7600GT vmod + cooler update

I've upgraded the heatsink on my 7600GT to a thermalright v1 that I found for a great deal. First of all, it didn't quite work that well on my card since it's not a supported card. But after a moment it worked out well, or so I thought... after testing the temperatures where about the same as with the original cooler. Since I've read alot of reviews I knew the cooler couldn't be that bad.

After looking at the parts that came with the card and on how I had installed the heatsink I realised it wasn't mounted properly. There was a plastic shim that I realised would help mount the cooler so it would make proper contact with core. After mouting and testing again the temps where horrible! O_O

More checking and I realised I had to cut away parts of the shim and after some more testing I saw the temps where much better :D And I ran the original fan at 5 volts and it was about 3-4 degrees c cooler the the original cooler. During load it was still about the same temp as the original cooler though. So I moved the fan to the front and put another silent fan on the back. Now it was about 10 degrees cooler than the default nvidia cooler and much more silent too.

The card didn't overclock any better though so I tried to vmod it. I did exactly like they did at www.vr-zone.com I increased vmem to 2.2 and vcore to 1.46. Using atitool I overclocked the memory and found that I couldn't overclock any more at all. I could overclock the core about 5% more, so not that much of an improvement. But then again the core temp was 59 degrees so I'm still wondering if the cooler really is properly mounted? As far as I could see it was making good contact.

One thing I've noticed with overclocking the 7600GT is that if the core is overclocked too high 3d applications start freezing and after unfreezing they usually run at a really slow speed, probably 50% slower than usual. It seems it's the same deal with the 7900 cards.

Original cooler idle:50 load:67 noise:horrible

Thermalright v1 idle:45 load:57 noise:silent

Thermalright v1 vmod idle:47 load:59 noise:silent

I've also beated the main quest in oblivion now and I'm the head of the thiefs guild, mages guild and the dark brotherhood. Took me 83 hours, but I didn't really visit any extra caves or other places unless they had something to do with a quest so I'd guess that I haven't visited 70% of the caves and ruins.

Oblivion mainstream card performace

Firingsquad has a comparison of mainstream cards in oblivion. They have also tested if 512MB of memory makes a difference in oblivion. With a 7900GT card it's about 10% faster in some areas with 512MB memory on the card so not that much of a difference at all, I would have expected more. One interesting thing is that the Ati X1800 GTO is alot faster in foliage areas than 7600GT. I did expect the GTO would be faster but I thought that it would be faster in all situations where HDR was enabled, but that's not the case. 50% faster is alot and it's in the situations where the game is at it's slowest so for everyone who hasn't upgraded their graphics card for oblivion. Get the X1800 GTO if you can afford it.

The 7600GT card is 30% to 50% faster indoors where the game is fast enough even on cheaper cards... It could just be that there happens to be some shaders that favour ati cards outdoor and favour nvidia cards indoors. But if this keeps up for future games it seems like ati cards have an architecture that's much more suited for future games where there's alot of complex scenes. Then again that's what the X1x00 series was designed for, hehe.

Someone at ati spent a weekend fiddling with their drivers and figured out a way to run with both HDR and AA at the same time. So now there's a driver called "the chuck patch"... to download. It also has AFR crossfire mode for oblivion and that can make the game alot faster for crossfire owners. Ugh, I don't like the name chuck since it makes me think of Chuck Norris and all those stupid jokes about him and his leetness, coolness and [H]ardness

The chuck patch

Oblivion performance

I've been busy lately with oblivion and other stuff so that's why I haven't been posting. I bought oblivion as soon as if came out and I also got a nVidia 7600GT card to replace my old 6600GT. But even that card isn't really enough to play with most options on high and at high resolution. I run with most options on highest and at 1280x1024 and with HDR. I would run at 1024x768 but HDR looks so much better running at a higher resolution. I fps is usually 20-40 but in fights outside or in some special situations the fps can go down to lower than 15 and that's painful...

TweakGuides.com's oblivion tweak guide.

Firingsquad oblivion benchmarking

Seems like one needs a nVidia 7900GT or better to run oblivion at really high quality. And it seems like ATI cards are a little bit better at running oblivion but it's probably not a good idea to buy an expensive high end card now. 65 nm cards will probably come out in autum/winter.

There's alot of quests and caves in oblivion. Even walking along a road it's possible to find caves and ruins to investigate and loot of course ;) Running in the forest there's even more to find and you don't have to travel far to find something either. And later on oblivion gates start popping up like crazy too.

And last but not least a link to lots of oblivion mods