Doom3 Freezes

[Pastie321]

Recently bought an Ati Radeon 9800 Pro 128, after shennanigans with the power supply managed to get it working.

Been playing Doom 3 / Far Cry quite happily for a couple of days, then 2 days ago screen froze on D3 after playing for about 90 minutes. Screen froze, no artifacts, and accompanied by high pitched noise from speakers.

Re-started machine, back into D3, same thing happened after about 5 minutes. Re-started, tried Far Cry, same thing after 5. Even tried Serious Sam 2 and the same thing happened.

Now the day this occurred on was the hottest day of the year (35C) and the room that my PC is in was sweltering.

Is this a heat issue? Has anyone had similar?

Tried again tonight, weather still very warm, same thing after 45 minutes.

Specs:
Gigabyte 7VT600-L (VIA KT600)
Athlon XP 2600+ at 2.1 Ghz
512MB DDR400 pc3200
128MB Radeon 9800 Pro
CAT 4.7

 

[nitromullet]

In case Kobra doesn't see your thread, this could be your problem... He posted this in another thread about ATi performance in Doom3.

Originally posted by: Kobra
I pointed out a flaw with 9800's months and months ago that can cause 9800 overheating a large portion of their cards... Theres a metal retaining border around the GPU, during manufacturing, this can be placed slighting crooked on the board - which seems to happen a good majority of the time.. When this happens, the heatsink and fan don't seat tightly enough on the 9800's, and causes overheating because 9800's already run hot.

This problem is compounded because of the poor heatsink and fan on the 9800. Result is artifacts, tearing, overheating, crashing and lockups. I harped on this problem with ATI for months, RMA'd 2 cards, and both had the same problem.. I'm RMA'ing my last 9800Pro to them this week, then throwing it up on Ebay to try and recover some of my losses from those bastards.

Not to steal Kobra's thunder, but I thought this might be helpful....

 

[Pastie321]

Thanks, will check as a starting point....