I've been reading in various forums about how people claim Doom 3 is destroying their Radeons...like most people, I thought these claims were ludicrous...until it happened to me.
I've been running a Sapphire 9600 Pro for about 5 months. I recently purchased the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer Rev. 3 due to the large number of positive reviews on this product...plus I wanted better cooling when I started playing Doom 3!
So Doom ran fine for a few weeks...until yesterday the card pooped out on me! Upon closer inspection, I concluding it was the VRAM that failed, or shall I say melted:Q, not the core itself.
As you can see, the bottom chip is the healthier of the two...
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/glorygunk/mem.jpg
This memory chip has sure seen better days...
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/glorygunk/memburn.jpg
(copy and paste if linking doesnt show pic)
My belief is the VGA Silencer, being as how it's so damn big, obstructed airflow across the RAM chips...causing them to overheat. The RAM itself, obviously, has no heatsink.
So is the VGA Silencer REALLY such a great "cooling" solution? I'm not so sure anymore.:|
I've been running a Sapphire 9600 Pro for about 5 months. I recently purchased the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer Rev. 3 due to the large number of positive reviews on this product...plus I wanted better cooling when I started playing Doom 3!
So Doom ran fine for a few weeks...until yesterday the card pooped out on me! Upon closer inspection, I concluding it was the VRAM that failed, or shall I say melted:Q, not the core itself.
As you can see, the bottom chip is the healthier of the two...
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/glorygunk/mem.jpg
This memory chip has sure seen better days...
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/glorygunk/memburn.jpg
(copy and paste if linking doesnt show pic)
My belief is the VGA Silencer, being as how it's so damn big, obstructed airflow across the RAM chips...causing them to overheat. The RAM itself, obviously, has no heatsink.
So is the VGA Silencer REALLY such a great "cooling" solution? I'm not so sure anymore.:|