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NV42 vs. NV41

post #1 of 20
7/11/05 at 5:13am
Thread Starter 
I just felt like sharing my thoughts on the subject since I got lucky (?) and managed to exchange my NV42 for an NV41. That's a long story so I'll drop that and get right to the point.

1. My laptop idled between 28-30 degrees right after bootup. The first time I booted after installing the NV41 it idled at 35 degrees and didn't drop below that for as long as I was logged on (10 minutes or so). The second time around it idled between 33-35 degrees. So my laptop seems to run a few degrees hotter with the NV41 than the NV42.

Edit: the temperatures here are the CPU temps.

2. Like we've all come to know in other threads, the NV41 is definetly able to run faster. While OC'ing, my NV42 would max out at around 370/750. Well, the NV41 topped that right away and is now running stable without artifacts at 410/795. And I've still got some tweaking to do before I'm happy . As for 3DMark results, they increased from 4413 to 4789 using the same drivers (Laptopvideo2go's 80.40). That's a nice little jump, but I'm still a couple of hundred marks from joining the 5k club

3. My NV41 is noisy. I don't know if anyone else with NV41's has noticed this or if it's just my particular card, but whenever it does something taxing (like 3DMark) it emits some sort of screeching noise. It's not awfully loud but I noticed it right away. I haven't had the time to open my baby up yet, so for all I know the Dell (or Infocare actually) technician didn't fasten it good enough or something. Maybe it's got a screw loose? Anyway, if anyone's experienced the same thing let me know. I'll open her up this weekend and have look. Oh, and it's definetly related to the new card or the installment of it as I never heard the noise before this all happened.

If anyone's got any good tips on how to squeeze out those last 200+ marks, let me know

PS: Haven't updated sig yet. Will do so after some more testing tonight.

Edit: I read in a different thread that someone got higher 3DMark05 scores with lower memory frequency. Can anyone else verify this?
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post #2 of 20
7/11/05 at 6:03am
Have you tried setting a negative lod in riva tuner? I know a lot of people interested in benchmark scores use this tweak to gain higher framerates during 3dmark?I havent tried this myself yet but I am hoping it will give me a boost to my own score of 4793. Just to throw a spanner in the works this score was achieved on an nv42 board running at 401/803. Just had a look on ORB and I have the 5th highest published score when you look at single score per user.WOOHOO!!!!!
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post #3 of 20
7/11/05 at 6:12am
Thread Starter 
That was a pretty big spanner, mate

Are you sure it's an NV42? Ok, dumb question. The reason I'm asking is that while my old GFX card was ID'd as NV42 by software it was listed as NV41 by Dell (under the My Systems & Peripherals - Service Tag list of components).

But if you've got the NV42 to run that high with no artifacts: KUDOS!

(or maybe there are even more versions out there and the whole theory needs to be revised)
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post #4 of 20
7/11/05 at 6:54am
Course I'm sure!! its listed as an nv42 in rivatuner powerstrip and the Nvidia properties.I would've loved to gotten my hands on an nv41 and working for dell manufacturing you would think that I could've swung it that way but as the 41 and 42 have the same part number it really is the luck of the draw as to which rev you get in your system.But I don't think even with my card oc'd this high that I am going to break 5k without more ram or a pinmod.Good luck with your own attempt though
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post #5 of 20
7/11/05 at 7:04am
Thread Starter 
Aah, I didn't notice that you're a Dell man

Well, I knew it was a dumb question in the first place. It's just a bit odd that there are such big differences is all..
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post #6 of 20
7/11/05 at 10:18am
pin mod and ram have NOTHING to do with your score, its all video card....
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post #7 of 20
7/11/05 at 10:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sPHINN
I just felt like sharing my thoughts on the subject since I got lucky and managed to exchange my NV42 for an NV41. That's a long story so I'll drop that and get right to the point.

1. My old NV42 idled between 28-30 degrees right after bootup. The first time I booted after installing the NV41 it idled at 35 degrees and didn't drop below that for as long as I was logged on (10 minutes or so). The second time around it idled between 33-35 degrees. So it seems it runs a few degrees hotter than the NV42.

