How about trying another GPU cooler?

I always like to try on the best cooling gear, and since the stock GPU cooler had already been removed I thought this might be a good time to test out a very funky video card cooler we'd gotten some time back. Off came the stock Visiontek heatsink and on went the Zalman ZM17CU. I don't know about you, but the GeForce looks really cool in with this copper chipset cooler attached.

Unfortunately for me, the ZM17CU attaches to the chipset with an adhesive (lock tite) that takes a while to fully set. I say unfortunately because I couldn't wait for the adhesive to fully set and ended up moving the card before things were completely solid - so the somewhat heavy Zalman cooler slid right off. Rather then reattach the Zalman cooler I just dropped the stock Visiontek right back in place... There will be a full review of the ZM17CU shortly when we have a bit more time to let the heatsink set properly on the Geforce 3 core.

Components:

Since I had the heatsink off the Geforce 3 GPU yet again, I scraped off the yellow thermal adhesive Visiontek use with their heatsinks and checked out the stepping number. Looking under the hood I was relieved to see exactly what I wanted - an A5 stepping notation.

nVidia NV20 BIOS

Hehe, being myself, I was dying to see how high I could get this card, especially with the success I had with the MSI Starforce 822 (also an A5 stepping)! I guess I was a little disappointed in the end when the Visiontek would only reach 235/550 (which is still respectable), but I also know most cards don't overclock as well as those from MSI generally do. You'll see though that when overclocked, the VisionTek GeForce 3 is a mighty force to be reckoned with!

For those of you already very familiar with Geforce 3 features and the technology I suggest you jump ahead right to the benchmarks here.. For every one else, the next couple pages explain the main features of the Geforce 3 GPU and its' features.