zerobdr

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Jul 21, 2009
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Hey all,

So yesterday I got the urge to try and do some slight tweaking to my old evga GTX 275 card, however i'm not sure if I did any damage to the gpu. I had previously had my card at 648 (not sure what the other clocks were at) and after this OC attempt I eventually kept my card at that, its currently 648/1458/1188. During my OC I had OCCT open and running in windowed mode and I went to increase the core clock from 648 to around 658 however the screen went black so I backed off in increments of 25 and eventually all the way down to 600 but the screen was still black. I uninstalled and reinstalled OCCT and somehow the black screen went away but there were errors counted at the 658 mark, so I returned the settings to what they are now. Everything seems to be in working order with the gpu under load in OCCT and furmark, temps are getting into the high 70s or so and everything seems stable thus far. However I noticed something unusual. Prior to the OC yesterday I had been playing Skyrim and my card reguarly got into the low 90s when playing on high settings with the fan 100%. So before the OC attempt I blew the dust via compressed air from the gpu and a decent amount of dust came out, not a whole lot though. Now after the OC and the dust cleaning I go to play skyrim under high and now even ultra settings and the textures seem kinda low res compared to before (maybe its just me idk), when I save a game it freezes for a second or two and the temperature while playing barely breaks 60 C now (nothing else changed, no new case fans, etc.). I've been running everything at a resolution of 1920x1080. Could cleaning out some dust really drop the temp that much or did I somehow damage the card? I didn't adjust voltages or anything so I don't think I could have damaged the card that way. Any insight and help is appreciated!

Specs are:
i7 920 (Stock no OC)
6gb OCZ gold ddr3 1600
EVGA GTX 275
1tb wd black HD
asus p6t deluxe v2 mobo
850tx corsair psu
 
Cleaning helps-especially with older, hotter running cards and it takes only a small amount of dust in the heatsink fins/fan blades to cause turbulence and restrict airflow.
It's possible the blackscreening has caused the game or card to change settings, I know my Source games will reset themelves if I update drivers so I'll suggest you restore the card to its default settings and check the Skyrim preferences.
 

zerobdr

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Jul 21, 2009
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I'll definitely be sure to revert the card back to original settings and I knew removing dust would help, it really surprised me how much the temp. dropped after removing some dust. I had thought the temp. would only drop a few degrees, I never had it drop 30 degrees or so
 

zerobdr

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Jul 21, 2009
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I just adjusted all the clocks back down to stock 633/1404/1133 and strangely enough the card was idling prior to me reverting them back to stock at 39 C and after its now idling at 45 C. Kinda odd

**Update after a bit more fooling around I found out that when I am currently playing skyrim my all my clocks don't ramp up which is causing a huge drop in FPS. My core clock stays at 400mhz and my mem clock stays at 297mhz. Is there any way to fix this? Also, if I were to revert back to my stock gpu settings would I just downclock everything back to stock in say precision x or msi afterburner or is there a proper way to do it?