Gap between GPU and heatsink on 9700Pro cards

[Admiral]

According to Andrew Vorobyev, our video editor, new ATI Radeon 9700 Pro cards have an interesting feature: those who tried to overclock them might have noticed a gap between GPU and heatsink (thanks to bvscool, our forum member, for help). To illustrate Andrew made this photo (click to enlarge):



The match lies on the GPU with heatsink removed. Notice the about 1mm gap between chip walls and the crystal! ATI's thermogasket doesn’t add to the overclocking potential. Naturally, if you remove it, you will have a lot of thermal grease...

Those who lowered walls for better chip-cooler contact easily raised R9700 Pro clock up to 400 MHz.

Is it the secret of ATI? Perhaps, the company plans to release an "ultra" Radeon 9700 Pro to compete with NV30? With lower frame, special cooler and chip place, and selected GPUs, operating at 400 or even 425 MHz, the release of such cards get more and more real. Furthermore, as Radeon 9700 Pro production has already been honed, nothing can prevent from honing the process technology as well for better yield.

Warp2Search (linking from digit-life.com)

[Maggi]

using a wooden match as a prove doesn't look very professional to me

but nevertheless it's an interesting find ...

[PeTe]

This has been a PROBLEM with some cards. It has been known from the day they started releasing these cards.. so i HIGHLY doubt that Andrew Vorobyev actually was first to find this shit out, when it was common knowledge @ rage3d.com months ago.

The brave first who wanted to use watercooling / some other heatsink fan found that out..

And everyone knows that if ATI wanted they could collect the best chips and release a "ULTRA" card if they wanted.. slap on DDR-II and basically you have a R350.

But yeah, they didnt MEAN to have that gap between the core and heatsink.. it was a FAULT... god only knows if they sold cards like that out and if thats the reason some people are having problems with R9700.

Pe-Te

Ps. And im guessing thats going to happen ~ the same time when NVidia launches NV30. So NV30 have to be VERY FAST to keep up.

[Ali]

From loolking at my one, what I think has happened, is the shim was made the correct hight in relation to the core, but they forgot to take into account the height of the glue they used to stick the shim onto the package.

That 1mm is little over the top. with mine, I could only just see light comming through when I pointed a lazer pointer at the join on the far side of a metal ruler.

Replaced the old goo with AS3 and put it all back togeather. Core can go to 380Mhz easily, and havent tried higher, as that made minimal difference.

[Indiana]

My Radeon9700Pro BBA goes up to 385MHz Core without any modifications to the card. The only thing I need to do is leave the case open.

Everyone I've read that actually has removed the GPU spacer reported better oc'ing results afterwards.
I'm quite sure that by just making a better fit of the cooling and using a better heatsink/fan, maybe upping the GPU voltage a nod, it would be an easy task for ATI to release a Radeon9700"Ultra" with 400MHz GPU clock and 500MHz 256 bit wide DDR-II.

The question is: why should they? The Radeon9700 stomps all the way over NVidias current fastest offering. Besides it would not really make much of a difference, as even the R9700 is way too fast for any of todays CPUs when not using highest resolution with FSAA and anisotropic filtering.

That way they're also able to immediately react after the NV30 is released..

[Admiral]

As long as you use some thermal grease to make contact it shouldn't be any problem.
That's one thing Sapphire forgot when they sent their Radeon 9700 Pro to nvNews for review.
bad move