[jr2]

Anyway, this brings up memories about my voodoo 3 3000 pci. The hottest graphics card of the day, if not the hottest graphics card ever. It had a passive heatsink and was always burning to the touch, it was an interesting card because i could overclock past voodoo 3 3500 specs and it'd be burning hot, but just as reliable as factory set clock speed.

This gives me a wicked idea...
*jr2 reaches over to a shelf where he keeps a couple of Voodoo3 16M AGP and PCI cards, and turns a fiendish eye towards an old derelict comp in the corner*

[Descenterace]

GPUs do not overheat easily.

I bought an Arctic Silencer 5 for my X800XT a couple of years back, because I thought 80C was a little warm for my GPU and the fan noise of the stock cooler was annoying. A few months later, my graphics card started randomly crashing under heavy, prolonged load. Turned out that the Silencer's fan was stopping whenever the temperature passed 60C, possibly due to bad lubrication in the fan bearings combined with a ****ty motor. The GPU would hit 120C before it started acting weirdly, and I suspect it was actually the RAM overheating which caused that.
I put the stock cooler back on it. Currently, it resides in my secondary gaming machine and still works perfectly today.

My previous card was a GF7800GTX, factory-overclocked and watercooled. The GPU never exceeded 40C throughout its entire lifetime, but the RAM was cooled only with ramsinks. These should have been adequate, but I think one of the RAM chips was borderline; it seems to generate twice the heat of all the others.
That card is effectively dead; I can't even play Total Annihilation on it for more than a couple of hours before the RAM overheats and crashes the computer. And because I watercooled it, the warranty was void...

GPUs do not overheat. RAM chips do. If your graphics card is acting strangely, it's far more likely to be RAM to blame than the GPU.

[S-99]

Bad generalization.  It really depends on the processor and its age.  For example, Intel P3 and P4 processors generally stay under 50°C.  AMD Thunderbird processors operate around 65°C.  Both of those are at max-load.

As a general rule (which covers hardware from the last 10 years or so), motherboard should be under 40°C, CPU under 70, and the GPU under 50.  Generally its video RAM that's the problem heatwise, though, as someone already said.

What do you  mean by age? I get a feeling you're just plain old talking about previous processor generations. P3's usually stayed at something like 35C or 30C, p4's did the whole 40C thing. Like what you said. But what do you mean by age?
Processors don't wear out. If you had a system that was at 40C and then a year later is like 10C hotter and you made no changes maybe you should try dusting it out.

But anyway i think i got what you meant about possibly past processors, as opposed to a processor getting old and getting hotter as it gets older?

On another note, gpu's can most certainly overheat. It's just that they usually result in system instability rather than smoke. For my 9800 without the gpu heatsink it kept my system from getting past the windows xp splash screen. A better thing to say is that worrying about a gpu overheating you should never worry about, unless the damn fan on it breaks then you'll have an overheating gpu which will result in some major system instability such as some bad lockup experiences (of course easy to fix as putting a new good fan on the heatsink). Ram on video cards is more the criminal as the whole problem of bad fans on video cards isn't so prevailent as 3d artifacting.

[MP-Ryan]

Bad generalization.  It really depends on the processor and its age.  For example, Intel P3 and P4 processors generally stay under 50°C.  AMD Thunderbird processors operate around 65°C.  Both of those are at max-load.

As a general rule (which covers hardware from the last 10 years or so), motherboard should be under 40°C, CPU under 70, and the GPU under 50.  Generally its video RAM that's the problem heatwise, though, as someone already said.

What do you  mean by age? I get a feeling you're just plain old talking about previous processor generations. P3's usually stayed at something like 35C or 30C, p4's did the whole 40C thing. Like what you said. But what do you mean by age?
Processors don't wear out. If you had a system that was at 40C and then a year later is like 10C hotter and you made no changes maybe you should try dusting it out.

But anyway i think i got what you meant about possibly past processors, as opposed to a processor getting old and getting hotter as it gets older?

On another note, gpu's can most certainly overheat. It's just that they usually result in system instability rather than smoke. For my 9800 without the gpu heatsink it kept my system from getting past the windows xp splash screen. A better thing to say is that worrying about a gpu overheating you should never worry about, unless the damn fan on it breaks then you'll have an overheating gpu which will result in some major system instability such as some bad lockup experiences (of course easy to fix as putting a new good fan on the heatsink). Ram on video cards is more the criminal as the whole problem of bad fans on video cards isn't so prevailent as 3d artifacting.

