The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-03-13, 05:09:

Yep, underclocking without undervolting was never a thing. It works for overclocking though, because increased power consumption is negligible.

What I didn't consider was that the underclocking works a lot better on older cards because they run at higher voltages, so the power savings in absolute terms will be much higher per clock. My Radeon 9800 Pro does get quite a lot cooler when underclocked, so I assumed the same goes for this 7600 card, but that's definitely not the case.

BoYan wrote on 2024-03-13, 08:04:

I also have one regular 6800 (non-GT, non-ultra, non-XT), only issue is only 128MB of GDDR, but I could give it a try to have a software volt-mod

Why don't you try the Radeon X1600 that you already have and see if it's fast enough for your needs? The X800 series has very similar TDP, so it won't be any cooler.

I have many of the mentioned video cards in this thread and have done extensive temperature tests on pretty much all of them (it was a hardcore geeky hobby of mine a few years ago and still is to a point.)

My GeForce 7300 GT and 7600 GS cards are the best, by far, when it comes to decently low temperatures and decent-to-very-good performance. Both of these will be about on-par with Radeon 9700/9800 non-pro... but with better support for DX9 games. In fact, both of them will also regularly equal or beat my GF 6800 XT and 6600 GT in DX9c game performance, and at half or less the power draw of the 6800XT. That being said, neither my 7300 GT nor my 7600 GS use the stock coolers. However, they can still run decently cool with single-slot coolers, provided those are bigger than the stock ones. In the case of my 7300 GT, it's from BFG and came with an anemic "U"-shaped cooler equipped with a tiny 50 mm fan screaming at full blast on 12V. It was loud and didn't run very cool... though not too bad either compared to many other cards I have seen: about 57-60C under gaming / 3D load with 19C room / ambient temperature (open computer case.) Of course, I wasn't happy with this result, since my room where I used to do all of these tests would regularly hit 28-30C in the summer... meaning, temperatures on older GPUs with no fan control would also rise by the same amount. So the same 7300 GT would get close to 70C in the summer, which is not good for it, considering it's a bumpgate -era card (keep these under 60C at all times if you want them to last.) As such, I gutted the original BFG cooler and put on a cooler from an XFX GeForce 8600 GT. While at it, I also wired the fan of the 8600 GT cooler to run at 7V to make it more quiet - it became almost inaudible, in fact. With this setup, my 7300 GT ran at 48C tops with the same 3D load and same room temperature - a reduction of 12C (while also being more quiet.) Not only that, but even when summer temperatures hit 28C, my GPU core never went above 58C. Most of the time, it stayed in the 55-57C range in 3D load. My PNY GF7600 GS performed in a very similar way... and perhaps this shouldn't be surprising, as it is rated for only 5 Watts more TDP (the 7300GT is 30W TDP... IIRC... and the 7600 GS is 35W TDP.)

Another decently cool mid-range video card is the GeForce 6200 / 6600 LE (NV43 core, 128-bit mem. bus DDR2). It has about the same TDP as the 7300 GT and 7600 GS (~30W) and you can almost always unlock 4 extra pixel pipes without any noticeable increase in TDP. It does tend to struggle a bit more in DX9c mode compared to the above two, particularly when I tested it with Portal or other Source engine -based games. Bumping down the DX_level to 8.1 or 9.0 did bring the FPS right back up, though.

Then there's the Radeon 9600 NP (non-pro) and 9550 128-bit: again, both of these being mid-range cards but with nice low TDP. I don't know if I can suggest going below this card, though. For example, I also have an HD2400 Pro. While it's a very nice and cool card and will run most games about on par with the Radeon 9600... that's only so in 1024x768 resolution... and certainly 3D scenes can make the 2400 Pro really crawl due to its 64-bit mem. bus.

As for higher-end cards... I don't know if there are any that are both cool-running and use a single-slot cooler. Usually it's pick between hot-running and single-slot cooler or cool(er)-running and dual-slot cooler... and in some cases neither (dual-slot cooler and the card still runs hot.) I think the closest to this would be an X800 GTO - at least based on tests from the one I have. It seems to run relatively cool according to its built-in temperature monitor and should beat the 7300 GT and 7600 GS in some games. However, I haven't tested it too extensively yet, so can't confirm if that's 100% true. The Realto bridge chip on the back of these newer Radeon cards surely does run hot - something not to be overlooked (additional cooling on top of it highly recommended for longer-term reliability.)

