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ATi overheating?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hi all,
In February of this year I installed a Sapphire 9600 Pro 256MB AGP card in my PC. As summer approached, my PC started locking up ever more frequently in 3D applications: MS Flight Simulator 2004 and Google Earth. Temp in my den is 28C/84F. The Sapphire card has a heatsink, no fan.

No prob, I thought, I went out and bought a Sapphire X1600 Pro 512MB AGP, active cooled. I was surprised when it, too, started locking up my PC. I was using the latest ATi drivers with both the 9600 Pro and X1600 Pro. If I leave the side cover off and aim a table fan full-blast on the motherboard, I more-or-less get stable operation, but it still can lock up unexpectedly, specially when flying into clouds (clouds must be difficult to render, they lower the frame rate tremendously).

I went into Sapphire's customer support forum and saw a lot of users there complaining about overheating and lockups, and about the forum moderator deleting the overheating threads.

I have since returned the X1600 Pro to the store I bought it from, but on a whim I decided to do some further testing. Using the driver from the CD that came with the 9600 Pro, I am able to get a few minutes of flight before it locks up. Using the latest ATi drivers, I'm lucky if I get 30 seconds of flight.

I Googled "ATi overheating" and found a lot of entries regarding different levels of ATi drivers causing overheating cards.

Now I am at a loss as to what to do: I'd like to stick with ATi because I like to turn up all the quality stuff (AA, AF, mipmap) and ATi cards do look better than nVidia when all the eye-candy is turned on. Yet, I am now fearful that ATi cards are facing overheating problems. I have a friend who installed a 9550-based card (brand unknown to me) and he is having the same problems, he cannot run any 3D software without his PC locking up (luckily he is not a gamer, but he is POd that his marine aquarium screensaver locks up his PC).

Is anybody else experiencing ATi graphics card overheating? Anybody have any comments or suggestions? :?:

I'm looking at popping for an ATi (genuine) X800XT AIW 256MB. I gotta believe ATi itself is not selling graphics cards that will overheat with its own drivers. :!:

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Graphics card Master

I can say ATI cards DO run hot....but they are made for it....or at least should be...i have a 9800pro....it was fine....i zalman'd it to shut it up tho. Grabbed a X850pro flashed to XT... ohh boy 92c....hot.... never did crash....i zalman'd it too(too loud).....got a X1900XT sitting in a box...i hear 90c is normal for that too.... i will see how the stock cooler is when i get my ram.....

Just be sure to make sure it is not the driver recovery thing happening(when it freezes give it 1-2 minutes just to be sure...)....i've seen that.....make sure you run the cat uninstaller to get rid of all drivers....and have the .netfix installed....if u have cat control center....

You can also use ATI tool to see the temps on some cards....
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Graphics card Expert

Quote:
I can say ATI cards DO run hot....but they are made for it....or at least should be...i have a 9800pro....it was fine....i zalman'd it to shut it up tho. Grabbed a X850pro flashed to XT... ohh boy 92c....hot.... never did crash....i zalman'd it too(too loud).....got a X1900XT sitting in a box...i hear 90c is normal for that too.... i will see how the stock cooler is when i get my ram.....

Just be sure to make sure it is not the driver recovery thing happening(when it freezes give it 1-2 minutes just to be sure...)....i've seen that.....make sure you run the cat uninstaller to get rid of all drivers....and have the .netfix installed....if u have cat control center....

You can also use ATI tool to see the temps on some cards....

My 9800 pro nearly burned up with the puny stock cooler, so a zalman'd too :) 

I would check all of your fans.
Make sure ps fan and cpu hsf still works, clean em to be sure.
Be sure there are no obstructions to your air flow and you should have a fan in front drawing air in and a fan in back drawing the heat out at a mininum.
There are nice quiet fans you can buy if you need em.
Anytime someone says taking the cover off and blowing a fan in helps thats a solid indicator that your case's airflow is lacking.

