Gainward 6800 Ultra; 10 months old and dying?

[Joe Pineapples]

Hi everyone...

I've got a problem with my 6800 ultra. I get glitches / artifacts when playing counter strike source for longer than ten minutes. I've never OC'd, tweaked or modded the card in any way, and it's been sat in a well ventilated case for about 10 months. This is the second card I've had from the same retailer, the first one being a Gigabyte 6800 GT that wouldn't do anything involving 3D hardware accleration. Not ideal.

The card currently in question is a gainward 2400 ultra on AGP, and has a rebadged version of the stock nVidia cooler. I coped with the issue for a couple of months, thinking that it might be driver related or something I could sort out, but recently it's gotten so bad that I can't enjoy a (modern) game anymore.

My windows installation was getting old so I took that chance to see if a clean system would make a difference - reinstall, new drivers all round, clean %systemdrive% etc... still no change.

I don't get the chance to play many games but I have also tested COD2 and that produced artifacts also. The only other game I play regularly, Command and conquer Red alert 2 is fine, but it then again it played fine on my 2mb ATI mach 64 back in 2000. And that was an old card even then. I don't want to have to play legacy games though. I didn't buy a 6800 ultra so that I could hear my hdd power down as I played Day of the tentacle for the 7000th time. Regardless of the fact that it's still probably the best game I own.

I have had horrific experiences with returning faulty GFX cards before and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't something I'd missed or overlooked before I go through the process of trying to RMA the card.

I read in a post on here that someone's 6800 GT was 'dying' and it seemed like this was an accepted fact amongst the ppl who replied to the post... has the GFX industry lost it's quality control to the extent that cards are now a consumable part? Has reliability been sacrificed on the altar of performance? If the answer is yes then I might have to dig out the Mach 64 and go back to playing software mode quake 2 (still better than quake 4 IMO)

I digress...

Thanks in advance to anyone prepared to help me out with this!

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Do you have coolbits installed so that you can over/under-clock your card? Try underclocking the memory by 50mhz or so and then run CS again. Yes, it sounds like your card is dying. But, lowering the clock on the mem a little bit might allow it to be playable until you get a replacement.

 

[Joe Pineapples]

Thanks for the response. I underclocked by 50Mhz and it was a little better, but kept stalling for 10 second periods... I managed to blag a 6800 ultra for testing purposes from a friend, and now thats in my b0x I'm getting the same errors... I'm confused. What other components could cause problems like this?

 

[modedepe]

What else is this running with? Try taking the side panel off and leave a normal fan blowing on it, and see if that helps. If that doesn't help it could be something with your power supply.

 

[BassBomb]

just like i said in the other forum, i believe its dust making you overheat... have you taken off the HSF and try to clean it up?

my uncle had a Ti4200 and AMD 2700+ for a lonnnng time... then suddenly they would both overheat and fail... he found a dust bunny and problem solved

edit, to let you know, he had that system for at least 2 years

ive had my 6600GT for almost 1 year now

 

[Acanthus]

Does the gainward have the stock nvidia cooler? that thing is a pos and clogs up with dust after 6 months or so, id take off the plastic cover and blow all the dust out of there and see if your temps drop and artifacts stop.

My HSF was hitting 90C on my 6800GT until i figured out what was wrong.

Edit: you could be running much hotter than you think under load, be careful, temps drop very rapidly as soon as you close an app or minimise, as much as 15C in a couple seconds.

Good god ive been spending too much time in cpu, it originally said "stock intel cooler" ><

 

[Killrose]

Originally posted by: Joe Pineapples
Thanks for the response. I underclocked by 50Mhz and it was a little better, but kept stalling for 10 second periods... I managed to blag a 6800 ultra for testing purposes from a friend, and now thats in my b0x I'm getting the same errors... I'm confused. What other components could cause problems like this?

You may have a bad motherboard. Put your 6800U in your friends rig and see what happens.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: Joe Pineapples
Thanks for the response. I underclocked by 50Mhz and it was a little better, but kept stalling for 10 second periods... I managed to blag a 6800 ultra for testing purposes from a friend, and now thats in my b0x I'm getting the same errors... I'm confused. What other components could cause problems like this?

hey joe mine is doing ther EXACT same thing as yours.. i get those 10 sec pauses as well..
im so fustrated..
this was a 423$ card and its fvcked...

 

[CKXP]

Originally posted by: modedepe
What else is this running with? Try taking the side panel off and leave a normal fan blowing on it, and see if that helps. If that doesn't help it could be something with your power supply.

it could be failing. 6800U's need plenty of juice

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
just like i said in the other forum, i believe its dust making you overheat... have you taken off the HSF and try to clean it up?

my uncle had a Ti4200 and AMD 2700+ for a lonnnng time... then suddenly they would both overheat and fail... he found a dust bunny and problem solved

edit, to let you know, he had that system for at least 2 years

ive had my 6600GT for almost 1 year now

my games started suddenly artifacting with my 9800xt and i found the fan had stopped spinning and the card reached well over 100C . . . the card lasted a couple of months longer.

LAST month, my CPU 'overheat warning' came on [85c] and i shut Windows down . . . the shop vac terminated the dust bunnies that populated my case. . . . no harm done.

However, if it isn't dust or a bad fan or bad contact of the VGA cooler with the core, . . .

. . . well, then it's RMA time.

edit: your Power Supply is adequate? the ultra is hungry.

and is the card's external power cable plugged into a live source?