Which app for graphics card stability?

[pitsi]

A friend of mine got a Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT a few weeks ago while he was in the USA for holidays. Unfortunatelly he got very unlucky, since as it seems he got a faulty card. RMA, refund or anything similar is not an option so please don't ask. Anyway, what we noticed is that everything is fine in Windows and in 2D games such as Championship Manager. In more complex games though, like FarCry, the PC reboots after a few minutes into play.

Just in case anyone is wondering, yes I am 100% sure that the graphics card is the problem. He currently has Omega 4.12b installed. Using radlinker, I tried lowering the core and memory speed. Then I tried running FarCry again. Although we managed to progress a bit more into play than with stock speeds, the game crashed again a while after. 3DMark 2003 though completes a full series of tests without crashing. I tried lowering the clock speeds even more and this time I managed playing about 10 minutes without any problems. Is there a utility that can help me check whether his system is now 100% stable? I thought 3DMark could do that but apparently it doesn't help in this case!

 

[Crashman]

Could be a weak power supply or graphics card heat (bad fan?).

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[pitsi]

I am sure the problem is graphics card heat, because we swapped graphics cards yesterday until I find out what the problem is, and my Radeon 9500 Pro is running just fine on his system. His Radeon 9600 XT though causes the above mentioned problems on my system.

Can anyone help me with my exact question? What app can I use for stressing the video card, besides 3DMark? I have both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, and I read somewhere about a "Half-Life 2 video stress test" that really pushes the limits of your graphics card. Does anyone know if I can use any of these two games for this exact purpose, and how?

 

[Robc1880]

crash and wusy are giving you very good advice about it being a heat issue. You might want to look into getting a good aftermarket cooling solution for that card. Might want to look at the VGA Silencer 3 or ATI Silencer 2 with some Arctic Silver 5.

Xaser 3 case with 420W TT PSU
AXP2500 (11*200 at 1.85v)
9800 Pro 128MB (418/372)
NF7-S v2.0
PDP DDR400 1GB(2-3-2-5)2.6v
Lite-On SOHW-832S
WD 80GB 8mb buffer caviar edition.

 

[pitsi]

Oops now I get it! Sorry! You mean that there may be nothing wrong with the card, it's just that the fan might not be sufficient. Ok, I will look into it.