Well, decided against SLI 8500gt

[hat]

Some of you here mayhave noticed that I brought up the idea of getting another 8500gt for SLI. Well I decided against it, here's why:

When installing my spare 120GB drive, I decided to take my PCI slot fan out (I got a really good one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835114024&Tpk=azenx). So out of random curiosity, I touched the heatsink on my 8500 and almost burned myself on it. 66C idle! So I did a stress test... about a minute of ATiTool's Scan for Artifacts, I managed to get to 76c before I shut it down. re-installed the fan, 45C idle/59C load. :o

I'm thinking of being brave and doing a BIOS vmod on the core..

[panchoman]

good luck with that.

[Ripper3]

I know you said you didn't have money for a whole new graphics card, but I guess since you're not going for another 8500GT, you've got a good enough reason to upgrade, heheh.
Supposedly, SLi'd 8500GTs still can't beat a single stock speed 8600GT, so I'm glad you didn't spend the money.
Anyhow, you should likely forget the vmod, if you're not upgrading graphics (hell, even if you are), get yourself a new cooler. I say the Thermalright V2 is kickass (keeps my 8600GTS under 50c under load, OCed, with a decent enough 80mm fan), and it's pretty universal in fitting, so you can swap it from card to card.

[hat]

I probably will just keep the 8500gt.

[Basard]

My friend just bought the eVga 8600gt for 100 bucks, its pretty nice. It's faster than my x800gto agp, and our systems are almost identical, mines slightly faster, but its agp. same cpus, mines OC though, same RAM too....

Anyways, give the 8500 to granny.

[hat]

I can't really give it to anyone. Everyone in my family with PCI-E compatable motherboards has something better (one has SLI 8800gts, he is a gamer, The other has a 7950gt, he isn't a gamer)

I will keep it I think. And 8600gt won't be much better than my overclocked 8500gt anyway.

[Ripper3]

The 8600 hs double the shaders, but an overclocked 8500GT could certainly get good speeds, tis a shame though that yours is DDR2.

You may somehow be able to convince the 7950GT owner to swap you, maybe for a little cash on top, heheh.

I've had a look at the passively-cooled 8500GT by XFX, uses a similar passive cooler to my Dad's passive 6600, whih heats up a hell of a lot, I've been thinking about buying a better single-slot cooler for it, it really does get hot, and any replacement cooler would likely be better than that passive crap.
But hell, if you're getting those sorts of clocks, that passive cooler is likely more than good enough.