Thelvyn, I understand your concern, but I am a clean freak and I blow out my case and fans regularly with my shop compressor. All fans are clean and not more than 3-6 months old and they work perfectly. I have 2 rear 8cm fans and one 12cm front fan. Leaving the side cover off (no external fan) improves case and CPU temps somewhat, but does nothing for the hangs. Since the 9600 Pro is cooled by convection (no fan blows directly on it), leaving the side cover off is about as good as case ventilation is going to get for it without external assistance. The external table fan I use is 14 INCHES, not centimeters, and I set it on high. This is the kind of fan people sit in front of when it's hot outside. It's a frikkin' hurricane inside the case when it's on!

Nukemaster, the latest ATi drivers make things worse, not better. Sapphire does not have newer firmware for either card, and their upgrade path for WinXP drivers is to download the latest ones from ATi, which make the overheating worse.

I have used ATiTool to underclock the 9600 Pro, with little improvement. Neither the 9600 Pro nor the X1600 Pro have temp sensors. MBM5 says my Athlon XT 3200 is currently running 44C, the motherboard 31C and the case 27C. My wall thermometer says 28C. I really don't think conditions inside the case are going to get much better.

I'd watercool the 9600 Pro sumbitch, but I hate spending as much for the cooling as for the graphics card. I'm planning on building me a new PC around Xmastime and I want to leave this one in reliable operating condition as a second machine. The 9600 Pro is slow, but acceptable, for my needs; it cost me under 100 Euros. The X1600 Pro is nice while it works; it goes for 150 Euros but I've returned it. The X800XT AIW I'm now looking at goes for 190 Euros, but that's getting to be expensive for a machine I'll surely use very little once I build a new one. :?

I've been an ATi user since the 7000 series and never had any problems with them. But now it's not only me but also my friends I've recommended ATi cards to. Well, at least the ones who have upgraded their drivers. :?

I’m not sure your dealing with a heat issue at all.
You may want to approach this a little differently.
Run prime95 to check for hardware errors.
Run memtest to check your ram for errors.
When you installed the latest drivers did you uninstall the old first?
Even uninstalling drivers leaves registry entries behind so you may want to use a good registry cleaner and reinstall your drivers clean.
Other problems such as addware or bloat ware can slow you down or lock up a heavy app.
If you recently changes or added a device you could be dealing with a conflicting driver.
If you haven’t tried it use system restore to bring you back to a point where you were not having lock ups.
Take a look at your psu voltages (are they in line?)
Do you have enough wattage for everything?
Unfortunately the problem solver is usually the last thing you look for.
Hopefully the graphics cards are not the issue
Good luck

Well going by what your saying I think we can eliminate the graphics card actually. Two different cards of a totally different design so it is not likely to be related and you have eliminated the possibility of it being heat related apparently.
So now we come to other things.
If its hardware have you considered the possibility of it being the psu or the mb ? I would tend to lean towards it being a motherboard problem at this point but a bad ps is not out of the question.
What you have stressed is that it happens when playing 3d games, your whole system is working very hard when this happens not just the video card.
Your are drawing more amps from your ps then normal and your cpu is working extra hard as well. The most stressful time for your computer as it were.
Can you try a different ps ? Also have you tried reinstalling windows ? It might not even necessarily be a hardward issue. Windows does some strange things at times. XP has been known for example to stop recognizing cds or dvds when inserted in the drive. Cannot be accessed at all, swap drive, different cds/dvds doesnt matter.

The cheapest thing to do at this point is reinstall windows, then I would try a different ps(Could do now if you have another known good one around)
If it still does it after that you could try a nvidia card but I would tend to think if you have tried all of that the mb is on its way out
Graphics card Master

Well the R9600 is one of the cooler running cards out there, and the X1600Pro isn't a heater either, so likely it's your northbridge or something else that would be 'overheating'.

Try googling fastwrites, then disable it. Betcha that helps.
Anywhoo, much more likely the cause than 'overheating' which is ridiculous for the realitvely cool cards you're talking about.

BTW, check you MoBo bios and drivers while you're at it, if not updated, then it will cause problems with newer display drivers.
Graphics card Master

If you pointed a house fan at it, and it didn't help, its not a heat problem. Check the event viewer, check your ram (memtest.org), PSU (speedfan), and anything else anyone can think of. You've ruled out heat, good job.

For the record I have an x1800xt, no problems with heat. I've never checked it after playing Farcry or F.E.A.R., but I don't have any problems playing those games. (Does your flight sim have a patch for the game???)
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