Card or system.. Or both. Please Help :(

[Cstelly]

Ok so I'm not gotta lie. I'm not at great at building computers as most people here so im gonna listen and not try to bs or give people shit when they offer to help.

So my problem:

Recently I had bought parts to build a new computer. I had gone over the parts with friends and had ordered them. Upon receiving the parts I had a buddy of mine help put the rig together. After hours of learning a ton it was up and ready to go. Installed XP Sp2 without any problems and everything was good from there one. Week later, Boot up disk error. Got that fixed via problems with mobo driver. Anyways lets leave that for another day. So after I got that problem fixed I reinstalled windows xp and loaded my drivers and games to get back on track. Got mobo and vid card to latest drivers and proceeded to play WoW. Now since this new reinstall I been having a weird issue where I can play 15 minutes of wow in an instance before the game itself freezes. I can close the program by ctrl-alt-del and closing it from desktop but the second time It happens I cannot C-A-D or Alt-F4 to get out. Just have to hit the reset button.

Now when i contacted XfX about the card they asked me to run 3Dmarks06. I did so and noticed my 8800gtx card was giving me this as a reading
24 Min GPU Engine Frequency 108 108 MHz
25 Max GPU Engine Frequency 108 108 MHz
26 Min GPU Memory Frequency 337 337 MHz
27 Max GPU Memory Frequency 337 337 MHz

and got a score of 3DMark Score 9799

Now the thing that scares me is the readings for the GPU.

Any ideas on if its the card or can be my system (I will post the rest of the Benchmark numbers when I get home if needed)

Hope someone can help and thanks for reading

 

[jeff_2087]

Those readings are normal for the 8800 series in 3dmark, and your score is about right. Lower than most from the GTX but not significantly, probably just because of your CPU. So I'm not sure what's wrong but your 3dmark results are a-ok.

Can your computer run other games, or other benchmarks like memtest and Prime95?

 

[Cstelly]

Almost forgot. Card and CPU under heavy load are getting to 73c for Vid Card and 50 for CPU. Dunno if those are normal or not.

 

[cutthroat]

73C Video card is your problem I'll bet. If it's an older one you can try to clean the dust out of the hsf on it (be careful), and try to increase the airflow around the video card. Are you sure all your fans are running, in the right direction, and not directly at the video card.

50C is also a kinda high temp for a C2D (if that's what it is), but OK. Makes me wonder about your airflow though.

 

[jeff_2087]

Nah, for a video card 73C is fine.

 

[Cstelly]

Well I wont be able to check air flow till I get home later tonight. But the side fan shouldnt be blowing on the card itself?

Like I said I dont really know much about computers. Im open to advice had by all. And as for airflow, I know that might be one of the causes.

 

[cutthroat]

Shouldn't your side case fan be an exhaust? That would seem more logical to me, but I'm not sure as I don't have one. What you really don't want is your CPU fan blowing onto your video card.

I agree that a video card can run at 73, however I don't necessarily agree with temp sensors. And 20C over the CPU at load seems kinda wierd, like an airflow problem. Under stress testing both my CPU & GPU run around 50C, but I did remove my hsf from the vid card and replace the paste with Shin-Etsu and cleaned it and stuff.

You can try underclocking the video card a bit to see if it helps you out. If it works you'll have a good idea where your problem is. Don't leave it that way if it does work.