Beeping alarm sounds from my Powercolor X850XT card

[sabbath1]

I have recently run into some issues with beeping alarm sounds with my ATI card. It seems that when I have run a game for a little while, maybe not more than 10 minutes, I get this annoying warning signals that immidiately go away when I close the game. I use Catalyst 6.2 with Catalyst Control Center, and the max temperature I've had so far has been around 80 degrees, (slightly below), according to Control Center anyways.

Now I'm wondering if this is some kind of known problem with Catalyst 6.1 and 6.2, since I think the problem began to appear for me with 6.1. Or could it be that I have a fan that's close to failing? It sounds ok, no strange sounds coming from the fan at all, and it spins ok.

Any help is appriciated.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

Get AtiTool (12/13 beta) and check on the graph (it has a temp monitoring graph) where the temp goes to when the beeping starts (you won't be able to check it in game - so leave atitool open in the desktop and start a game). I doubt that it can be the card, maybe the cpu.

Although, you say Catalyst Control Center reports 80C when you exit the game, so maybe your card is overheating because the card can drop 10c and more once you exit the game up until you can see the temp in CCC.

So ATiTool is the best bet at this stage. Do you have any other temp monitoring apps running? Maybe their ranges are too low (high temp alarm), and then they cause beeps?

 

[swifty_morgan]

Download and install atitool, after installing, got to settings, at the top use the drop down window, select fan control, override the fan control and go to fixed percentage............100 percent. Run it that way for a while to see if temps drop.

You can adjust fan speed by using overide fan speeds and going to 0c.....right hand box, and change speed to 25%, and then hit apply or reset...don't remember which. and you can change the rest of the %'s to a speed more of your liking. Before installing an arctic coolin device on my card, I had it 100% by the time it reached 70c, but it never made it that far.

If you use atitool, you'll probably see that the halfwits set the card to run at 5%..................Making the card stay hot all the time......try it !

Also on the tool there's a setting for temp monitoring, so it'll show up on the 1st screen when you open atitool.

 

[sabbath1]

I downloaded and installed Ati Tool, and so far it looks like 90C is where the graphics card complains about the temp. I'm 100% certain that it is the graphics card that is the issue, because the first time I got the complaint, the game jumped back out to Windows, it's Catalyst Control Center that tells me that the card is running above safe temperatures. The thing is that this didn't occur before and I'd really like to know why it's happening now all of a sudden. So is 90C the limit for what's allowed for ATI cards? I've read somewhere that Nvidia cards can run up 120C without taking damage. Or is this a new limit introduced by Catalyst 6.1?

So the max temp I got with all settings at default after 5 minutes in F.E.A.R. was 91C.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Didn't you use the tool to over-ride the stock fan speed and temporarily make it 100% as stated in my post above......see if it will cool the card down..................

 

[sabbath1]

Yes I tried your advice too I was just going to reply to it

Yeah first I tried overriding the stock fan speed, and the temperatures that are usually around 48-49C out on the desktop quickly began coming down to 42-43C. And while the max temp in heavy games seems to land around 90C, if I set the max fan speed to more than 40% at temps over 80C, my max temps stays at just that, around 81-82C. The GPU fan really seems OK, I cannot hear any strange noises from it, not on any fan speeds. At 100% the fan goes very loud, but it doesn't sound like it's about to break or anything. So what could be causing these alarm sounds? Is it a new "feature" of Catalyst 6.x or anything like that? Because I only very recently got these warning beeps and messages about the gpu running too warm.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Well, it was my assumption that the stock fan setting was stuck at 5% like mine was...... factory set. Not good for the card. If you ran the card hard for 20 minutes or so at 100% fan speed and checked the temperature, and it was much less, or the beeping didn't go off, I'd say you are headed in the right direction.

Try setting the maximum temp that the fan will spin at 100% at 60c and see what happens. Play a game for 20 minutes and see.

You can always get a better cooler for that card, if the one you have isn't performing up to snuff...................I did and it made a signifigant impact.

If what we are trying to do here doesn'y work, then there is something else wrong, and you may want to concider other tactics, or getting another card.

Anothet thing to concider is that you don't have enough airflow getting into your case, therefore eliminating the cards ability to pick up cooler outside air