RAM sinks

[General Septem]

How important are video RAM sinks on older cards? I know virtually all 6800 XTs had no cooling for their RAM, including the one in my dad's Dell. How hot does video RAM get?

 

I ask because one of my RAM sinks keeps falling off, and well the only thing even holding it on is Ceramique. Since the card is vertical it keeps sliding down onto the GPU cooler. I'm wondering just how paramount it is that I find some way to hold it up, or if it won't hurt anything to leave it off for the time being.

[Angry_Games]

really depends on the memory itself, and how far you are going to crank up the clock

 

a 6800XT doesn't seem like it is one of the top cards, so I doubt that the memory is really all that fast, nor will overclock as well as say the top 6800GT or Ultra.

 

If you aren't clocking the RAM, there's really no need to drop sinks on them. If you are, and have a good card that clocks well (ie say 1.1ns Samsung BGA on an X1900XTX that you can adjust memory voltage with ATI Tool to crank from 650 to 856 like I can on my X1900XT), then you probably want something that can help remove that excessive heat quickly (I went with a full Tyee DD waterblock, but that isn't always a reasonable solution)

[General Septem]

Thanks. I guess I'll just keep an eye on it then. I have a 6600GT, by the way. If I just leave it, the sink is on the chip about halfway because it's resting on the cooler. I'll just keep an eye on it, it's not going to be around much longer anyway (waiting for R600 lol). Thanks for the help.

[Technohydra]

Typically, the high end cards are rated as producing about 2 watts of heat off of a ram chip at load. 1 watt to 1.5 can be non-cooled and loose no performance, so you should be ok without a sink on your chips. Alternately, go to a hardware shop and look for 3M thermal rated adhesive tape. It's the same stuff Swiftech uses on their awesome ramsinks.