Are artifacts affected by temperature?

[Guest]

Let's say I overclock my card to a certain level and it's running at 80c (not great but it's not going to cause damage). I get a few artifacts in ATITool and my card is deemed unstable. Is this less likely to happen if the card is running at 60C, or is stableness/artifacts completely based on the card and what clocks in can take.

I had difficulty explaining that but I hope you understand me

 

[wolfram23]

Little of both. Heat does affect performance, however, generally artifacts are from too little voltage. Heat issues are generally cause for crashes/BSOD/GSOD/driver resets and that sort of thing.

If you can't increase voltage, just drop the core speed by 5 or 10mhz and try again.

 

[Guest]

Ah okay, thanks
I don't think I can increase the voltage, don't you have to BIOS mod for that?

The reason I asked is because at the moment if I increase the clocks anymore than I have them at now I get artifacts/crashing/freezing. However, when I set the fan speed to 100%, which cooled the core down significantly, I managed to get to 740MHz without any artifacts etc. Then I set it to 750MHz and it crashed so I restarted and tried setting it incrementally back to 740MHz with the core temperature at around 80C. This made it crash at 730MHz or so when with a cooler card I had no problems at this speed.

Based on that, do you think it would be worth me getting a new cooler? This is also partly because of the noise. I've been looking at the AC Twin Turbo Pro and some of the offerings from Zalman.

 

[wolfram23]

Well a new cooler can help, but the thing is a lot of them have great GPU core cooling but shitty VRM cooling which sounds like your problem. Artifacts, like I said, are from insufficient voltage but crashes and such are either due to heat issues or possibly the VRAM is OCed too high.

Aftermarket cooling will really depend on your set up. I just put a pair of Scythe Setsugen's on my two 5850s and they're pretty good but not quite as good as stock. However, they're 100% quieter which is what I was going for.

Voltage adjustment is sometimes simply not an option with a given card/PCB. Physical limitation. Sometimes tho it is indeed as easy as BIOS flashing but you'll have to look into it for your specific card.

 

[Guest]

Damnit, I can't get my sig to work. I assume when posting threads like this that people can see my specs I've got a Gainward 8800GT 512MB which is currently clocked 700/1750/1000
Hmmmm. Any ideas for what I should do to get my card clocking higher and quieter at the same time?

 

[wolfram23]

Not really sure about 8800GTs - whether or not they can have voltage adjustment.

But yeah some aftermarket cooling is definitely going to help. I was only looking at 5850 compatible coolers tho so I don't really know what would be good for your system. Sorry.

 

[Guest]

No problem, thanks for your help anyway. I think maybe whatever cooler I get I should invest in some heatsinks for the VRMs.

 

[wolfram23]

Most do come with heat sinks... however, for example the heat sink that fit over 3 VRMS perfectly was extremely thin (for my Scythe Setsugens) so that one VRM temp got way higher. I ended up doing a mod to make a bigger heat sink by using a copper riser plate intended for the GPU. It brought the temps down to the same as all the other VRMS.

Here's a pic

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by dangerman200k.

 

[Guest]

Oh I see. Well I will probably grab an aftermarket cooler anyway and then try some more overclocking and see how it goes on. If anything, I'll end up with a nice cool GPU.