burnt my card:but now i wanted an overclocked card

[Domy]

i just burnt my softmodded power color 9800se >9800pro (hiks), and since i got no budget at all, i replaced it with a 6600 plain 256mb pixelview. I lived in Indonesia and to get a nice priced-performace card is a bit tedious. so here i ended up with a vanilla 256mb 6600. it gives almost the same performace with my previous soft-modded card. anyway, now i wanted to overclocks it.do u guys think this is a wise decision? thx...

[Infinity666]

The vanila 6600 is a ok card (i know you dont want to mod but) i think there is a way to unlock the pipelines to make it a 6600gt

[mx125race]

ooh, i would love to know how to do this

[saturnotaku]

Originally Posted by Infinity666

The vanila 6600 is a ok card (i know you dont want to mod but) i think there is a way to unlock the pipelines to make it a 6600gt

The 6600 and 6600 GT have the same number of pipelines and vertex engines (8 and 3, respectively) so there's nothing to unlock. The vanilla 6600 uses standard DDR memory. The 6600 GT uses higher clocked GDDR3.

[911medic]

Most vanilla 6600's use the same core (NV43) as the GT's and can be easily overclocked (core) from the stock (~300MHz) to GT speeds (~500MHz). Memory, however, is another story, as Satunotaku has pointed out.

A quick example from a Guru3D article:
"The GeForce 6600 at default clock speeds is doing 300 MHz. It's DDR memory is 2x275 thus 550 MHz. Overclocked it was capable of running at 550 MHz core and 575 MHz memory frequency.
The high core overlock is something we observe with almost all 6600 cards, it's just amazing." http://www.guru3d.com/article/content/158/8/

[mx125race]

i was only able to OC mine to 554 mem clock...i dont have anything but stock cooling, so i only OC'ed the core to 340...

[rohit]

so is it performing better?

[ragejg]

Honestly, even with stock cooling, you should be able to do 450 core. My 6200 modded to 6600 (pipeline unlocking) would do 450 core and 675 memory... Definitely a big jump, going from 6200 to ALMOST 6600GT just by doing a couple easy tweaks.

[mx125race]

Originally Posted by rohit

so is it performing better?

i notice a slight different in FEAR i think. The water appears a little better and explosions are more realistic. Runs a bit faster now, but nothing real drastic. I'm going to OC it a little more right now. I dont want to go to high because PNY doesn't cover OC'ing and I'm selling this card in the future. I'm still not impressed by this card from my 5200 FX...

EDIT: Okay, I just OC'ed to 380/544. I'm going to test it out on some games.

[Domy]

when i softmodded my 9800se>9800pro it a was ok for a year. i even got thermaltake heatpipe giant II for the card, and i don't oc'd it. just plain soft-mod, but still the card is dead after playing FEAR-damn- i wanted a hihger performance from my 6600 card but will overclocks reduce my card's life span?any thouhgts or experience from u guys?thx

[911medic]

Originally Posted by Domy

i wanted a hihger performance from my 6600 card but will overclocks reduce my card's life span?any thouhgts or experience from u guys?thx

Depends. If you do it correctly, it's "useful" lifespan will probably not change much for you. In other words, if the card would've run for 6 years at stock speed, maybe it'll only run for 3 overclocked. But realistically, if you're running a OC'd 6600 3 years from now, you'll still be playing UT2K4 3 years from now.
Of course, this is all assuming you safely OC the card: ensuring adequate cooling, not OC'ing to the absolute limit, etc. There's a bit of art and science to it, but it's mostly common sense.
I guess if you're just starting out OC'ing, the 6600's not a bad card to experiment with. It's relatively cheap, and apparently has a lot of overclocking potential (at least on the core).

[NightFire]

I think you can push the core up some more, if you're not getting any artifacts at these speeds.