Vid card problems

[Heater]

Ok, I think my vid card is close to dying. Here is my problem, things are fine, things look great with my x1900xt. But, I had this problem with portal and TF2, never really had it with wow but i dont play wow anymore.
When I am in game, I see random lines and random wall looking textures on maps. Sometimes they will be on certain players, or from my weapon to another point on the map.

Also, sometimes my vid card crashes, it will goto no signal and I have to reboot.

Does anyone have any ideas what I can do to fix this issue, I dont want to spend the money for a new card since I spent 300 on this card when it was brand new.

Thanks for the help in advance, I can try to post some screenshots when I get home.

 

[Lafinass]

Firstly, I've said it before and I'll say it again, WoW is no indicator for video card performance- the game could have been run on 5 year old machines when the game itself was new 4 years ago.

Do you have any other games that you run? Ones that are not Source?

With just your description of the problem though, it sounds very much like a heat issue. Either the GPU or the memory on the card may be overheating, causing graphical glitches and in extreme cases hard locks. I don't know the card specifically, but open up the case when you first start the machine and make sure the fan on the card is running. Use some compressed air to get any dust out of the system too. If you are running any over-clocking, stop. Also, if you're not running any kind of temperature monitor I might suggest doing so.

 

[MrQ]

I suggest GPU-Z or ATTtool for temp monitoring.

I agree with Lafin that this is a heat issue. Had the same issues when I oc'ed my 8800gts. It crashed on DODS. Pitiful, I know. DUST IS THE BIGGEST HEAT ISSUE EVER!! Always, always, always, blow your case out at least once a month or more if you have a lot of fans. I have to do it every month and I have only 4 fans. Which reminds me...

 

[Lafinass]

One of my GPUs was spiking up to 95C, didn't even open the case, just sprayed air into it's exhaust and it dropped down 15 degrees. Dust is a killer.

 

[Heater]

Ok, ill check out the dust, i only mentioned wow because its the only game besides tf2 and portal that i have played on it in the last year.

I have a temp monitor on my case, its usually around 80-90 depending on how the temp is in the house. Ill open up the case though and check for dust and to see if the fan on the vidcard is spinning.

Think it could be drivers or anything else?

 

[Lafinass]

Is this a new problem? If it is, then it's unlikely to be drivers and issues with drivers are less sporadic. But it isn't going to hurt you to update them. Just be sure to uninstall the old drivers in safe-mode, you'd be amazed at the headaches caused by a simple conflict between new drivers and remnants of old ones.

The temp monitor on the case is most likely the ambient temperature in the case. 80-90 is really high for ambient temperature. What this means to an air-cooled system is that components are cycling hot air in an attempt to pull heat off. Blowing 90 degree heat across a component won't be able to lower the component's temperature below 90 degrees no matter how fast you blow the air.

Ideally, the ambient temperature of the case should be as close to room temperature as possible. The best way to achieve this is to have intake fans in the front bottom of the case and exhaust fans in the top back or actually in the roof of the case. Also the total flow of the exhaust fans should always exceed that of the intake, by a fair margin. For example, I'm running a 2.4 C2D clocked up to 3.0 and three video cards in my system. I've got 3 120MM fans blowing out, 2 120MM fans blowing in. 2 exhaust on the back end of the case, one in the roof. One intake in the front bottom, one blowing directly onto the stack of video cards. The ambient temperature of my case never exceeds 5 degrees over room temperature.

Make sure all your case fans are working, if you're using stock fans, consider upgrading to ones that can pump out more air. If your case is simply built badly, you might need to buy another one unless you're comfortable with metalworking.

Unless that's 80-90F? In which case, you need to learn to work in Celsius.


Either way, get some temperature monitoring software, most motherboards these days have pretty comprehensive reporting. Speedfan for the overall system and GPU-Z for the GPU.

 

[Heater]

lafinass, def seems like you know your custom pc stuff.
i meant 80-90F. it doesnt run too hot inside, i do need an intake though. my case is a 100 dollar antec, but no fans on roof or side.
i checked inside and not too much dust, and the fan was spinning, i blew it out anyways, reseated the card because it felt very hot. i let the card cool to room temp before reseating, i blew out the slot too. still have some issues but i havent fully tested it yet. thanks again for the input. ill have to try updating drivers next.

 

[Heater]

Here are the readings of temps from gpuz and speedfan.

System 44C
CPU 53C
AUX 125C
Core 0 46C
Core 1 46C

I have no clue what AUX is referring too.
My GPU is 60.4C, PCB is 51C, fan speed says 27%

Can you let me know how normal or abnormal these values are?

 

[MrQ]

Woah a tad hot there!! My 8800gts on GPU-Z says its at 40C with the PCB at 37.5C idle and its a heat monster. Also your fan at only 27% dang dude I run mine at 100% all the time. Those fans do n0ot move much air. Try rivatuner to adjust your fan speed. It works for me every time. I have heard people say speedfan is problematic.

Also your CPU is running a little hot too. Is it overclocked? What type is it? I assume its a Intel Core2 judging by the temps (AMD's run cooler)?

 

[Lafinass]

Been building them for just over a decade.

Are you sure the AUX isn't -125C? I think it's more likely to be a sensor that isn't giving valid data and printing as a negative. 125C would fry most components. Are these values at idle (IE. No games or high stress programs running) or at full load? If it's not at full load, get into a game and tab out once the graphical issues show up. The temperatures are a little on the warm side for idling than I aim for, but not enough to panic. Also, the room temperature can effect this, I have no idea what it's like in Tucson.

