rec.autos.simulators

Lovin' this card by the way!

--
don

[|]-(_)-[|]

Dave K

--
-----------------------------------
Morgan Vincent Wooten

http://members.tripod.com/~morganv/
-----------------------------------

Well, it could definitely shorten its (chip's) life, but it might still
last a lot longer than you'd be willing to keep the card. Do note that
these beasts CAN get really hot, so hot in fact that you could burn your
fingers when touching the heatsink. Common sense dictates here that it
might be a good idea to go for a fan.

I've clocked my V3 2000 to 178 MHz and haven't yet had a single lockup
with this card. I've also yet to see a V3 2K which couldn't be clocked
beyond 170 (two of my friends also have a V3 2K).

For cooling I've installed Titan's TTC-002 80 mm system cooler
( http://www.titan-cd.com/sys1.htm#a ) directly beneath the card (only
about 2 mm away from the chip's heatsink) so that the big fan sucks air
heated by the V3 right out of the case. Bigger heatsink would generally
be in order at these frequencies but the flow of air generated by the
80 mm fan seems to be efficient enough to keep the heatsink from getting
hot. I just installed a thermal sensor to the heatsink, as close to the
chip as possible, and plan to monitor the temperatures at different
frequencies to find the "sweet point" and to set a suitable limit to the
hwdoctor's temp alarm.

---
Antti Markus Peteri

       15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away

                                 - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken

Brian

With a right kind of fan it's a snap. If you take a look at the card, you
ought to find two holes cut through the PCB, placed diagonally to the
GPU. Some dedicated VGA fans are attached using two plastic "rivets"
which fit into these holes. If you use one of these, the fan will just
snap onto the heatsink. I know some people have just screwed a fan on the
heatsink but any visible damage to the heatsink will also void the
warranty.

---
Antti Markus Peteri

       15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away

                                 - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken

http://www.tomshardware.com/

http://www.anandtech.com/

Specifically for V3 cards, try the following:

Go in to your Windows directory and double click on Regedit.exe (or from
the desktop select start, run, and type in regedit) Your Registry Editor
should open.

Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Scroll down to 'System' and select that and
you will open the CurrentControSet directory.

Now select the 'Services' folder.

Scroll down until you see the 'Display' folder. Select it and you're in.
From the 'Display' folder you may have several 000X type folders. These
are your old or previous graphics card's registry settings. Leave these
as they are and locate the one that is for your Voodoo 3 card. It should
say something like "3Dfx Voodoo 3" next to the DriverDesc.

Now select it and you will open five more folders. Open the 'Default'
folder and add a NEW STRING VALUE. Name it "Grxclock". Modify the
Grxclock value to whatever you fancy trying your luck at. If you have a
143MHz board (V3 2000 card) and want to try 150MHz then simply try
putting in "150". For a V3 2000 card the max you should safely try is
around 160 to 165, although I've heard 170 is possible. Don't overdue
it, try small increases one at a time to see if they work ok. I suggest
increments of about +5MHz at any one time.

If the card stops working, go back to the last setting, as this
indicates you have gone too high, and the card is overheating. You can
add cooling (fans) or use a freeze spray which coats your graphics card
chips and keeps them cool (available from hardware shops or the net).
You can also try leaving one free PCI slot between the V3 card and any
other cards, this aids cooling.

To really speed up games using your V3 card, you should disable the
V-synch option. For Glide based games you'll need to simply add in a
single line into your autoexec.bat file found in the root directory. Add
this line: SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0

For D3D games locate the following directory from the Windows registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\000X\
D3D]

Then simply add this string value: "SSTH3_SWAPINTERVAL"="0"

With these settings your fps should be faster.

There are also utilities available from the net that provide small
programs that make overclocking your V3 crad even easier, as easy as
moving a slider on screen?

8-)

*Peter* -  http://www.cix.co.uk/~peterpc/home.html

don

[|]-(_)-[|]

<SNIP>

% > I don't see anywhere to overclock my new V3 card, is there a seperate
% > utility needed to do this, or should I just leave it alone?
% >
% > Lovin' this card by the way!

<snip registry hack info>

For quick and dirty and fast settings, get the following utility.  It is
accessable via the dispay control panel once installed.
http://www.3dfiles.com/utility/voodoo3overclocker.shtml

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

don

[|]-(_)-[|]