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Did overclocking damage my video card? Please Help

C

computergeek

Junior Member
For the past two weeks I've been on a mission to get the best gaming performance out the rig I just built about six months ago. Some of you may have seen my other posts.

Well it appears that trying to make my PC better has only caused it to get worse.

Just two days ago everything was working well and I was even getting pretty good 3Dmark03 scores. That was until I decided to overclock my video card. I'm a complete NOOB when it comes to overclocking anything, so I had no business messing around with it....

I downloaded the most recent version of ATI Tool and slowly increased the video core and memory about 5kb (?) each until the 3D window started to display artifacts. Once I started to get artifacts I bumped it back down to a more stable speed. Once I found a stable speed I saved it as my OC profile and did not default to it every time I rebooted the PC. I only used it when I was playing games. Any other time I just left it at the default settings.

I wasn't very comfortable with OCing my fairly new card, so I decided to delete the tool and not use the OC setting. After I deleted the tool I uninstalled the video card drivers and loaded the new Catalyst 4.12 drivers. Shortly after I put my computer back to the way I should have left it I decided to play a little Call of Duty. I was about 20 minutes into gaming when my computer completely rebooted itself. At the time I just blamed it on the server I was in, but then it happened about 15 minutes later while still playing CoD. I then decided to do a fresh install of CoD. I ran CoD for about 30 minutes before I had to stop playing and no reboot within that time. The next day I was on my PC browsing the Internet for about 20 minutes then the computer reboot itself again.

Did I destroy my card? That's the only thing I can think of. Thanks for your help.

Computer specs:
Processor ? Intel Pentium 4, 3.0 GIG, 800MHZ FSB, HT Technology
Motherboard ? Intel, 865 Chipset (Latest Chipset Drivers Installed)
RAM ? 1 GIG PC3200 DDR400 Ultra
Hard Drive ? 120 GIG, Maxtor SATA, 7200rpm, 8mb cache
Video Card ? ATI 9800 Pro, 128MB RAM (Catalyst 4.12 Drivers)
Power Supply ? Ultra 400Watt


See Update Below
 
it really doesn't sound like you destroyed your video card. Try a different game and see what happens. CoD is pretty buggy from my experiences... Activision has a fairly decent knowledge base though that helped me fix (well actually, workaround) the issues I had with CoD.

https://activision.custhelp.co..._nl&p_sort_by=dflt

Can't explain the random re-boot while surfing the web, but I certainly wouldn't equate a crash in CoD with hardware instability just yet.
 
try uninstalling your vid driver, then use driver cleaner, then reinstall new drivers.

cod gave me trouble when i had my 9800se/pro. after a reformat, for other reasons, they played great together. edit: which makes me think it was a driver issue.

also, are you ocing your cpu?
 
What sort of temperature readings are you getting? Perhaps you have a fan unplugged or a heatsink clogged.
 
Thanks a bunch for the advice, but I?m still having the issue. I disabled the restart function and now the computer just freezes and doesn?t produce the infamous BSOD. It freezes during gameplay and during basic desktop/web surfing activities and is completely random. Sometimes it happens three minutes after the computer boots. Here?s some additional information that might shed some light on the situation.

1. I reformatted my hard drive and did a fresh install of XP then loaded the latest Catalyst drivers (4.12).
2. My CPU temperature during gameplay is around 39c to 45c, but I have no idea if that?s good or bad.
3. I have standard cooling, which consists of three case fans, one CPU sink/fan, and one sink/fan on my 9800pro.
4. I?m not ready to replace the power supply until I know for sure that?s the problem, so any ideas on how to make sure my PSU is working properly would be great.

Thanks again

Geek
 
I would make sure the fan on the vid card is working properly. 9800pro fans are known to be flaky. They can stop and cause overheating, but then run fine again later. I would monitor the GPU temp if you can.
 
Before you suspect the graphics card, you may want to ensure that your RAM, your PSU and your CPU are stable.
 
How would I go about checking the stability of my PSU, CPU, RAM?

I checked the bios and everything is registering correctly. I also used SiS Sandra and everything checked out, well at least the correct volumes where showing. I have no idea if they are working like they should.
 
Originally posted by: computergeek
Thanks a bunch for the advice, but I?m still having the issue. I disabled the restart function and now the computer just freezes and doesn?t produce the infamous BSOD. It freezes during gameplay and during basic desktop/web surfing activities and is completely random. Sometimes it happens three minutes after the computer boots. Here?s some additional information that might shed some light on the situation.

1. I reformatted my hard drive and did a fresh install of XP then loaded the latest Catalyst drivers (4.12).
2. My CPU temperature during gameplay is around 39c to 45c, but I have no idea if that?s good or bad.
3. I have standard cooling, which consists of three case fans, one CPU sink/fan, and one sink/fan on my 9800pro.
4. I?m not ready to replace the power supply until I know for sure that?s the problem, so any ideas on how to make sure my PSU is working properly would be great.

Thanks again

Geek
Click to expand...

HI Geek!

Regarding your PSU. Get Motherboard Monitor 5 on the PC, on the lower-left hand side of the MBM5 mainscreen is the option to enable the "sys log" feature. Choose to have it written to a text.doc, select one second recording intervals, and maybe 100 entries in the log.

Now when you a lock up/crash, reboot and go into the MBM5 file and click on the text.doc. It'll show you how much, if any, your power rails were fluctuating. You may see a spike or drop b4 lockup indicating your PSU is the cultprit.

Good Luck with it.

Fern
 
Measure the 12V voltage, with a digital volt meter, while running prime95 to check the stability of the PSU.
Then, measure the 12V rail while running "scan for artifacts on ATItool.

Use memtest to check the stability of the RAM.

Use prime95 to check the stability of the CPU.

If you go in this order and everything is OK, run ATItool and run"scan for artifacts" to check the stability of the graphics card.
 
Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
There is a good chance that your PSU is now shot. Replace it.
Click to expand...

thats where my finger points to. And the problem could be with any PSU line, not just the +12v line.
 
I apologize for the delayed response, but I haven't been able to get to my PC until now.

I tried several suggestions in this thread and the problem continues. After the last time my PC rebooted/froze I checked the event log and received the following message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x1000007f (0x0000000d, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini011205-01.dmp.

I have no idea what that means so any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
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