anybody with a powercolor 9700p having to underclock it to run stable?

[sam_fisher]

i've got a buddy at work who just got a powercolor 9700p yesterday from the same store i did.
he was going to take it back but the store was closed today..
get this...

we have to underclock it to 310 to get it to run stable without a hard lock...
he can run 3dmark03 for about 15 seconds of wings of fury
before a hard lock at core/324....we treid increments of 5 and the only freq it the core would run at was 310...pretty crazy huh...
same for 3dmark2k1se only locks up in nature..
any opinions...i know what mine is..its a freakin dud...

his rig: is my old board and cpu
p4 2.5
1gb pc1066
antec tp 400w
sblive 5.1 digital
seagate 60gb 7200 ultra ata
pc 9700p with dedicated power connector..

[ol' man]

Maybe someone switched a 9500 bios flashed to a 9700 pro with the real 9700 pro? That crap is happening all to often now.

[MuFu]

The heatsink probably isn't making decent contact with the die. Take it off and have a look.

MuFu.

[sam_fisher]

whats the proper way...to put the heatsink backon...last time i did it freakin fried one...i think i had to much thermal goo on it...

tell me step by step please...i dont want to have to buy this guy a new one...

is it ok to use the white thermal compound that comes with the termaltake volcanos for this? its all i have..i'm out of aritic silver 3...
would be of help to mod a 60mm fan on the stock heatsink?
thanks guys

[Tuxy]

Wha't syour cooling situation? Do you have an exhaust slot fan or a side intake fan? Get this my GPU dropp 5-6 degrees becasue I removed my exhuast slot fan. My original idea was that it was exhasut the circulated air which I figured would be hot becasue the card would give off heat. But I realized after feeling the air being pumped out of my pc was cool air. So I remove the exhaust fan.

Not I'm running in the 39-40 degree range in idle with stock sink and WinCAK38 fan. It's circulating the cool air and I guess the hot air is rises above and being ehausted by my case fans beneath the PS.

I'm erthink a way to engineer a better heatsink and retry ermoving the stock sink. But despite running so cool and running stock setting I'm having trouble completeing over night burn ins on 3DMark2001SE.

Could I have damaged the car? Becaue I don't tinhk it's a heat issue.

[sam_fisher]

i can't remember...did you take the shim off?
thats more than likely your prob...
i took the shim off the first one i had and ran the stock sink with a slimline 80mm fan on it...burned it up...the center of the heatsink got no air at all. thats where the core is

just be careful of this..
i'm going to go and take the heatsink off of my buddy's 9700p
take some aluminum foil and smash it and lay over the top of the core...so i can get it off the shim... this works beautifuly..i've done it to several using a p3 heatsink and 60mm fan...
just make sure you smash the crud out of the foil before you put it on...so there arent any cracks or creases in the center of the foil..use a tiny bit of thermal compound...between the core and foil and also the foil and heatsink...
rock on..

[Tuxy]

No I didn't. Personally I'de rather have it there and try and engineer a way to fill the gap. I wat the shim there so the heatsink will sit flat and stable and won't crush the core. I'm working on a design now.

Here's a link how to remove the shim.

http://www.overclockers.com/articles714/index02.asp

[evetsrim1]

'his rig: is my old board and cpu
p4 2.5'
What is your old board and does he run it at 2.5 ghz or higher. I guess what is his pci clock speed.