Club Overclocker have thrown up their new GeForce FX5900 to FX5950 Ultra Flash Mod Guide!
When overclocking my stock 5900 I noticed something unusual. Unlike all the other cards I have successfully overclocked, this one would not lockup, or develop any artifacts as I upped the core clock speed. I could go up to 500mhz or more, but my benchmark scores would get worse. The card was clocking faster, but getting slower! From what I understand the new nVidia drivers use the thermal diode on the GPU to monitor the temps and will "underclock" the card in case of overheating. I thought that the GPU core had allot of speed left in it, but the drivers were killing the performance by throttling back. I was actually looking for a way to disable the temperature monitoring feature of the drivers, when I came across the "flash" method we are discussing here.
I will interject a bit of my own theory here. I believe that nVidia has their driver throttling back the GPU speed at a lower temp on the 5900 than they allow on the 5950u. If this is correct, the 5950u card is allowed to run at higher temps, and the drivers will not throttle back until much later. Alternatively, the driver may look at the core clock speed and adjust performance based on the amount of overclock. I suspect both scenarios might be used together. The 5950u cards do have what appear to be larger, more efficient heatsinks. The heat protection feature most certainly will allow a cooler card to run at a higher clock speed with greater performance. This is something to consider, but we are protected against overheating none the less.
GeForce FX5900 to FX5950 Ultra Flash Mod
When overclocking my stock 5900 I noticed something unusual. Unlike all the other cards I have successfully overclocked, this one would not lockup, or develop any artifacts as I upped the core clock speed. I could go up to 500mhz or more, but my benchmark scores would get worse. The card was clocking faster, but getting slower! From what I understand the new nVidia drivers use the thermal diode on the GPU to monitor the temps and will "underclock" the card in case of overheating. I thought that the GPU core had allot of speed left in it, but the drivers were killing the performance by throttling back. I was actually looking for a way to disable the temperature monitoring feature of the drivers, when I came across the "flash" method we are discussing here.
I will interject a bit of my own theory here. I believe that nVidia has their driver throttling back the GPU speed at a lower temp on the 5900 than they allow on the 5950u. If this is correct, the 5950u card is allowed to run at higher temps, and the drivers will not throttle back until much later. Alternatively, the driver may look at the core clock speed and adjust performance based on the amount of overclock. I suspect both scenarios might be used together. The 5950u cards do have what appear to be larger, more efficient heatsinks. The heat protection feature most certainly will allow a cooler card to run at a higher clock speed with greater performance. This is something to consider, but we are protected against overheating none the less.
GeForce FX5900 to FX5950 Ultra Flash Mod
