Overheating all of the sudden

[pureair23]

I'm running:
Windows XP
2.66 P4
2G ram
Maddog 650 dual fan power supply
ATI X850Xt.....not overclocking at all
I'm running 2142 on all medium settings, 4xAA and I've never had a problem with heat issues at all. I played on tuesday and ran flawlessly for a few hours. I played yesterday and all of the sudden I get a warning about the video card running too hot and it was going to drop back the settings to keep playing. I turned on the ATI control center to check the heat readings and I'm in the mid 50's F during web surfing and basic stuff, but I start climbing to the high 80's F and within a half an hour my comp shuts the game off. Does anyone know why this could be happening all of the sudden. Or a way of getting the temp really low on the card. All fans are working and it even overheats with the case wide open and the side off. Any help, I'm sure this can't be healthy for the card and I hate playing for 30 mins at a time every couple of hours. Thanks for any insight or recommends.

Pureair23

[venny]

faulty thermistor? hmm... well if the fans are all working, shld be fine. did it really feel very hot after ur gaming session?

[pureair23]

It felt pretty hot but I have never felt it before to have something to judge it against. I just felt it now and it doesn't feel any hotter then it did yesterday when it shut down. I do have one Idea, I blew a whole lot of dust out of the case, and now that I'm looking at it there is a lot of dust in the card under the plastic shield that houses the heat sink. If I can't get this to straighten out I'm guessing maybe the card is starting to fail, I've had it 2 years now. Any advice on a newer Ati card that would run good with the current system setup I have ?
i.e. :ATI Technologies Radeon X1650 Pro Video Card, PCI Express, 512MB DDR2
or :ATI Technologies Radeon X1300 Pro Video Card, PCI Express, 256MB DDR2.

Thanks for the help and insight :)

[Sir. kaheiyeh]

80F is only around 27C which is quite cool for a video card; unless you're talking about 80C then that's a different story. Might seem obvious but, have you tried taking the heatsink off and brushing away every bit of dust on it and reseating it with new thermal paste? I did that once and temps dropped by over 10C during gameplay.

[venny]

It felt pretty hot but I have never felt it before to have something to judge it against. I just felt it now and it doesn't feel any hotter then it did yesterday when it shut down. I do have one Idea, I blew a whole lot of dust out of the case, and now that I'm looking at it there is a lot of dust in the card under the plastic shield that houses the heat sink. If I can't get this to straighten out I'm guessing maybe the card is starting to fail, I've had it 2 years now. Any advice on a newer Ati card that would run good with the current system setup I have ?
i.e. :ATI Technologies Radeon X1650 Pro Video Card, PCI Express, 512MB DDR2
or :ATI Technologies Radeon X1300 Pro Video Card, PCI Express, 256MB DDR2.

Thanks for the help and insight :)

u havent dusted ur com in 2 yrs... :shock: my com accumulates lots of dust after 3 mths, i use a hand pump to blow out the dust frm the heatsinks n fans, and a small paintbrush to sweep off dust frm the cards. rmb to blow ur psu too, cos it attracts lots of dust too.
u shld also do like kaihei says, to wipe off the old paste frm your cpu, get new thermal paste and apply again.

anyway, if u want to get a new ati card, the current flagship is the 2900xt or the older and cheaper but still powerful 1950xtx.

[pureair23]

No, sorry I wasn't clear enough. I have dusted the inside of the case all over, but I have never pulled the card and dusted inside the clear plastic that incases the heat sink. It looks like I'm getting a new card tomorrow now. Just after I dusted the card completely (holysh_t there was a ton, I'm a dumb_$$) reinstalled it, watch the temp, it hovered around 40. I started the game, played for about 10 minutes, pulled up task manager so I could minimize the game and check temp.........98:cry:. Before I could shut the game down I saw a spark in the card and I'm down. Let it cool off. Turn it back on and I've got boxes with little pin points all over and I can't see or make out anything. She's fried:dead::salute: So I'm running on my old 9800 pro till morning when I can get a new card. So sad, my own stupid fault. So, take my bad experience as a lesson. Clean your cards regularly, I learned the hard way.
Thanks for the help and advise Venny and Sir. kaheiyeh. Hopefully my tradgedy will spare a few lazy asses like myself of my own fate.
At least I get a new card :yay:

[venny]

too much dust can indeed cause a short circuit n fry the card. i used to hav a hdd, becos of the way its place, the underside with the board accumulated alot of dust and after awhile, some of the resistors on it burnt out and died. lost alot of gd data on that drive. lesson learnt, keep ur com clean and dust free.

[looqas]

It's got to be in somewhere between paste and heatsink sector. The paste might have broken and given up to the strain and finally have cracked to open up a small chasm between GPU and heatsink. Do the re-seating with new thermal paste. Clean the old one away.

[Warhawk]

The X850XT runs at 90C on the default fan settings. Some gpu's don't like the temperature that high and start to run crappy.

You've probably been running it at 80-90C for a while and the GPU just can't handle it anymore. I use a program called ATI tray tools to manage my temperatures. With some simple fan adjustments, mine will run at around 60-70C which is a more tolerable temperature.

btw - I've been using the same case for 6 years and I haven't dusted it once. I've had this video card for almost 2 years and I haven't dusted that either and it still runs great.

[mybulleturface]

lol i have not dusted in 3 years and i took my friends grahpics card and it had a lot of dust all over it and i didnt clean it. using ati tool i chagned the core from 250 to 597 and it still runs fine.

ATI RADOEN 9550 FTW
:laugh:

[MikeyC]

Anyone remember the old Radeon 9700 Pros that would start overheating over time even when the fan worked and the card/case was clean? There was a mod to remove the metal shim between the heatsink fan and the GPU. It seems that the cards were engineered improperly and there was a gap between the bottom of the heatsink and the top of the GPU that they tried to fill with thermal compound tape, and after a while that compound tape broke down and became less efficient at hear transfer.

When I lifted the heatsink off my old 9700, the tape looked all cracked and was not covering the entire surface of the GPU... You need to be careful if you do this because that shim is there to protect the GPU from uneven pressure. You can get away without the shim if you're very careful when you reinstall the heatsink.

I'm just curious but this might be happening to your video card...