As for the GeForce 7800 GT and 7900 GS - I only have the PCI-E versions of these cards. The 7900 GS & GT both have the same TDP - about 50W... which isn't that much. Still, cooling that with a single slot cooler and a tiny fan is not possible... yet this is how all of these usually come stock. The 7800 GT is worse, because it's made on older fab node and thus is more power-hungry (about 60-70W TDP, IIRC.) And 6800 XT/vanilla/GT is even worse (60-80W TDP.) HD3850 is nice... but certainly not cool-running in the single-slot versions (i.e. those Sapphire cards.) If you're after that kind of performance, however, only HD4670 will be about on par. I personally like the HD4670/4650 series quite a bit. With the right single-slot cooler, an HD4650 (or HD4670) can be made to run relatively cool. While I do agree with others here that underclocking by itself doesn't generally yield lower temperatures (usually), I have found that for the HD4670, it does make a difference - I can shave 3-4C off of my HD4670 cards if I underclock them to run at the same core clock speeds as my HD4650 cards.

Anyways, that's all the cards I felt like digging up info for from my test results. Hope it helps.

I have an SN25P and use an Asus 7800GT, the one with a single slot blue LED hsf. In an air conditioned room playing Oblivion it wouldn't get over 77c. It is PCIe.
Maybe test with on-board sound and see how it goes. I won't put my ZS in there because it's likely going to trap too much heat in.

Take ATi X800XL AGP or Nvidia 7600GT B1 AGP?

7600gt rev a2 is 90nm and 7600gt rev b1 is 80nm version chip, those are made also for AGP.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-g73b.g1028
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce … 600-gt-agp.c729

ATi X800XL has R430 @ 110nm, X800 R420 and X850 R481 are all 130nm chips.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon- … 800-xl-agp.c119

Take X800XL or 7600GT B1, change cooler and overclock if slow for you?

marxveix wrote on 2024-03-19, 07:41:

Take ATi X800XL AGP or Nvidia 7600GT B1 AGP?

Ah, thanks for pointing it out: the ATI x800 "GTO" I mentioned in my post above is indeed an x800XL with an R430 core (and branded by Sapphire.) And indeed it seems to run rather cool... though I have yet to verify if its onboard sensor is reporting correctly or not. Most 50W TDP cards I've tested (like GF 7900 GS/GT, 6600 GT, and similar) have all ran rather hot with a single-slot cooler. The x800XL's doesn't look that much bigger, so I am very surprised to see these GPUs run cooler. I suspect one possibility is that these x800XL cards never or rarely hit full TDP, similar to how Radeon HD3870 is rated for 105W TDP (IIRC), but rarely tops 80-90W in most realistic 3D loads.

roxfly wrote on 2024-03-19, 06:41:

I have an SN25P and use an Asus 7800GT, the one with a single slot blue LED hsf. In an air conditioned room playing Oblivion it wouldn't get over 77c. It is PCIe.

That's waaaay too hot for a bumpgate -era card. Sure some do last longer than others, but keep it running at that temperature and it's bound to fail.
55C tops is where you want to be with these for long-term reliability, maybe 60C on a really hot day.

update coming up your way... 😀

In the end I decided for Radeon X800 series and I'd say it's the right choice, but now I see different trouble - the system freezes as soon as there's some 3D involved:
- I tried first with Sapphire X800XT PE AGP card, much cooler than 7900GS, idle with open case at ±42 C, but freezing in 3D after some time more or less, so I went with...
- Sapphire X800Pro, even more cooler, staying between 36-38 C idle open case, but again freezing.

I tried fastwrittes OFF, seen this could help, but it didn't. Also tried running Prime95 to check system stability, no issues there, at least until I include 3D.
I tried 2 versions of drivers and none helped... on 10 occasssions I managed to only once to finish 3D mark 01 and god almost 23,000 pts. with X2 3800+ s939 - is it an expected score, for me it seems quite good?

What chipset drivers and what ATi drivers you did try, is thermal paste changed?

chipset drivers are latest from Shuttle website for Win XP and card stays cool enough, I tried TWO cards with same problem, which I've successfully used before in another system. It seems to me as a compatibility issue....

EDIT: for card Omega drivers 38330 and one newer, forgot the name, as well as official drivers coming with XP SP3.

