e-GeFORCE4 Ti4400 - Cooling and Overclocking
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e-GeFORCE4 Ti 4400
Cooling and Overclocking: Now we get to the really fun part. Overclocking! For tweakers like us, buying a video card is truly a tough decision. We want to purchase a card that is somewhat easy on the wallet, but still have the overclockability that we so badly desire. Fortunately, the eVGA GF4 Ti 4400 is no slouch in this department.
The card comes stock with 3.6ns Samsung TinyBGA memory as seen below.
Notice the 36 at the end signifying that it is 3.6ns memory on the card.
For overclocking, there are quite a few different applications you can use. The two I suggest are CoolBits and Riva Tuner. CoolBits is a simple reg hack that installs an overclocking tab in your vid card properties to let you raise the core and memory clocks. Riva Tuner is a great video card tweak program that includes low level hardware overclocking and many other video card tweaks. Very nice for the serious tweaker. And an absolute must-have to get your 3DMark scores as high as possible.
CoolBit enabled Clock Freq Tab
Riva Tuner
Main Menu
Notice RivaTuner tops out at a full 830MHz (as if) while CoolBits tops out at 690MHz. Unfortunately CoolBits is useless for me, as this card OverClocks to a whopping 705MHz Memory! While Core clock hits 295MHz.
| Core Clock | Memory Clock |
| 275MHz Stock | 552MHz Stock |
| 295MHz OverClocked | 705MHz Overclocked |
| 7.27% Increase | 27.71% Increase |
Ok, lets face it. Being an overclocker, I was truly hoping for something special in this card. My expectations were exceeded. Especially with 3.6ns Memory. I was truly torn between purchasing a GF4 Ti 4600 and this card, due to the much faster 2.8ns memory that came stock with it. Lets do the math shall we?
The formula for calculating memory speed is 1000 / x rated memory. ie. 1000 / 3.6 = 277.MHz x 2 (because we are dealing with DoubleDataRate Memory DDR) = 554MHz, which is basically what this card comes stock at, 552MHz DDR. Now, the 4600 @2.8ns comes clocked at a cool 714MHz Memory.
So with the Ti 4400 we are overclocking to very near Ti 4600 speeds and keeping a few $$ in the bank to boot. Although I'm sure the eVGA e-GeForce4 Ti 4600 has some overclockability in her as well.
Now, I've had this card for a few months. Unfortunately, when I pulled it out to take a few shots of the memory, I saw this.
A blade on the fan had come off and was sitting inside of the heatsink unit. Ironically, the same thing happened back when I had an original GeForce 32MB card. I contacted eVGA and explained the situation and I am happy to report that they shipped me a new heatsink immediately. It arrived 2 days after my email to them via USPS Overnight Service. Even better, John from eVGA Marketing informed me they would be more than happy to send out new units to customers that report this type of problem (of which they have had very few of). That's the type of service that will keep eVGA customers coming back for more. Great job guys!
The actual heatsink is pretty well constructed. It's "weighty" and has fin ducts to direct airflow over the BGA memory chips. The original mounting was very stable and took some pressure in order to pull it off of the chipset after releasing the push pins. Lets take a look under the hood shall we?
My first suspicion was that the thermal adhesive type material was not of good quality. However, after installing the awesome Tt Crystal Orb, I was not able to obtain a higher Core clock. So that tells me the eVGA HSF (which interestingly is manufactured by Thermaltake as seen HERE) even with a broken fan blade was doing an adequate job. I will tell you though, that getting the residue of this thermal material off the chipset was NOT fun at all. I had to scrape with razor blade and swab with cotton and alcohol for quite awhile to get it clean enough to install the Crystal Orbage. Here's a close-up of the NV25 chipset and then installation of the CRORB.
Above is a nice shot of the chipset, the Tt Crystal Orb, the backside of the Tin coated Copper Orb with reflection, and a quick shot of the chipset with some nice Arctic Alumina provided by the excellent folks at Arctic Silver Inc. Flame me all you want, but there are 3 main reasons I really dig this stuff. 1, it's cheap. 2, it doesn't spread like peanut butter. Goes on nice and smooth. 3, it works great!
Again, I was not able to obtain any higher of an overclock by installing the CORB. But I felt since the stock fan was falling apart. It was in my best interest to protect my $200+ investment. And it looks sweet to boot.
Conclusion: Cutting to the chase. I have been really impressed by this card. It was the lowest priced GF4 Ti 4400 on the market when I purchased it. This, coupled with great performance and a super high memory overclock, I believe the e-GeForce4 Ti 4400 Slimbox is one of the best video card solutions currently on the market. Bang for the buck factor is key here. Especially considering I paid over $100 more for my GF3 almost a year ago. I am very pleased overall with the eVGA Card. Lets touch on some Highs and Lows of the card to round up this review.
Highs:
Lows:
That pretty much rounds it off. Again, I was very pleased overall with this card and would recommend it to anyone looking to build a stable and fast system, with possibilities of a nice overclock. It also won't break the bank.
Thanks for stopping by and checking out the review. Feel free to head into the forums to lay a few words of praise or flame upon us, or to the Front Page and check out the other GooSH!™ OCA has to offer..
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