Ati Radeon x700 Series card fatal crashing during games

[tpinson]

Hi,

I have a homebuilt system that was working fine for a while but is now experiencing difficulties. I'm using an Asus Nvidia board with 2 gb of ram, a P4 3.0 ghz processor, and an ATI Radeon X700 Graphics card. I was playing a game called "Titan Quest" for some time without any problems until one day, out of the blue, it started crashing my system. I tried another game and the same thing happened. What would usually happen would be the monitor would flash and turn itself off for about a second or two, and then little green specs would appear on the screen and the computer would start beeping whenever I move the mouse. This doesn't always happen at the same time, but it always does happen within about 2-3 minutes of launching a program. I have not experienced this problem with any non-graphics intensive software that I have run (including audio production programs that pretty much max out my RAM/CPU capacity), which leads me to believe that it is a graphics card problem. I searched around for ideas and saw a few people recommending to flush the bios, but I am afraid to do this as I've heard it can wreck your system...

Any ideas?

 

[jaguarskx]

The video card could be overheating.

The most likely reason is that the PC has lots of dust inside. Open up the PC and remove as much dust as possible especially dust clinging to the heatsinks.

 

[tpinson]

Hmm..this is actually quite possible. When I opened up the case after the latest disaster, I noticed that the video card was VERY hot to the touch, especially the fan (not a good sign!) Besides getting rid of the dust, is there anything that I can do to reduce the temp? Would a house fan (we have those big tower things that spin) help?

 

[tpinson]

So I took a closer look at the video card heatsink fan while the system was running...

Turns out the fan isn't spinning at all! Is it possible the fan controller is misfunctioning, or maybe is there a wire that needs to be connected? Or...do I simply need to replace the fan?

 

[jaguarskx]

It is possible dust has clogged up the fan. Try removing as much dust as you can from the X700, then place it back into the the PC to see if it will spin.

You can buy an aftermarket heatsink & fan for it (~ $25), but if I were you I would buy a new card especially if you have a PCI-e x16 (or x8) port. My recommendation would be (both are more powerful, and uses less power than the X700):

HD 4670 = $60 after rebate + shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102820

HD 4650 = $45 after rebate + shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102805


If you have the older AGP video port, then your choices are more limited and the available card are not as powerful as PCI-e video cards in the same price range.

HD2600XT = $45 after rebate + shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131136