Wow, I wish I'd seen this thread sooner. I just got done recapping and building an SN95G5 v2 a couple weeks ago.

You've hit on what I generally favor for late AGP Shuttles - the X800 cards are a good balance between size, heat, and capability. You might technically be able to run a reference-cooled 6800-something in a Shuttle, (that's what I started with on this latest one, although the CPU is a single core 90nm Winchester that I undervolted to save power/heat), but the fan noise makes it a non-starter imo, especially right next to the aluminum side panel. The X800s use less power, run cooler, and are waaaay more quiet. Heck, ATI even demoed the X800 in a Shuttle at their launch event.

As far as the stability issues you're running into, have you considered capacitors? Shuttle used absolutely dogshit caps (OST and G-LUXON everywhere) up until about mid-2007, and twenty years spent baking in a shoebox certainly haven't done them any favors. Remember you'll need to do the power supply as well, as it's also full of OSTs, and the 240 watt PC36 they used in the SN95G5 and similar systems is annoyingly hard to replace. Stick a bunch of 10000 hour Panasonics in there and you won't have to worry about it.
I can give you the cap list I used for the board and PSU if you like.

Also yeah, do the thermal paste on the MCP if you haven't already. Every little bit helps.

Like Rawrl, I was also going to mention that you check the capacitors in the system (motherboard and power supply), since indeed these systems are well-known for this issue... but he beat me to it already.
If unsure what you are looking for, just take a few photos of the motherboard and the power supply (with its top cover removed), and we should be able to see.

Rawrl wrote on 2024-04-01, 22:31:

Heck, ATI even demoed the X800 in a Shuttle at their launch event.

Never knew this, that's really cool!

IIRC, X800 series were also what was demo'd for Half-Life 2 back then. I remember daydreaming over getting one while having to contend with a lowly-low Radeon 9200 SE. But hey, I was still able to play HL2 with that R9200SE (at 800x600 and pretty low FPS regardless of the detail level used) and many other games. Moreover, that card is still working to this day, which is one reason I have remained a fan of low(er) power / cooler GPUs to this day.

Hi guys, thanks for the heads-up, about capacitors, but I managed to source the reason of my troubles to the GPU-Z app actually - seems it would fight for resources trying to monitor the GPU temp and freeze the PC. Soon as I tried running 3D tests without the GPU-Z in the background, everything ran well.

As fas as the temps go, X800 (pro) was the right choice - it stays in the low 40s when idle with case closed, and goes only close to 60 when pushing it to the max with Ati tool, also X800 being far less noisy comparing to Nvidia 7900gs model.

The performance difference I noticed between x800pro and x800xt on a more potent system was small, so I decided to stay with the cooler Pro model.

Also, I've also checked the caps on the motherboard of SN95G5 and in PSU - all healthy and non-bulged, and the unit seems almost as new even after 20 years... I would say it wasn't used a lot back in the day - heck, even the DVD drive works like new, except the problem with weakened magnet, so it opens wit a little bit more difficulty.

I used the nforce3 "unsupported" Toldedo core x2 3800+ running at 251 x 8 and at just 1.1V, corsair memory running synchronously at 2.5-3-3-7 , so it also stays cool - not reaching even 55 degrees with not a lot of cooler spinning up to cool it down.

Overall I'm quite happy with the outcome of this build, just need to find it now a nice spot on my desk to keep it as a regularly used retro setup.

Hey, great to hear the solution to this problem was actually a lot easier than we thought it would be.

That being said, still keep an eye on those caps. Even without much use, they can still go bad rather quickly as you start using the system. So just beware and check it from time to time... or mod the case with a small clear window so it's easier to check? 😁

Yeah, I'm glad you got it figured out. Just keep an eye on it, like momaka said.

If you ever do wanna do the caps, even as a preventative measure, I have the list of caps that I used which you're more than welcome to.
I have a whole pile of Shuttles I'm recapping, and I have tentative plans to make a thread somewhere (here? Badcaps?) with lists of the various capacitors and their replacements for each system, but I want to wait until I've done all of them to make sure I've got it right. Plus, I want to include the cap maps, but I need to translate them from my horrible scrawl to something halfway presentable. If you need the list before I get around to it though, just say the word and I can post the SN95G5 and PC35 ones in this thread.