Sorry, I should have said processor generation.

And don't get me wrong, I know GPU's can overheat, but usually it's the video RAM that gets too hot under normal circumstances - like you said, it usually takes a bad fan (or foolish overclocking levels) to overheat the GPU.

[CP5670]

GPUs do not overheat. RAM chips do. If your graphics card is acting strangely, it's far more likely to be RAM to blame than the GPU.

You have a relatively cool running card. I have actually had my X1900XTX overheat and crash (after passing 95C or so) even in old games like Descent 2 and Battlezone, if I accidentally closed down ATI Tool and the fan remained in the 2D mode's speed.

That being said, the kinds of artifacts seen in that screenshot almost certainly indicate a memory problem. A GPU crash generally results in snow, a completely garbled image or simply a black screen. Memory problems show up as banding or other corruption on specific textures.

[Tyrian]

Here are some shots of a couple of games that I took after the driver problems:

SW: KotOR II Main Menu:


SW: KotOR II In-Game:


I have no idea why they are upside down; when I run the game everything is right-side up...

WoW In-Game:


-----------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any shots of Oblivion; it's the worst of them all.  But as you can see, it's pretty bad.  Any other suggestions other than a total wipe and reinstall of Windows?

[Herra Tohtori]

I have no idea why they are upside down; when I run the game everything is right-side up...

They are TGA screenshots, right?

TGA's can have their starting point of data in lower right corner or upper left corner. Some image viewing/editing programs can't tell the difference and presume that all TGA's have their starting point at one end. What are you using to open the screenshots?

[S-99]

Reminds me of my inverted tga shot. It was funny GTCV was mirrored. Anyway, before i popped out my 9800 my fs2 skybox was doing the same thing, and so did a couple of the dragons i passed when i was flying. Try downclocking the ram by a ridiculous ammount to see what it takes to make the clipping and artifacting stop just for ****s and giggles. Idk, at this point in the 9800's life, you either want to get rid of it, or seriously buy some ramsinks(apparently for me i'd rather have a new card as opposed to just getting some ramsinks...did i mention that the 9800 memory chips get very hot).

[Tyrian]

Alright, I've had some free time while sick to work on this problem.

I've downclocked my GPU a ridiculous amount, in 50 MHz increments.  I went as far down as ATI Tool would let me.  Still no change.  To determine if there was a change I used Oblivion.

As to when it starts, it's there from the start of play.  It only gets worse as I play more.

As to case ventilation, it's got one intake port on the front, one in the back, one in the PSU, and one side vent that leads to the top of the CPU heat sink.  I clean dust from my case fairly regularly.  My CPU temp peaked at 57 degrees C, and averaged 56 degrees C.  My GPU stayed constant at 68 degrees C.  For the temperature tests, I used FSO with the following flags:

Code: [Select]

C:\Games\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_3_6_9.exe -mod derelict,mediavps -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -nomotiondebris -missile_lighting -cache_bitmaps -rearm_timer -ship_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -fps
I am using the most up-to-date mediavps. 

Right now, I am working on convincing my parents to allow me to format the hard drive.  If I can do that, then I can eliminate all software possibilities.  I'm hoping that will fix the problem.

[S-99]

I can tell you one thing it's definitely not software doing that. It's obvious it's the ram of the video card overheating and holy ****ing **** get that case cooled down 56C is a little high, i've never had a case exceed 42C system temperature, get that temp down and you might fix your radeon problem as well.

I don't even know what overclocking software you're using for your radeon for testing, clearly it doesn't do the crazy job you're looking for. 50mhz? that overclocker already qualifies as sucky if that's as much it lets you downclock, get a better one that lets you downclock by like 200mhz, you're testing out the ram to see at what speed it doesn't artifact at to see what you can do to reduce temperature, and if it's reasonable enough to go buy ramsinks if that will fix the problem entirely. But where is your families computer? on the floor? It should never be down there because then it'll just be a little vacuum cleaner sucking up dust through the psu. Get the ****ing computer to a cleaner location or something, but yeah, clean that thing out, even go as far as re applying heatsink grease on the processor, everything clean that ****er out. Something that works good as long as your gentle is a huge honking vacuum cleaner, works great

[Tyrian]

I can tell you one thing it's definitely not software doing that. It's obvious it's the ram of the video card overheating and holy ****ing **** get that case cooled down 56C is a little high, i've never had a case exceed 42C system temperature, get that temp down and you might fix your radeon problem as well.

