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So... is my video card dying? (SOLVED!)
aunsoph
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Perhaps a rhetorical question, as I'm pretty sure there's SOMETHING wrong.
First of all, let me post my system specs:
* ASUS P5B Deluxe.
* Intel Dual Core 2 Duo E6600 2400 MHz.
* Patriot Memory 1024 MB DDR2-800 SDRAM. x2
* ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256 MB.
* Updated ATI drivers; no custom versions installed.
Now for my problem:
It all started a week ago or so. I was playing City of Heroes, when the game simply locked up. I thought to myself, "Well, no biggie; let's reboot." I did so, popped back into the game and after about five minutes of gaming, it locked up again. Huh.
I promptly opened my case up and inspected my machine's innards, taking notice of the thick layer of dust covering most of it. Thinking that to be the problem, I unplugged it all, checked the all and plugs cables just to be sure... all seemed OK. I got rid of the dust with a hair dryer, (And believe me, these were the bigger, badder, meaner cousins of dust bunnies.) and fired up the PC once more, checking all coolers to see if they were working fine. The two on the motherboard were running perfectly, so was my video card's and the extra cooler installed in my case.
I left it open, toggled GPU Recovery in Catalyst and tried running the game once more. This time my gaming session lasted longer... roughly ten minutes. After a couple of seconds, the system unlocked due to GPU Recovery kicking in, although my screen was all garbled. I quit the game, checked the temperature in the control panel, (A cozy 40-something degrees Celsius, but that was to be expected, seeing as I was back to the desktop.) and launched City of Heroes one last time. Ten minutes. Lock.
"Alright," I thought to myself, "I might as well install ATITool and fiddle with the fan settings." I did so, opened up the fan settings and set it to hit 100% at 70 degrees Celsius. The result was roughly the same. I then toggled 3D view of the hairy little cube and started monitoring the temperature rise. It climbed to around 60 Celsius and then very slowly, taking about (Any takers?) 10 minutes for it to hit 70 Celsius... which once again ended up locking my PC up. I repeated the test a couple more times, adjusting the fan to be at 100% from the get go, yielding similar results.
I've already tested different games, all of which worked just fine previously: Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Beyond Good and Evil, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines as well as City of Heroes and City of Villains. 2D games or quasi-3D games that are nowhere near as intensive will run just fine for an indefinite amount of time.
The only graphical glitches I'd occasionally spot, were certain vertexes being stretched off into the horizon; a symptom that appeared in City of Heroes and Vampire Bloodlines. Even this stopped happening altogether after the first couple of days. All my games run perfectly smooth without any jitter or slowdown... until my system locks up.
The only way I've managed to avoid the crashes is by keeping my case open and propping a fan next to it. Even then, only if I turn it all the way up on a reasonably cold day will I reliably prevent the occurrence.
Strangely enough, the "sweet spot" seems to always be around 68-72 degrees Celsius. A few seconds at this temperature range will invariably crash my video card. I've updated my drivers and from what I can tell, my card is running colder than what it's expected when at its peak. I'd like to diagnose the hardware problem by myself before I'm forced to replace my X1950 PRO.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
First of all, let me post my system specs:
* ASUS P5B Deluxe.
* Intel Dual Core 2 Duo E6600 2400 MHz.
* Patriot Memory 1024 MB DDR2-800 SDRAM. x2
* ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256 MB.
* Updated ATI drivers; no custom versions installed.
Now for my problem:
It all started a week ago or so. I was playing City of Heroes, when the game simply locked up. I thought to myself, "Well, no biggie; let's reboot." I did so, popped back into the game and after about five minutes of gaming, it locked up again. Huh.
I promptly opened my case up and inspected my machine's innards, taking notice of the thick layer of dust covering most of it. Thinking that to be the problem, I unplugged it all, checked the all and plugs cables just to be sure... all seemed OK. I got rid of the dust with a hair dryer, (And believe me, these were the bigger, badder, meaner cousins of dust bunnies.) and fired up the PC once more, checking all coolers to see if they were working fine. The two on the motherboard were running perfectly, so was my video card's and the extra cooler installed in my case.
I left it open, toggled GPU Recovery in Catalyst and tried running the game once more. This time my gaming session lasted longer... roughly ten minutes. After a couple of seconds, the system unlocked due to GPU Recovery kicking in, although my screen was all garbled. I quit the game, checked the temperature in the control panel, (A cozy 40-something degrees Celsius, but that was to be expected, seeing as I was back to the desktop.) and launched City of Heroes one last time. Ten minutes. Lock.
"Alright," I thought to myself, "I might as well install ATITool and fiddle with the fan settings." I did so, opened up the fan settings and set it to hit 100% at 70 degrees Celsius. The result was roughly the same. I then toggled 3D view of the hairy little cube and started monitoring the temperature rise. It climbed to around 60 Celsius and then very slowly, taking about (Any takers?) 10 minutes for it to hit 70 Celsius... which once again ended up locking my PC up. I repeated the test a couple more times, adjusting the fan to be at 100% from the get go, yielding similar results.
I've already tested different games, all of which worked just fine previously: Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Beyond Good and Evil, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines as well as City of Heroes and City of Villains. 2D games or quasi-3D games that are nowhere near as intensive will run just fine for an indefinite amount of time.
The only graphical glitches I'd occasionally spot, were certain vertexes being stretched off into the horizon; a symptom that appeared in City of Heroes and Vampire Bloodlines. Even this stopped happening altogether after the first couple of days. All my games run perfectly smooth without any jitter or slowdown... until my system locks up.
The only way I've managed to avoid the crashes is by keeping my case open and propping a fan next to it. Even then, only if I turn it all the way up on a reasonably cold day will I reliably prevent the occurrence.
Strangely enough, the "sweet spot" seems to always be around 68-72 degrees Celsius. A few seconds at this temperature range will invariably crash my video card. I've updated my drivers and from what I can tell, my card is running colder than what it's expected when at its peak. I'd like to diagnose the hardware problem by myself before I'm forced to replace my X1950 PRO.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
aunsoph on
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This discussion has been closed.
Posts
It definitely sounds like your GPU is failing, locking up only in games and polygon vertices being improperly rendered is pretty telltale.
The absolute nail in the coffin would be to see if you can put your card in another computer or get another card to try in your case. If that's not possible I'd say you have more than enough evidence to safely say that your GPU is damaged. It might be running at what would normally be sustainable temps (70 C is not that hot) but previous damage may have compromised the card or the cooling system so that even only mild temperatures are enough to cause a crash.
I would check into the manufacturer of the card's warranty information and see if you are eligible for an RMA, if not you probably want to look into a new graphics card.
A hair dryer? Really? I'll just go ahead and say never, ever do that again. Keep a can of air handy for that sort of thing. I spray my machine out every 2 or 3 weeks because, as you just discovered, pc cases are really good dust traps. If the dust in your machine was as bad as you described I'm surprised your video card is the only thing that overheated. Test it in someone else's computer and confirm the diagnosis, buy a new card and consider yourself lucky.
Well, that's good to know. As I'm not the most tech-savvy person around, (What gave it away, huh? ;-)) I thought that simply using the cold setting wouldn't be capable of damaging my system; obviously not that hot of an idea. Thanks for the heads up!
I'll check my warranty, I've had the video card for approximately 8 months, so I'm not getting my hopes up. Once again, thanks for the help.
I mean, yeah, if it was one of the ones that only heated up, I can see that, but don't most hair dryers have a just plain "fan" setting? And shouldn't that work just fine?