7900 gt how far o/c?

[K007]

I am getting one of these soon, and i want to oc say by 50mhz to 500 on core and..maybe a bit more on the memory. Its Leadtek but its stock cooler..i am wondering how effective the stock cooler is..maybe its a good idea to get a cooler for it? I got a Artic cooler for my 6800gt and wow...temps went down alot and the oc has been running for over a year @ ultra speeds.

The stock cooler also dosent seem to cool the memory? Is it a good idea to O/C the memory a bit?

Leadtek PX7900GT 256MB SLI
ASUS A8N-SLI-PREMIUM (S939 SLi GbE)
Corsair 2.0 GB TWINX-3200C2 (400MHz) 2-3-3-6
Seagate SATAII 320G 7200 16M (3320620AS)
AMD Athlon64 3700+(2.2GHz 1MB 939)

This is the rig i am getting. I think the core 500 should be ok but the memory might not be so ok..

Whats a good cooler for 7900GT? Something like Artic cooler series?

[Stevedroid]

There's a bit of room on the core, but the memory speed can be a problem since there's zero cooling on the memory chips.

Overlclocking 7900GTs is tough business. It seems that for most people when they reach the card's limit they won't get atifacts or other tell tale signs, rather it seems they'll just hard lock. As discussed in this (now well known) EVGA post (http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14558), I suspect that this may be related to the voltage regulators chips on the back of card, which basically shut the card down when they get too hot, being the real limit.

Though I had very few problems with my 7900GTs I did get the occasional hard lock, but after adding some ram sinks to those chips I haven't had a single problem.

Regarding aftermarket coolers: the only ones that are compatible with the 7900GTs without modification are the Zalman VF700 and VF900.

[Rytr]

I have used both the VF700 and VF900. The VF900 cools a little better but is expensive (see pic). This card has OCZ copper sinks replacing the Zalman aluminum blue sinks.

http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/140/140734/folders/239722/1878740VF900-CU01.jpg

OC is in sig. Default for this card is 550/1580.