ATI's shitty drivers are causing my video card to overheat

Lork

One of the features of ATI Overdrive is automatic fan speed control, so it doesn't get too noisy when it doesn't need to, and normally this is a pretty good thing. Lately, though, it's been letting my video card run way too hot. When I'm just using Windows it doesn't even turn the fan on at all, and ends up running at 80C. When I run a game, the fan turns on, but barely.

A few days ago my computer shut down due to overheating while it was idle, and today a Left 4 Dead session was interrupted due to artifacting. I can manually set the speed of the fan and it works fine, but it gets pretty noisy at the levels required for newer games, and manually changing the levels every time I start the game sounds like huge pain in the ass.

Is there anything I can do?

matrics

You could try turning the overdrive's speed control off and using ATI Tray Tools to regulate it... it's been about 6 months since I had an ATI GPU so my advice may not be valid

Lork

ATI Tray Tools tells me that no supported hardware is found when I look at the fan controls.

Satsumomo

I use Rivatuner and set my fan speed manually. In my case, since it's so silent I just have it running at 85% all the time.

Rigor Mortis

I put one of these in the next slot over from my video card. Not that I had overheating problems but I cooler is always better... http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.7256

Dissociater

Have you tried directing a blast of compressed air into the fan? The dust build up in those things can be deadly.

Lork

Dissociater wrote: »

Have you tried directing a blast of compressed air into the fan? The dust build up in those things can be deadly.

There's nothing wrong with the fan. I can turn it up to a high speed and it'll cool the card like it's supposed to, but it's also noisy as fuck. I don't mind when I'm playing games because I usually have my headphones on and can't hear it anyway, but it's obnoxious at all other times.

Dissociater

I was thinking more underneath the fan. I dust can get lodged in there and block what the fan's supposed to be blowing air onto. I only mention it because it really shouldn't be over heating when your computer's idle, that's pretty rough.

Lork

Dissociater wrote: »

I was thinking more underneath the fan. I dust can get lodged in there and block what the fan's supposed to be blowing air onto. I only mention it because it really shouldn't be over heating when your computer's idle, that's pretty rough.

It's not blowing air into anywhere because it turns the fan off. I have no problems with cooling if I manually force the fan to turn on and speed up to the levels that it's supposed to be at. The problem is that the calibration for the auto adjustment has somehow gone out of whack and isn't setting the fan speed to what it's supposed to.

prawnstar69

I had a problem with my 3850, the atikmdag driver would stop and restart (I'm assuming due to heat, apparently it's a massive issue), I used RivaTuner to underclock the core by 10MHz and now it's fine =/

Maybe that's something you could try, I know it's not ideal but it worked for me.

GrimReaper

Lork wrote: »

ATI Tray Tools tells me that no supported hardware is found when I look at the fan controls.

You need to use the latest beta, downloadable from here, which is linked from the official forum here. (it works perfectly fine on my 4870)

I think it also needs to be said that Catalyst Control Centre is a steaming pile and ATI Tray Tools is the best ATI management tool around. ATI should hire the guy who makes this software, he's a seriously talented guy.



How much better is that than ATI's for fan control...

Lork

GrimReaper wrote: »

Lork wrote: »

ATI Tray Tools tells me that no supported hardware is found when I look at the fan controls.

You need to use the latest beta, downloadable from here, which is linked from the official forum here. (it works perfectly fine on my 4870)

I think it also needs to be said that Catalyst Control Centre is a steaming pile and ATI Tray Tools is the best ATI management tool around. ATI should hire the guy who makes this software, he's a seriously talented guy.

How much better is that than ATI's for fan control...

That's exactly what I needed, thanks!

Lork

Ok, new problem: ATI Tray Tools causes most Java applications to crash. At least, anything that uses Swing will crash with a stack overflow error. I know this because I just spent an hour trying to figure out why my very simple Java roguelike wasn't starting. And then on a whim I shut down ATITT and poof, the crashes went away.

No, seriously. What the fuck?

GrimReaper

Lork wrote: »

Ok, new problem: ATI Tray Tools causes most Java applications to crash. At least, anything that uses Swing will crash with a stack overflow error. I know this because I just spent an hour trying to figure out why my very simple Java roguelike wasn't starting. And then on a whim I shut down ATITT and poof, the crashes went away.

No, seriously. What the fuck?

Hmm, I uninstalled Java ages ago. My only thoughts are a few things:

Disable on screen display "Tools & Options", "OnScreen Display..." and the OSD tab. Deselect "Enable OnScreen Display".

You could also ask Ray Adams in the official ATT forum for some help.