Rave's probably very obvious tip for 4830 owners

[Rave]

Little short one for ya: I've had a Force3D 4830 for (thinks) a year or so now. Recently upgraded my CPU and had weird cooling problems, so I thought I'd score some AS Ceramique off ebay and paste the CPU properly.

That basically worked, but while I was inside the comp I realised that it'd benefit from seeing the business end of a hoover- the card's cooler was full of cat hair, so I undid the screws from the back so I could hoover it properly. Upon removing the cooler from my (I'm assuming) reference design 4830 I found a millimetre thick layer of paste on some parts, and sod all on a couple of spots. So I cleaned it all off, put a thin layer of Ceramique on, and bolted it all back together using a screwdriver with proper torque (it only took finger pressure to take the HS screws out). Bingo- whereas before it would crash out of 3DM05 at 700MHz, I've just run it through at 750MHz core/1080 mem and it was solid as a rock- no artifacts at all. I believe that's a solid overclock for a stock 4830. It scored 22000+ on 3DM05 at 750/1080, with an E8300 at 4GHz.

So if you ain't done yr screws up....

[Zak33]

good advice.

Many graphics cards could do with a "human with a clue" applying some new thermal paste... as opposed to a robot with no idea, as per factory in many cases.

The screw pressure is prolly good advice anyway.. stuff comes adrift in life...