First, 56C is the CPU temp, not the case temp, as I said in my previous post.  Case temp is much lower, about 48C-50C, usually less.  I'm using SpeedFan for my temp readings.

I don't even know what overclocking software you're using for your radeon for testing, clearly it doesn't do the crazy job you're looking for. 50mhz? that overclocker already qualifies as sucky if that's as much it lets you downclock, get a better one that lets you downclock by like 200mhz, you're testing out the ram to see at what speed it doesn't artifact at to see what you can do to reduce temperature...

1.)  I said I was using ATI Tool in my prior post.
2.)  50 MHz increments.  I declocked all the way down to 150 MHz, from 412 MHz.

But where is your families computer? on the floor? It should never be down there because then it'll just be a little vacuum cleaner sucking up dust through the psu. Get the ****ing computer to a cleaner location or something, but yeah, clean that thing out, even go as far as re applying heatsink grease on the processor, everything clean that ****er out. Something that works good as long as your gentle is a huge honking vacuum cleaner, works great

It's inside a cabinet in my desk.  Not the best place for it, ventilation-wise, but out house is small and we have a space problem.  I've had to cabinet door removed for months to improve airflow as much as I can.  I also already said I clean the case regularly.  Reapplying thermal compuond isn't an option, as my parents don't like it when I add/remove things from the computer. 

[S-99]

Well then, ****, i guess to say perhaps you're card not having any difference visually from downclocking the ram a whole bunch, maybe your card is as ****ed as mine was. Idk, the problem with the 9800 isn't likely to be able to be fixed, if not fixed any time soon. Go on the market and look for another one just in case. For now apparently your card is still good for desktop usage, and can even still do 3d(but extremely degrading 3d).

[Descenterace]

This computer is used by the rest of the family, right? I guess they don't want it fiddled with because it still works fine for what they use it for, and like my parents (and anyone else who doesn't know or care what's in the box) they're scared of having it damaged more if it's opened up. Which is stupid, since at this stage that graphics card is ****ed, and anything you do isn't going to break it any more except possibly leaving it to die completely.

Something similar happened to me about ten years ago. The CPU heatsink in our computer had come loose and it was causing random crashes. My Dad would not even let me open the case to see what was wrong (I knew what was wrong, dammit!).
So I tinkered with some files to cause it to crash even more catastrophically. Within six hours we had the case off and the heatsink reattached, and the next day it was working fine again, after reinstalling some parts of the OS I claimed had been damaged by running it on overheating hardware.

[jr2]

Heh... ppl fear the unknown.  My dad is like that with computers, too.

[S-99]

I guess i have lucky parents. Everyone in my house will open up their machines to fix them. My family is very computer literate. I guess to say my mom isn't so, but at least she gets to use a laptop, and she treats it very properly actually so no one has to open it up. I wish she knew how her printer worked though, i'm always helping her make that work on her laptop. Or i'll teach her how to burn cd's with something easy like nero express, and then she'll never burn cd's because she doesn't need to until one time that she does and then she wont remember how. She uses the same laptop every ****ing day, i know she can learn new tricks with it.

What's worse is that my dad likes to go overkill with the computer hardware at city hall. My dad's office computer has like a geforce 4 you see for an office computer that's the good part since he doesn't play games on his office computer. Now his secretary on the other hand he got her an ati x600 (didn't even have a powerful enough power supply in that machine to run that card until i came along) he got the other chick in the office his old 9800 pro for me to put in her computer because her old good video card blew out because she had the computer on the floor and the fan got clogged. I fixed that problem as well, but what the hell does she need a 9800 inside of her office computer? Those good video cards i guess must be worth their money for microsoft office, outlook express, internet explorer, and mozilla firefox. I don't know what the hell is wrong with my dad treating the office rigs as gaming machines, unless he secretly hosts a lan. People buying **** for their computer that they don't need...my other pet peeve. I mean just don't spend that extra money if you don't have to.

[jr2]

Relax... they make it that much easier for us to get that stuff.  (Supply & Demand - it'd prolly be more expensive to buy gaming rigs if it weren't for ppl like your dad.)