Blinkin' shim ....

[Usenetter]

Has anybody removed the shim from a Radeon 9700 ?
I'd like to take a few 10th's off it - as it stands proud of the core, so no
direct sink contact.
But it looks like the thing is soldered.
Someone suggested sticking it in the freezer and levering it off - but I'm
not sure exactly what effect this would have on solder (as opposed to
adhesive, which I don't think it is).
I could grind the shim in-situ, but clamping for the grind-down is an
issue - and I don't really want to court a £215 catastrophe.
All suggestions welcome.

TIA

UN

 

[Brian Mills]

My recommendation is to leave it well alone, you are risking an expensive
card for a possible 10-15% increase with a load of work and worry.

If you must have the extra pefrormance then upgrade. I reckon the engineers
who build this stuff know enough to get them as fast as possible without
them becoming unreliable.

Millsey

 

[Usenetter]

Thanks Min.
After posting, I looked round the net and there's a few sites devoted to
this issue.
But in the forums, a few folk remarked on how easy and painless removal was.
So I took a new razor-blade to it - and with forecast ease, gently pried it
up.
Re-gooped with AS3 - and no dramas, she runs real sweet.
Good to know it's properly cooled.
I'd already lapped the incredibly rough Gigabyte heatsink down, so
everything was up and ready.

UN

 

[wired and confused]

Get a hair dryer this will make it hot enough and it will come off easier.
Just put driver over area and it will make putty of the adhesive."Usenetter"

 

[SST]

Cool!

In my case the shim was below the core so it made no difference having it or
not.

I glued down a nice 1U height Socket 370 copper cooler (60mm) to it and
mounted a strong 60mm Sunon fan. I did this almost 10 month's ago when I
first bough my 9700pro. Its been running at 371Mhz core / 344Mhz memory ever
since.

3DM01
19,292 score
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6661809

3DM03
5,756 score
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=944079


Its nice to have a card that is about as fast as it gets, but it was even
better having it 10 months ago.

 

[Minotaur]

Great news dude *8)

 

[SST]

ATI

'... your 3DM03 seems lower than expected...'
What did you expect? 3DM01 scores jump because the test is so easy for the
card to run but 3DM03 is much more difficult and very unrealistic in the
real world but its a good indicator in some respects.

We need a new benchmark.

 

[Usenetter]

Great 3DM scores - but your 3DM03 seems lower than expected.
O/c'ing my VPU from 325 to 356 and VMEM from 311 to 317 makes no difference
to either score, on my rig.

Ummm ..... turns out, that's because I wasn't o/c'ing it - Gigabyte's own
o/c utility isn't that intuitive.
Overclocking from default 325/311mem to 372/352mem raises 3DM01 from 16,126
to 16,585 and 3DM03 from 5,098 to 5,600 exactly.
Higher than that my R9700 can't handle without artefacts (at any voltage -
it runs best at default 1.5v).