 could reach to 1900 without messing up.
Let me continue to work with the GPU0. I'll focus on one 9600 GSO.

[quadomatic]

I think the reason why my card got so hot was because the thermal paste was no good. I took the cooler off of the card to take a look and it hadn't gone from the dry putty state it had been to a smoother state, so I'm assuming that the stuff had oxidized after I took the card out, and it was foolish to expect that I didn't need to put new paste on...

Right now I'm looking to buy an Accelero S1 and to strap a 120mm fan to it with a zip tie. I'm not sure whether old Accelero S1 coolers work on 8800GT though.

UPDATE: I decided to go for it. I picked up an S1 on eBay for $17 after Live Cashback. This cooler is supposed to be pretty amazing (I already have Accelero S2, but unfortunately it doesn't fit on this card), so I'll strap a 120mm fan onto it and hopefully this will help.

[panzerchaos47]

I did a lot more test on GPU0 with and without the pencil mod. The I shaded the resister to 3.16 kohm there was no difference. I guess it was because reapplying thermal grease so many times sometimes temperature changes (somtimes 60 or 70). I still can't get the overclock with over 1800. I think my 2nd GSO was with luck. Also found out the measure points isn't working. Doesn't give a constant reading like 1.35v then later reboot it could do 1.5v so don't use that. Getting the better vcore measure would help a lot. I wish it was easy as the HD 3870.

[quadomatic]

Perhaps this mod doesn't actually work then? Maybe the only way is through the VID pins?

But, then again, I was able to run at higher clock speeds and memory speeds without it immediately crashing on me. It was only a little afterwards that I got artifacting. I think one of the reasons was because the memory wasn't being adequately cooled (notice those styrofoam pads?). They had some liquid thing on them before I took off the cooler. That wasn't there anymore when I went to put the cooler back on. I'm guessing whatever that was, was keeping them at least a little cool or something. Maybe it helped to transfer heat.

[panzerchaos47]

Yeah I guess it won't work since other GSO vmods didn't mention any pencil mods but for the memory.

[quadomatic]

We'll see for sure once I replace the cooler. If I find that I'm able to break 760 on core without it crashing (it used to do this immediately, not because of heat) then I'd be pretty sure it works.

[panzerchaos47]

I found out there was vmod for vmem which is kind of useful since this card has limited memory bandwidth.

Same as what I did but it's for APW7067N that 14pin on top of the penny. Look at datasheet for FB pin then shade resister. If you measure it stock is 591 (or near) ohms.
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.net/datashe.../APW7067N.html

Voltage measurement is very accurate. Check same picture that I posted it's lower right of the green arrow.

590 ohms = 1.88v / 1.90v
572 ohms = 1.93v / 1.94v
556 ohms = 1.97v / 1.98v

This first successful vmod I did but for vmem.

[quadomatic]

Awesome! You're right about that. Increased memory speeds would probably make a lot more of a difference. Plus these are samsung chips, not the nasty qimonda, so we might be better off.

DOM (Palit 9600GSO http://www.teampalit.com/showthread.php?t=6661) got to 1150 with his memory. I got to 1050 without a volt mod, so this could help quite a bit.

How much more were you able to raise the speeds? I'd suggest you get an Accelero S1 since you would then be able to put heatsinks on the memory so they'd actually get cooled some.

Does the new voltage depend on how thickly the resistor is shaded?

Now if only we could figure out the core...not sure how much we'd be able to push it though. If it can get to 850 I'll be pretty dang impressed, though that seems really unlikely on air. On water, that's a different story...

I wish largon would respond to my PM's...he'd probably be able to help quite a bit.

UPDATE: Is this the resistor that needs to be shaded for vmod on mem?

[panzerchaos47]

That's wrong side though. Sounds the same thing like that other 9600 GSO mods from techpowerup that has no pencil mod for vcore but different PCB.

Vmod for Vmem. I was able to get it over 1050 without crashing. Measure it before you do shade it. Should be around 590 ohms.
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...600gsovmem.jpg

Blue is measure point for Vmem
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...asurepoint.jpg