AtiTool fried my card???

[chinkgai]

so i was scanning for max core...it hits 583.something and freezes...first the program...then windows. i thought it was my drivers. i tried again after running driver cleaner a couple times...and tried again...and reverted to old drivers and tried again...same results everytime...freezes at 583.something even with vpu recovery checked...

after a handful of tries, now it wont even run at stock speeds without have artifacts up the arse in about 20-30 seconds...

btw, i have an x800 xt and was using beta 4.12 then switched to official 4.12 and switched back a couple times...

so is it fried? i didnt know it would/could permanently damage my card...:|

 

[screwd01]

use driver cleaner, uninstall the card, take it out of the mobo...clean if needed, maybe try putting a better cooler, or new thermal paste, reinstall...hope and pray

when i used ATiTool it would just clock down when it got errors, is the x800 supported by the program?

 

[jiffylube1024]

What temperature was it at? 583 MHz is insanely fast for stock cooling/stock voltage - it was probably hot as, say, hell.

Hopefully it will cool down and return to normal tomorrow... Try it out after giving it some time. Once I thought I borked a 9800np because when I put the RAMsinks on I really used lots of torque to push them in there; it wouldn't even boot. In a few hours I tried again and it worked fine, and I noticed when I put even a mild amount of pressure on the RAMsinks in Windows the screen got all garbled, so it was a problem with BGA Ramsinks not liking lots of pressure.

Your card most definately overheated; hopefully it's not irreversible. Don't even bother messing with the drivers and whatnot tonight - give the card time and try it again tomorrow stock speeds and watch those temps! There's a reason so many people are buying ATI Silencers for their cards.

Edit: funny that people are up overclocking their systems at this hour. I was actually running some Memtest86 myself on my RAM, lol.

 

[chinkgai]

well it is rock stable at 567 and doesnt even touch 60 degrees...only like...55 or 56, thats what atitool reports as its scanning

yes it used to just downclock and not freeze, but for some reason with this card...it jes keeps going and then freezes...first the program then windows about 30 sec after

i'd have to reset the system via the switch

it was fine before tonight...i guess it freezing too much may have damaged it?

after i rebooted to windows it was at 33 idle again...you think waiting all night would make a difference? =\

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Don't even bother messing with the drivers and whatnot tonight - give the card time and try it again tomorrow stock speeds

great advice, i had to go to a study group so i had to leave it alone anyways, so i did and after half the nite i got home and it was just like before again, 567/579 with 3dmark looping without problems and no artifacts detected

i let out a major sigh of relief as you would expect *whew*

reason why i dont have a silencer on there is because mine was just returned two days ago from an RMA

my first one broke cuz the material the bolt was made out of was too soft and it just broke off with BARELY any torque, so im stayin away from it as of now. also the build quality wasnt too impressing..crappy finishes and soft aluminum backing loses its shape very easily...but i am VERY tempted to open that package and stick it on anyways since others have reported such great results

reason why i havent is cuz it had clearance issues in my nf7-s v2, that fvcker is just too damn big...

im putting my lanparty in after this weekend tho...and it seems like it'll fit in that...so if the silencer doesnt sell by then, im gona snap and just put it in

 

[TStep]

I really don't have complete faith in AtiTool. I have had it do the exact same thing on several different cards. One time, early on when I first tried it out leaving it unattended, it had the core of my 9500 way over 450, yet showing no artifacts. Obviously that was nearly a disaster. Other times it has worked as expected. I never leave it unattended any longer. Usually I find the rough maximum clocks, then just start the tool just below these speeds, then run the test.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm. About a week after I got my Radeon 9200 (FIC 64MB model, 250/200 core/mem, 128-bit, 4ns RAM, fanless - only a heatsink on the GPU), I downloaded ATITool and started playing with it. (I think 0.20). Honestly, I think that program is buggy as heck. I had a bunch of programs that were otherwise rock-solid on my system start to crash after having run ATITool - that issue was repeatable. Also, I had similar issues like the OP, I think that it may have overheated and possibly slightly damaged some of the RAM on the card. I can't really tell, but when I first started using it to test OCs, I could bump things up quite a bit, and I didn't see anything different, so I thought that they didn't "take", so I bumped it up even more, possibly to a dangerous level (~280-290Mhz core, ~230Mhz mem). Then things started artifacting, and even clocking them back down didn't help. I even had corruption at the BIOS screen after rebooting, requiring a power-cycle and some cooldown. Even still I occasionally have cold-boot problems, even not overclocking. But anyways, now I get artifacts using ATITool to OC even slightly, like ~260Mhz core, and I can't even run ~210Mhz mem stable, it seems. I dunno what happen, but I do wonder if either I damaged something, or perhaps the card might have been flaky to begin with, I didn't really test with many 3D apps during the first few weeks I had it. Also, I would get wierd vertex artifacting during 3DMark 2001, even at stock speeds. I don't really care, it's a dog-slow card with or without overclocking, and if I burned it, it wouldn't set me back much, other than I wouldn't have an AGP video card any more.

 

[TStep]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Honestly, I think that program is buggy as heck. I had a bunch of programs that were otherwise rock-solid on my system start to crash after having run ATITool - that issue was repeatable.

Interesting thought. I've had similar instability issues now and again that I could never pinpoint the root cause. I'm on a new system build right now. Since it's a clean install of everything, I may just do a little stability testing before an after AtiTool. I'll post if I find anything.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The stability issues weren't just after installing ATITool, but actually running it during that session of Windows. Some of my other programs would seemingly crash after that, when they wouldn't before. Then again, it could be a power/heat thing too, but I think that the program overwrites some memory that it shouldn't, or something. Either that, or the ATI Cats that I was using at the time were buggy somehow, in conjunction with everything else.

 

[chinkgai]

yeah i no longer have the confidence i once had with this program. blech.

 

[Noid]

I accidently left my screensaver active while the tool was running...

when I 'woke' the computer up ... the ATI tool window had no 'picture' and my core was insanly high
(probably 'cuz there was no image to render in the window)

I immediately rebooted and reset core speed.


I'll never use that tool again