2. Like we've all come to know in other threads, the NV41 is definetly able to run faster. While OC'ing, my NV42 would max out at around 370/750. Well, the NV41 topped that right away and is now running stable without artifacts at 410/795. And I've still got some tweaking to do before I'm happy . As for 3DMark results, they increased from 4413 to 4789 using the same drivers (Laptopvideo2go's 80.40). That's a nice little jump, but I'm still a couple of hundred marks from joining the 5k club

3. My NV41 is noisy. I don't know if anyone else with NV41's has noticed this or if it's just my particular card, but whenever it does something taxing (like 3DMark) it emits some sort of screeching noise. It's not awfully loud but I noticed it right away. I haven't had the time to open my baby up yet, so for all I know the Dell (or Infocare actually) technician didn't fasten it good enough or something. Maybe it's got a screw loose? Anyway, if anyone's experienced the same thing let me know. I'll open her up this weekend and have look. Oh, and it's definetly related to the new card or the installment of it as I never heard the noise before this all happened.

If anyone's got any good tips on how to squeeze out those last 200+ marks, let me know

PS: Haven't updated sig yet. Will do so after some more testing tonight.

Edit: I read in a different thread that someone got higher 3DMark05 scores with lower memory frequency. Can anyone else verify this?

Ok that's all well and good. What I want to know is... do you actually get significantly better in-game performance, or is this all for the sake of having a higher number in the sig?
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post #8 of 20
7/11/05 at 10:46am
Thread Starter 
Both.

+ I like pushing things (blame Boulder Dash).

Edit: read too fast, didn't see all your words. Significant might be pushing it a bit (aw, not again!).
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post #9 of 20
7/11/05 at 12:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockinfella2k
pin mod and ram have NOTHING to do with your score, its all video card....

they might not make a hufe difference but they will make adifference, i think i rember reaver saying somewhere that he gained about a 100 point when he pin moded to 2.26 not sure what he had before... am guessing a 1.6...
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post #10 of 20
7/11/05 at 2:23pm
So your NV41 idles around 35 degrees Celcius. Mine idles around 50-55 with all default settings. Do you have any idea what causes this big difference?
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post #11 of 20
7/11/05 at 2:55pm
I apparently have an NV41, and mine peaks at around 370 / 750, currently clocked at that and idling at about 50c. If it's a 41, should it be running better? Are we sure there's actually a significant difference between these cores, because just from this thread it seems like it's just the luck of the draw, regardless of whether it's a 41 or 42
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post #12 of 20
7/11/05 at 11:15pm
Yeah I am starting to think its down yo luck aswell, As I said earlier I have an n42 board that idles at 40c and under load running artifact detect in ati tool it has never gone above 67c,I dont use any laptop cooler just rely on the fans although living in Ireland the ambient temp rarely goes above 22c so that might have an effect too
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post #13 of 20
7/12/05 at 4:06am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sxc
So your NV41 idles around 35 degrees Celcius. Mine idles around 50-55 with all default settings. Do you have any idea what causes this big difference?
The reading was way off for some reason (I will edit my first post now) and fanGUI won't read my GPU temp for some reason..
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post #14 of 20
7/13/05 at 5:29am

screeching noise

Quote:
3. My NV41 is noisy. I don't know if anyone else with NV41's has noticed this or if it's just my particular card, but whenever it does something taxing (like 3DMark) it emits some sort of screeching noise. It's not awfully loud but I noticed it right away. I haven't had the time to open my baby up yet, so for all I know the Dell (or Infocare actually) technician didn't fasten it good enough or something. Maybe it's got a screw loose? Anyway, if anyone's experienced the same thing let me know. I'll open her up this weekend and have look. Oh, and it's definetly related to the new card or the installment of it as I never heard the noise before this all happened.

It's most likely either your fan(s) or your power capacitors. More likely your caps, based on what you said, Sphinn.
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post #15 of 20
7/16/05 at 11:57am
Most silicon chip processes for CPU/GPUs are based on wafers, the higher yield (usually best performing chips) tend to be the ones processed nearer the center of the wafer, and even though one wafer would contain all say Geforce Go 6800 NV42 or NV41 based chips as labled. They are all somewhat different on what their performance caps could be based on where on the wafer they came. This is pretty much the same as CPUs too as some of the same CPUs could overclock better than other even though they are the same part and sometimes even stock. I have read alot of reviews and forums on peeps with NV41 and NV42 parts getting way different core clock results in the same family (42 or 42 that is). I got pretty good results with my card (NV42) 401/355. Not horrible, but I have seen others with lower core etc.

