geForce 7900 GT overheating

[geekified]

Athlon X2 3800+
2 GB RAM
Windows XP Fundamentals for Legacy PCs
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GT (EVGA)
A8NE Asus motherboard

The processor has a brandname heatsink/fan on it (I think it's an older Zalman). The only things I have done recently to my computer hardware wise are reseating the video card and getting a new LCD monitor (previously using an ancient CRT).

So the other day I came home and my computer had rebooted to the BIOS password screen and there was bad artifacting that continued in Windows. When I checked the GPU temperature in Windows it was idling at 71C and it got to 90C when I was dumb enough to turn on a stress test. Obviously after this I turned my computer off.

I tried underclocking the GPU after that with nTune, but it would revert to stock settings after a reboot.

I'm not sure what to do now, any advice?

 

[cprince]

Check to see if the fan on the 7900GT is still running. Occasionally, I have seen fans on video cards that are stuck.

 

[geekified]

The fan seems to be running.

 

[geekified]

Anyone?

 

[Navid]

When did you buy the card?
From whom?
Thee were problems with original 7900 cards.

 

[oynaz]

I would RMA it if it is under warranty.

 

[Noya]

Reseated the card? As in taking it out of the PCI-e slot and putting it back in?

You may want to check the HSF on the card. I've read a few time that the screws holding it down can back out a little and while at first glance it looks okay, the copper may only be touching the GPU / RAM on part of it.

The weather is warming up...has it spiked in your neck of the woods?

What case and cooling?

What was the idle temp before the 71c?

 

[geekified]

I bought it in early 2006, but it hasn't given me any problems until now. I can't RMA it to eVGA because I long ago threw out the original receipt.

I haven't messed with the heatsink/fan yet.

The weather is warming up...has it spiked in your neck of the woods? yes, but i keep my room cool

What case and cooling? i'm using a stock hsf on video card, zalman on the cpu, and a

What was the idle temp before the 71c? it starts usually around 53-56c now and it will get up to 90. it is weird because the fan seems to be working now too