Dying video card?

meatflower

I've had this BFG 8800GT 512 OC for about a little over a year now I guess. It came factory clocked at 625/1550(600/1500 stock). Never seemed to have any problems with it until the other day when I blew the huge amount of dust that had accumulated in my system out. I have an air compressor that puts out a lot of pressure, so I made sure to protect the fans of everything to avoid breaking them...it's happened in the past.

Fast forward to the other day when I install Mass Effect. Lost video signal on my monitor every 10-15 minutes, working perfectly up until that point. Dawn of Discovery followed suit, freezing every 10-15 minutes with a neon artifacting effect on the entire screen. The only game that seemed unaffected was Team Fortress 2.

I installed RivaTuner and monitored the video card temps while playing ME or DoD. My card was hitting 125C and then shutting down, every time. I remembered that it was OC'd so I brought it back down to stock speeds, and it fixed Mass Effect. It still runs at about 100C but it's stable. DoD continued freezing until I lowered the video ram from 900Mhz(which should be its stock speed) to 800Mhz.

So now I've got it stable, albeit with slightly underclocked RAM and stock GPU/shader speeds. But there's the terrible heat issue. My case airflow isn't the culprit here, I have an Antec P180 with two 120mm intake fans on the front and a rear and top 120mm exhaust fan. Taking off the side of my case and venting it with a large box fan actually resulted in higher temps.

Is it worth getting an aftermarket GPU heatsink/fan for this card or should it hold for a few more months until I upgrade to a GTX2XX?

Thanks.

archonwarp

First thing i would do is just try to re-seat the heatsink. It could be that it's not really contacting fully anymore. If that doesn't work, I'd try to contact BFG about it and see what they say.

Rook

BFG cards come with lifetime warrenties. Use it.

meatflower

Even without any of the original materials or receipt? All I have is the card itself. Bin'd the box long ago and god only knows where that receipt is now. Probably under 20 metric tons of shit in a dump somewhere.

Xeddicus

On a side note, using an air compressor isn't the greatest idea because if there's any moisture in the tank it gets shot into the PC guts. I've never actually heard of this happening, but you never know.

Did you happen to buy it online? Since you said "receipt" I doubt it, but if you did could get the invoice from whatever site you bought it from probably. Good luck if you didn't.

meatflower

Unfortunately no, I bought it at a BestBuy. That's why it's BFG, it was the only brand they sold.

elliotw2

Yep, your fan died, a 8500GT I had did this before. Now, your card does have a few more years on it, if you want to get a new heatsink/fan to fit it, it should run fine for a bit longer.

meatflower

I don't know what speed the fan on the card is supposed to be, or how accurate RivaTuner is at reading something like that, but it's being reported at ~2500RPM when I manually set the fan to 100% duty cycle.

Does that sound abnormally low?

elliotw2

Try popping the case and watching the card and fan while it's at work, see if it's actually spinning, because they can lie at times

meatflower

It's very much spinning. I can both hear it, and feel the air being pushed by it.

elliotw2

Then do check that the heatsink is contacting the GPU part, or it may very well be time to buy a new one

archonwarp

meatflower wrote: »

Unfortunately no, I bought it at a BestBuy. That's why it's BFG, it was the only brand they sold.

Did you happen to pay with a credit or debit card or use a rewardzone (their shoppers club) card? If so, they can look up your receipt and reprint it for you. It's possible that they may even be able to do a manufacturer's warranty exchange out for the item at the store.