I've been running my current system for about 2 years w/o problems. But for the last couple of days ago, with no system changes, my GPU seems to be failing ......

With heavy loads, my 8800 GT would run between 75-85 C (from what I read that's warm but not too hot). I was monitoring temps with PC Wizard but now also use RivaTuner.

First, I noticed that PC Wizard started to show an odd gpu temp display - it would cycle thru several temps and an odd entry : 182 C -> 118 C -> 64 C -> 4.293842 + 9C -> repeat.

Then the card apparently started to fail under load -> screen would go black but PC not shut down - just not working. Reboot would do fine - but with same temp display. After a couple days of that, and changing the card to the other PCIe slot, I now get a 4 temp display cycle: 192 C ->128 C -> 64 C -> 41 C and no odd non-temp reading. Card will now sometimes fails when just browsing. Of note, even when the pc has been off all night, when I first boot I get that last temp display cycle immediately after boot !!! Card couldn't be that warm that quickly!

So I'm not entirely sure that it's the card, but what else could it be??

I'm running Vista 32 bit on 1 c2d E6850 @ 3.0 (usually ocd @ 3.6)

Any ideas, suggestions?

Thanks

It sounds like the video card may have gone bad, is there another video card you can try to see if it makes a difference?

also, run GPU-Z and look at the temps, maybe post a screenshot here.

It's either going bad or it needs a serious clean.

My old 6800 was going over 110C and doing weird stuff. I took off the heatsink, cleaned out the fan with compressed air, cleaned off the old thermal paste and applied new stuff. Put it all back together and it dropped by 50C and worked perfectly.

Thanks for the suggestions .....

Here's a screenshot of GPU-Z ..... the first of the GPU temps showing 128 alternates between 128 and 0 about once/second most of the time but not all the time. Curious that the 2nd GPU temp is -63.5 C. I set the fan speed to be 100% all the time with RivaTuner.

I do have another card to try but will have to wait until later today.

Ask shadowww, he knows anything about Nvidia.

Anyways, you could check your heatsink. My ATi's were getting 110 at full load, changed to new cooler, alot better.
If it isn't it could be your card, and you need to buy a new one.

Quote from Bose321 :

Ask shadowww, he knows anything about Nvidia.

Anyways, you could check your heatsink. My ATi's were getting 110 at full load, changed to new cooler, alot better.
If it isn't it could be your card, and you need to buy a new one.

I barely got 95c with my last nVidia 8600GT - no cooling fan, radiator +heatpipes. 110 is alot

My current new 4870 idles on 45c and on load its about 60c max.

Quote from easyed :

Thanks for the suggestions .....

Here's a screenshot of GPU-Z ..... the first of the GPU temps showing 128 alternates between 128 and 0 about once/second most of the time but not all the time. Curious that the 2nd GPU temp is -63.5 C. I set the fan speed to be 100% all the time with RivaTuner.

I do have another card to try but will have to wait until later today.

Damn I thought mine were bad , Thats wierd Lol, I guess a temp sensors giving a totally wrong reading?? My temps are in the pic below, I still think there high, and they were not full load... Full load my first GPU goes up to 90+ on some games, the second is about 65+...

90 isn't ideal, but not super high. Todays cards are 'meant', or should I say, 'built' to handle such temps. (so I've heard).

and mobile bartons were operational at 100C. that doesn't say much.

i'd rather not have a component inside my computer that reaches those temperatures. the gpu itself can take it, alright, but the gpu is not alone in there and i do not want it dumping the heat around. it's one thing the gpu blowing air at 90C and another to blow air at 60. also the motherboard will heat because of the gpu.

no component in my machine reaches above 59C even at full blast cpu+gpu

Hey Moose - didn't see your post - I will certainly dismantle, clean, and repaste the heat sink/fan ..... will get to it tonight and if that doesn't work, guess I'll go for a new card soon. Thanks for the suggestion - hope it works as well for me

hazaky - I've read that my temps (before this prob) were well within those expected from the 8800GT (as Bose321 says) - but these new numbers are just hard to make sense of ..... I get the cycle display of 192->128->64->41 even when rebooting after the pc has been off for a few hours.

shiny_red_cobra - just substituted an ATI 4850 from my sons PC and it is running fine at 56 C and 25% fan speed - just using generic driver.

lukelfs - oh, I guess the 2nd gpu temp is for a second card .... that I don't have

george_tsiros - cool man

I guess your card is dying a slow and painful death then, you should replace it.

Yeah reckon so - but for now I've "stolen" an ATI 4850 from my son's broken PC and it out-performs my old 8800GT ........ so for now I'm happy but I need to get his PC running .... wonder how long I can stall

Thinking of getting some version of the GeForce GTX 260 ...... soon

i basically broke a video card at work the one time... turns out the fan died, and after an hour of running lfs the temp was like 130C according to atitool... blue screens and lockups... strangely enough, no artifacts... i pulled the card out and it took 3 hours to return to room temperature... and the room was climate controlled.

Hi

I think quite a few 8800 GT's have a common issue with overheating and particulary overheating memory modules on the graphics card.

In certain games, my one starts showing artifacts all over the screen and then stops alltogether within 10 seconds.

The way I fixed this problem was to actually underclock the MEMORY speed from 900Mhz to 850Mhz, no more artifacts/crashing ever again!

Worth a try, might work for you too...

Regards

Oz

WELCOME

and yeah, i just remembered that the 8800GT cards were virtually all problematic.
(or was that only for the mobile ones?)
go nvidia :/

Thanks for the welcome .) I'm new to LFS and really enjoying it.

I think it was the 8800GT's for desktops which had issues, not sure about the mobile ones...

For me, apart from this slight fault, the card has served me fairly well, I can still play most games fairly well with it, just finished Batman Arkham Asylum recently which was great by the way!

At work right now so I can't research...

...but a little googling will tell you that all(?) G84 and G86 cores have issues. The 8800GT is the G92 core, wich I think is a die shrink from one of those, so nVidia should have fixed it by then. No?

Quote from de Souza :

At work right now so I can't research...

...but a little googling will tell you that all(?) G84 and G86 cores have issues. The 8800GT is the G92 core, wich I think is a die shrink from one of those, so nVidia should have fixed it by then. No?

I had a PNY 8800GT, no problems at all with it. Was dumb enough to upgrade to a GTX260, and THIS gave me artifacts :P Strange as hell.

But what i mean is; I do NOT think it a general fault in the 8800's, must be 1/10 thats faulty..

Yeah probably only a few that were faulty but I guess you end up imagining they all are when you own one to make yourself feel better lol

My point was: the 8800GTs probably aren't faulty.

Quote from de Souza :

My point was: the 8800GTs probably aren't faulty.

Yeah I know what u meant, didnt mean to point that at u

It was meant for the ones earlier in the thread that "kinda" said all the 8800gt are crap..

Interesting feedback about the 8800GT guys

My EVGA 8800GT ran for about 2 1/2 years before dying .... and the last 5 months it was folding@home 24/7, often while playing LFS or watching TV (with tuner card) or vids. It got a pretty heavy workout and almost no rest .... so I have no real complaints about it

My problem solved with a BFG GTX 275 OC 896 MB

Sorry if I'm spamming or something but i have this ATI 4650 im trying to get rid of, I put it on ebay.

http://tiny.cc/hWSx2

I hope u bid for it