-Don
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post #16 of 20
7/16/05 at 12:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by eclypse3demons
Most silicon chip processes for CPU/GPUs are based on wafers, the higher yield (usually best performing chips) tend to be the ones processed nearer the center of the wafer, and even though one wafer would contain all say Geforce Go 6800 NV42 or NV41 based chips as labled. They are all somewhat different on what their performance caps could be based on where on the wafer they came. This is pretty much the same as CPUs too as some of the same CPUs could overclock better than other even though they are the same part and sometimes even stock. I have read alot of reviews and forums on peeps with NV41 and NV42 parts getting way different core clock results in the same family (42 or 42 that is). I got pretty good results with my card (NV42) 401/355. Not horrible, but I have seen others with lower core etc.

-Don
True, but I would say the NV41 have a better chance of a higher OC since the good NV42 are reserved for the 6800 Ultra.
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post #17 of 20
7/18/05 at 1:08am
I sent an email to a colleague of mine; a 30+year ASIC/mixed-signal chip designer friend of mine. This conversion touched on the NV41-to-NV42 debate. See below.

Quote:
<thorndt>,
These are my thoughts without any warranties expressed or implied.
As you know shrinks are usually faster and consume less current; however, that is not always the case.
Sometimes the oxide thickness and channel lengths and diffusion depths are held constant.
So in this case there would be no increase in K' and wide transistors would suffer. By wide, I mean with widths >>
lengths. This is because if the lengths are maintained the W/L aspect ratio would be reduced. This is what usually
results in lower performance of the shrunk device. However, because of proportionally reduced internal cap on gates and
full reduction on interconnect the slowdown is usually negligible even sped up. The slowdown effect is most often
noticed on the output buffers which still have to drive the same fixed cap external to the device. This is why the same
device manufactured at 0.35 TSMC unshrunk have more umph than the device manufactured at 0.3.
Steve




<thorndt>
<thorndt@deleted> To: Steve <deleted@deleted> cc:
Subject: Question: optical shrink and transistor speeds
07/16/2005 05:07 PM






Steve,

I've been following an interesting forum discussion regarding an Nvidia
graphics chip.
Apparently there's two different foundries for the same core. The core's
labled NV41 (IBM 0.13 um process) and NV42 (TSMC 0.11 um optical shrink,
I believe).

The interesting thing is that most end-users are finding that they can
overclock their NV41's more often/better than the small-transistor-size
NV42's...

What are you thoughts on optical shrinks--speedup or slowdown effects?

Just curious.

-<thorndt>
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post #18 of 20
7/18/05 at 1:23am
The change in process was purely monetary. NVIDIA can fit more cores per die with the 0.11u process, the only reason the NV41 usually clock higher is because the good NV42s are reserved for the Ultra.
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post #19 of 20
7/18/05 at 3:59am
Thread Starter 
Anyway, I opened her up yesterday to pinmod my CPU, apply some AS5 etc and while doing that I thightened pretty much every screw I could find, starting with the screws holding the GPU heatsink as I noticed that the tip of it was quite wobbly.. I also taped the wires coming from both fans as they were quite loose. And guess what? The noise is gone. And to top it off, the pinmode worked too!

Edit: well, the pinmod worked. After more extensive testing it turns out that the buzz is still there, though for some weird reason, only in 3Dmark (all versions). Go figure.
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post #20 of 20
7/20/05 at 4:13pm
It has been said in many reviews and previews of desktop boards such as the 110nm Geforce 6600 and 110nm Radeon X700 that the 110nm process is a cost-reduction process aimed purely to hit better price points. It allows many more chips per wafer and somewhat cooler chips which makes everything cheaper across the board. It is a far lower risk process too than 90nm, with guarantees for more working dies per wafer. High performance parts are all manufactured at 130nm low-k right now. Excepting the Geforce 7800GTX where size at 130nm was unacceptable, and 90nm isn't ready for massive chips quite yet.

ATI's R520 chip will be produced on 90nm low-k which is known to be the high performance step after 130nm low-k.
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