NHOC We often take a closer look at graphics cards and with MSI N460GTX Cyclone we found something really good. A mid-range card worthy of more special attention. There is a lot potential if you just pay it enough attention, and treated right it can do great things, even bring home GPU world records.
Getting a N460GTX Cyclone in the test lab worked out well since HWBot and MSI held a competition for GTS 450 and GTX 460 GPUs, sadly N460GTX Hawk looks hotter than my Cyclone. Oh well, armed with soldering paste, a Weller and some data sheets I thought that nothing was impossible, so I compiled some mods and wrote a small guide for those of you have a cards lying around and wants the most of it.
First of all, the standard VGPU, the voltage for the GPU is pretty weak. Afterburner lets you set up to 1080mV, which gets you nowhere really. My first step was to solder a real mod with trimpot for higher VGPU. The problem now is that OVP is ~1.2V, which caused quite a headache. Then came Henry, ME4ME to the rescue and taunted me for my Frankenstein approach to modding, and through luck we managed to get VID to 1.08V by removing all resistors marked on the pictures below. Even an OCP mod (hardly necessary) was done while we were at it. With the VID mod the OVP goes up to 1.3V, which is a lot more interesting for those interested in more extreme cooling. The VID mod should be used with the VGPU mod.
To get the most out of the card you need a memory mod, even if the card can do 1190MHz in Vantage and Kombustor at 1.55V. The data sheet for the voltage controller for the memory phase says that the OVP is 1.77V (or thereabout), but I tested up to 1.9V without problem. Though I did not see any improvement over 1.82V, where 1240MHz passed Vantage.
After a lot of sothering and many curses I managed to improve the card quite a lot, even I have to admit I never tested the card with 1.08/1.55V in Vantage under LN2, it would have been a waste of time. On the other hand 1.2V was “only” enough for 1140MHz GPU, 1.28V brought the frequency up to 1200MHz, a significant increase. The sum of it all can be seen below, which was the best score with GTX 460 when posted.
P26222 in 3DMark Vantage with MSI N460GTX Cyclone in 1200/1240
The card in the test bench – some unorthodox mounting of the GPU pot
It may be worth pointing out that the card is not in the state of being covered by the warranty if it breaks. Below are some shots showing what I mean.
With that said I thank you for your time and hope I made it worthwhile. If anyone wonders about the extra pot that is sitting on the (lower) the picture was taken the night before during the playtime with the VID tables, before all resistors was removed instead.
