9700pro OCing questions/Problems.

[BoomAM]

Hi.
Im having alot of trouble OCing my 9700pro.
Heres the situation thus far;
On friday i purchaced a Zalman ZM80C-HP and a 92mm fan for it. After 1hours worth of testing, it ran perfectly stable at 360/705 all weekend, running several long gaming sessions.
Yesterday, it gave me alot of artifacts, so i dismantled the Zalman, replaced all of the thermal goop with some AS3, and put it back together. I then set it to 350/350, did a few tests, and it ran fine, throught several runs of 3dm2k3, 3dm2k1, AquaMark3 and Halo Bench.
Which leads me to today. I booted up my PC about 20minutes ago, to be greeted by a majoriy fcuked up windows desktop. I managed to navigate to RivaTuner and reset to defaults, then restarted the PC, its now running without artifacts.
Why in the hell would it run 100% stable without problems one day, and then the next, give me loads of errors?
Im running Cat3.8 bty. Is it worth downgrading to Cat3.7? Does drivers affect the OC on ATI cards, as it sometimes did on nVidia cards?
Any help would be greatly appriciated.

 

[rbV5]

I was seeing a similar thing a while back. My trueblue 480 started dropping out on the +12v rail, followed shortly by a corrupted display..otherwise 100% stable. Replaced it with my enermax 350 something...now perfect again...Dunno?

 

[BoomAM]

By coiencedence, my PSU is a TrueBlue 480W.
But it didnt happen before i OCed.

 

[BoomAM]

Here are almost identical posts on two other forums that i use;
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthr...readid=33718035
And
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&postid=1428470#post1428470

Just for reference.
By askig on more than one forum, theres a better chance of a more accurate answer. In case you were wondering.

 

[rbV5]

My card was/is not overclocked, and this was prior to installing Cat 3.8. Antec PS was several months old and had been perfectly solid on all rails as well. Card has been perfectly fine since.

 

[Evdawg]

this isnt any answers to your probs.. but where did you find ram sinks?

 

[jamesp]

Evdawg,

You can find the ram sink at www.svc.com

 

[Vonkhan]

I have the identical problem with a 9500np ... and found out that AS3 was the culprit. It had boogered itself out of the core area and onto the rest of the die. Being capacitative, it gained enough charge or whatever to f*ck up the tiny bridges. Cleaned it out and replaced it with generic goop and never had a problem since.

 

[BoomAM]

Forgot.
Heres an update for you all.
I "downgraded" from Cat3.8 to Cat 3.7, and set the core/mem to 350/700. Upto now, its 2 days without a hick-up. Im hoping that it`ll stay like that as well.
Do you guys/gals know of any ramsinks that`ll fit on my 9700pro, with the Zalman on it? Will those TweakMonster BGA ramsinks fit?

 

[BoomAM]

Another update.
I just booted up and it gave me another garbled desktop. So i reset the speeds to default and rebooted, and its all fine again.
Why does it keep doing that, running fine for the best part of a week, then messing up!. Theres gotta be a reason why its doing that. It cant be heat, or a bad core, or voltage as it would have messed up earlyier. Do you think that the AS3 has come off the core and leaked onto the surrounding die. Cos its conductive, ive heard it can cause problems.

 

[Noid]

A garbled desktop is more likely your NB giving out. (from my experiences)
(too much FSB for NB, or not enough voltage)

I think your blaming the wrong part of your system.

_____________

A overclocked card will show this in 3d apps only ...

Have speckles (little dots poping on the screen) if the core is too high.

or

Abnormal textures (tearing, ripping, smearing) if the VC memory is to high.
_________________

Put the Vcard back to stock .

Run memtest86 for memory errors first.
Run Prime95 to check for hardware failure.

 

[BoomAM]

Ive never had that problem before though. My NB has got decent cooling on it anyway, a Zalman NB HS with a 92mm fan above it and the memory.
And the NB isnt OCed. And the garbledness went away when i downclocked the 9700pro to stock.

Im thinking that it might be the AS3 causing problems, as ive heard of similar things with the AS3 and 9700s. But as AS3 costs alot, im going to save whiping it off the core and replacing it with some generic compound that i have, till i get some opinions on the problem.

 

[Noid]

Why don't members run tests ...?
(better than doing nothing)

Those programs are free.

Good luck on your guessing game.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: Noid
Why don't members run tests ...?
(better than doing nothing)

Those programs are free.

Good luck on your guessing game.

What?
I do run tests. I`ve been running 3dm2k1/3dm2k3/AquaMark3/CodeCreatures daily to test the stability of the card.

Anyway;
I decided to replace the AS3 with the Zalman goop.
I Also used some alcohol cleaning whipes to help clean the AS3 from the core and surrounding area.
I`m gonna clock it to 350/700 again, and leave it running at that. I`ll run a few tests when i get the chance. Hopefully it`ll stay stable and artifact free now. Hopefully.

 

[Noid]

Those are benchmarks, not utilities that knowledgeable computer builders use to test SYSTEM STABLITY.
(PS. I think we had this arguement before ,,, so ,,, I wont bother you anymore)

 

[BoomAM]

It wasnt me that you had the arguement with.
I`d remember. I tend to remember arguements.

If you mean software like Prime95 and that "pi" thing then thats a little irrelvent for me, as im OCing my video and not CPU. However if you can suggest some other video stability testing software, then by all means do so.

 

[Noid]

I thought voltages either supplied to your MB NB or VC might be faulty ... and running Prime95 with one of those benchmarks at the same time ... will identify that ...
(well ,,, it will fail,,, but you can use a HW monitor to check voltages during your testing )

 

[BoomAM]

Suppose.
But my PC seems to crash any benchmark after a while any way, wether its at stock or not.