The temperature difference between idle and full load is pretty extreme unless you're running a decent water cooling system. My CPU goes from 35C to 60C and the GPU jumps from 70C to 90C. These 8800's run really stupidly hot though, first card I've ever had that idled at 70C. But they've been stable, so I just grit my teeth and ignore it.

So gimme the temperatures at load and room temperature if you have a thermometer, or if you're not air conditioned just look at a weather site for your city.


RivaTuner is nice, but frankly (and I mean no offense by this) if he's not computer savvy it can be a bit daunting in its complexity.

 

[Heater]

my cpu is intel core 2 duo.

these temps were at idle, but this room i am in is very very warm to begin with, the rest of the house is about 75-78, but this room im in for some reason runs hotter than that. i didnt even think of running temps at full game speed because i was whoopin some tail, i will try that tomorrow. not sure why my fan is at 27% im gonna check out and see if i can get a fan for the intake and see if that helps. ill also look for a real digital temp for this room just to see what this room is usually at.

building comps for 10 years is impressive, i built my first when i was in the military about 6 years ago. ive built 4-5 so far but never tried OCing any. Too afraid to screw things up, and frankly i was always satisfied with my latest and greatest hardware. i work for a computer support office that does lots of basic hw and sw stuff, but the problems never get complex and never involve heat issues. I

Is there anyway to turn up my gpu fan from 27& or is it there casue im idle?

 

[Heater]

here is a SS at idle

 

[Lafinass]

Lordie. I hope that 127 is a glitch. We'll see if it changes when you are at load.

Most fans adjust their RPM based on the temperature of the device, to make for a quieter system and extend the life of the fan. See if it spins up at load. Alternately, right there on SpeedFan is 'Speed04' which is set at 50%. Lets see what it's like at load before we start fiddling, it would be nice to know exactly what is over-heating.

 

[Heater]

here is the differences between temps in the room at idle, i woke up this morning and its a lot cooler. thermostat in the house is reading 72F, and its 52F outside. Also, the case is reading 81F. here is a screen of my temps now.

im gonna load up tf2 in a minute and see the changes

 

[Heater]

Ok after playing for 20 minutes or so I captured some in game glitch screens and the temps after. Drastic changes in gpu.

 

[Lafinass]

Except for that AUX, there is nothing terribly disturbing in those temperatures. You would get better performance out of your video card at lower temperatures, but one usually doesn't start seeing actual issues until 90-95C. The only thing I can think of is that the memory chips on the card are over-heating- there is no sensor on them, so you can't really be sure without some third party testing equipment. I'm unfamiliar with your card model, does it have a full card cooling system or is it just a fan/heatsink combo on the GPU itself?

It could also be a problem with your system RAM, errors or overheating- but you didn't mention having a BSOD and it's rare to have RAM issues without the occasional BSOD. I'm still leaning towards it being a problem with your video card.

Speaking of the AUX, do you know your mother board model? I'm starting to wonder if your board comes with a sensor on the northbridge. If that was running at 125C it might produce this effect, but I'd honestly have thought it would have fried itself after five minutes of that.

 

[Heater]

Ya im still trying to figure out what the AUX could be, Ive seen it as low as 117C and high as 128C.

My mobo is an Asus P5B.

As far as I know, my x1900 is just a 2 slot with fan/heatsink on the bottom.

I do though have a 60 dollar zalman cpu heatsink/fan on my cpu. Its really my only good cooling method inside the case.

I did notice however that in game my gpu temp was 74 and shortly after I stopped the game it went down to 60 or so.

 

[Lafinass]

Yeah, the second it stops doing the work of processing a game it should cooldown pretty quick.

Alright, from everything I'm reading that AUX is a common error and can be ignored.

Sorry man, not sure I can be a whole lot more helpful. Your temperatures all look fine by my standards, but some hardware is touchier than others. From those screenshots, particularly with the firsts it does look to be a heat or memory issue. Essentially the heavy's fists are a bunch of polygons drawn in a wire frame. A surface is then mapped over those polygons and textures mapped on that. What is happening in that second screenshot is that the point that makes up the corner of one of those polygons is being drawn with the wrong coordinates. The surface and textures are then mapped onto it which is why you get spikes, if you took the tip of that spike and pushed it down into the hand the stretched texture would look normal. That kind of individual point miss-map just screams heat to me. A cheap fix would be to replace the stock cooling system on the video card with a third party solution, just make sure it's a good one with heatsinks for the memory chips too. But I'd hate to have you do that and have it not be the problem. I'd bet good money it would fix it, but I really am just guessing.

 

[Heater]

Hmm, I'm close to just biting the bullet here and waiting till I can afford a new one. I spent 300 on this card when it was new so its hard to think about replacing/upgrading.
Do you have any models to recommend based on my system setup? I hear there are several 8800 models in different price ranges, but I really dont know much about which is best. When I got my x1900 it had excellent reviews and it was one of the best ones on the market. Now its probably horrible compared to all the new models and technologies.

 

[Lafinass]

It's all a matter of what you're willing to spend and what you desire from your system. I'm a bit of a technophile myself, so I generally try to stay near the cutting edge.

If you want to stay near the cutting edge without bleeding yourself dry, here are top and bottom for you.

8800 GTS 320MB for $189.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082

8800 GTX 768MB for $414.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130072

There is an 8800 GT that would be faster than the GTS for around the same money, but your motherboard doesn't have PCI-E 2.0 support and I can't hazard a guess at how much of a performance knock that would be on a card designed for it. Both of those cards are eVGA and that is generally the brand I would recommend. I buy all my hardware from NewEgg and have always had the best experience with them. If you plug a new card in and it doesn't fix matters, you shouldn't have too much trouble sending it back.