Yea I know, and the difference in real world game play will be negligible. Maybe 1fps if that. As to the potential return, the cards haven't been in my possession for 7 working days so I would be ok on that front although I wouldn't be potentially returning them for a further week. Even with a replacement I'm not guaranteed a good card for overclocking. I'll try 800/1600/2200 and see what I get.
I think as far as the law goes you need to put it in writing before the 7 working days is up that you intend to return the card under Distance Selling Regulations. Either e-mail or letter will do. I'm not sure if there is any particular time limit on returning the card itself after the retailer has been notified about the return. I can imagine as long as we're not talking about weeks/months then a reasonable amount of time would not present a problem. Best check with the place you bought it from first however! Also you inspired me to test my own cards one at a time. The first card I bought (without Arctic Silver 5 application) appears to be stable at 835 core and 1670 on the shaders. Which is the maximum at stock voltage. I'm currently using FurMark in Xtreme Burning Mode to test stability for these results. Temperature is table at 84 degrees. Next I'll test my second card that I cleaned and applied Arctic Silver 5!
let me know how u get on. I'm going to run them at stock and if I still get artifacting then I will send the card back for sure and get a new one before I get to LAN.
Impressed with these results! I tried the second card that I cleaned and applied a little Arctic Silver 5 and I'm getting a maximum temperature of 80 degrees! Slightly lower maximum clock on stock voltage of 830 core and 1660 shaders but not that big a difference to be honest. Not bad at all getting 4 degrees lower just for the application of a little AS5 TIM! Also I noticed the climb in temperature under stress is slower and the recovery following a stress test is faster with AS5. Time to clean and apply some AS5 to my first card me thinks! I'll see how temperatures then proceed under SLI and settle on 810 core if possible! Although I'll put my top clocker in the first PCI-E slot for when SLI is not in use
I won't tell them if you don't! I'm pretty sure it does but saying that I've done exactly the same to cards in the past with improved temperatures then after a few months they failed anyway! Never had a problem with returning it under the warranty. However it is a personal risk you can take if you want to have a little gamble! Is a return of 4 degrees worth it to you? Anyways, I've done the same job to the first GTX 460 and had a little panic when the card wouldn't output to my monitor! Reseated the card in its PCI-E slot and now it works fine, panic over! Temperatures are again in line with the previous card that I applied AS5 too, great job! Be interesting to see a month or two down the line if the temperatures actually decrease. The documentation with AS5 states that it'll take 200 hours exposed to typical operational temperatures for the TIM to reach maximum thermal conductivity. Could be marketing line!
how easy was it to take the heatsink on and off Blogins? I may consider doing it myself if I'm confident about it Could someone tell that the heatsink had been reseated?
It's the easiest graphics card I've ever taken apart to be truthful. Just applied my extreme overclock of 890 to my first GTX 460 and even when pushed that far the temperature has dropped from 85 originally to 83 degrees! Just looking at the temperature profile I can tell the cooling is more effective with AS5. Not worth it for everyone but when things are pushed to the edge it can help. Only need to remove four screws that hold the heatsink in place. Needs a little force to separate the heatsink from the graphics card due to the stock TIM Gigabyte use. I find a gentle twist and pull motion works a treat, being very careful all the time. Then the heatsink comes off with the fan assembly still attached. Then that's it! Give it a clean and apply new TIM, don't even need to disconnect the fans power cable! My technique is first to use kitchen tissue to get off as much of the stock TIM as possible. Be careful to focus on the GPU and not get any mess on the circuit board. Then clean both the heatsink and GPU with some TIM remover. I use Akasa TIM clean that has a pleasant smell of citrus. Again I use kitchen tissue to clean off the residual gunk, then move on to jay cloth cut down to a reasonable size to do some finer cleaning. Leave it for about quarter of an hour for the residual cleaning fluid to evaporate and then go over it with a dry jay cloth to remove any remaining fluid (you can tell by streaks over the cleaned GPU surface). Once both heatsink and GPU are well cleaned I applied some Arctic Silver 5 the size of a boliled grain of rice. Then with my finger in a strip of cling film I spread the AS5 over the entire GPU right up to the edge. If you go a bit too far just clean off any residual AS5 with a small piece of jay cloth around the edge of the GPU. Then with the fans face down it's quite easy to line up the PCB and put the screws back in place. Diagonal left to right first so it's in place then add the other two screws and gradually tighten each one until it's firmly in place.
is that 890 with the voltage boost? Even so that is very impressive. When I'm confident my cards are working ok I may try and get my MX-3 out and see how much I can knock off the temps. I need to remember to take home some IPA from work tonight ^^
Update: I returned my card in the end and received a replacement from SCAN today and I'm very happy with it. I managed to get 855/1710/2200 which is 10MHz more than my other card. I could well squeeze a couple more MHz out of it too. Once I'm happy with them I'll attempt to replace the TIM but being forgetful as I am I forgot to take home some IPA so it will have to wait ^^. I've also installed another intake fan at the bottom of the case so this should improve the airflow and create an equal pressure within the case. 3 intake and 3 exhaust
Yeah, that's with voltage maxed out to 1087mv under stock bios. Been using it in certain games that do not support SLI to improve performance through the one card. In those cases I disable SLI and setup afterburner so it only overclocks the single card to 890 core with the voltage pumped. Otherwise in SLI I edge on the side of caution with an 800 overclock on the core. Temperatures seem to behave with this system and rarely push over 77 degrees... whilst gaming at least!
Got mine this morning. Just managed to run 3dMark06, and I was surprised that I only got around 1000 more points than my 8800GT. BC2 runs on high nice and smoothly now though, and JC2 runs with everything turned on, and I suppose they're all running in DX11 mode, although I couldn't really tell. Going to try Crysis later, but at the moment it doesn't seem to have given me much more than my 8800GT, BC2 and JC2 didn't look different to me, granted I've not played them for very long. Hopefully crysis will impress me,
The GTX 460 1Gb is about 125/130% better then a 8800GT, I had a GTX 260 and that thing was about twice as powerful then a 8800GT, and the GTX adds about another 25/30% on top of a GTX 260.
I think the main thing is that its the sort of upgrade that's invisible, I'm sure its had a big effect, its just an effect that's hard to see. Already started OC'ing, . Only got to 730 core atm.
Let us know how far you manage to push it Cerberus90! My re-pasted 460's are working wonders in SLI with the new Arctic Silver 5 TIM. Since they've been in place for just over a week now the temperature is holding pretty solid at 80 degrees whilst both are overclocked to 800 on the core and stressed to the max with FurMark!
Only dared take it to 730 atm. I know it'll go much more, I just want to wait a while to let it settle in, and just to be sure its not duff, Then it'll get its arse thrashed,
Keep us posted! Interesting to see who gets the card that goes over 900MHz if any! This is the first graphics card I've ever seen that idles at room temperature, it's amazing. Room temperature is 24, graphics card is idling at 24, just stupendous!
Here's a question for you all. MSI afterburner won't put my fan above 70%. If I set it to manual, and put it above 70, then press apply, it just goes back to what it was before. Oh, and I've currently got mine at 790MHz Core, 1580MHz shader and memory is still standard 1800. Using the Crysis benchmark, when going from 760 to 775 on the core I gained 2 fps. And the stock clocks to 760 I gained 2 fps also. Max temp I've had is 75 degrees, and my room has quite a high ambient.
