GTS 250 Handling

[Thor_Odinson]

Hi, new member here!

Anyway, I just purchased an Inno3d 1gb GTS 250. As I was taking it off from its bag, I was handling it by its metal bar parallel to the table with one hand and removing the plastic with the other. The moment the jacket was completely removed from the card, I heard a very faint crack, possibly in the area where the metal is attached to the card (since I was supporting the card on that metal end only and with one set of fingers). Is this ok and will this give me problems in the future? How resilient are video cards in a physical sense?

The card runs fine and I've been using it for almost 3 hours, without any problems (slowdown, random restarts, artifacts, fan problems, etc).

Also, is 76 degrees C normal for this card at load? My rig is well ventilated (intake fan in front, exhaust fans at the side and back).

 

[nenforcer]

More than likely you put just enough "stress" on the card to cause it to slightly "flex" just enough to cause a "cracking" sound.

Don't worry, these cards are designed with a high fault tolerance for people like me to phat phinger them and even try and force a PCI-E card into a regular PCI or AGP slot.

Short of slamming the video card into the floor they should be extremely physically resistant as they have to endure temperatures of 76C and higher.

Worst case you break a fan blade or slightly dislodge a heatsink which will over time cause the part to fail.

Do your 24 hour burn in and you should be fine.

 

[Thor_Odinson]

Thanks! Any suggestions for the burn in/break in?

I usually just play a 1080p movie file on a 13+ hr loop (and 3Dmark, back then).

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I prefer rthdribl, just leave it running fullscreen with max AA on whatever resolution you use. Furmark is probably a better stress tester, but not by much, and rthdribl looks a lot better.

AFAIK HD movies don't tax GPUs that much, for my 4870 GPU usage only goes to 10%, it doesn't even go to full 3D clocks.

 

[Idontcare]

Hi, new member here!

Welcome to the forums Thor_Odinson! :thumbsup:

 

[evolucion8]

I prefer rthdribl, just leave it running fullscreen with max AA on whatever resolution you use. Furmark is probably a better stress tester, but not by much, and rthdribl looks a lot better.

AFAIK HD movies don't tax GPUs that much, for my 4870 GPU usage only goes to 10%, it doesn't even go to full 3D clocks.

Furmark is considerably better to stress a GPU than rthdribl, the latter uses old and less demanding techniques for HDR simulation (It doesn't use FP Filtering at all). I have to admit that it looks much better than the creepy hairy donut with veins.... D:

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Someone should do an update. I don't really want to be stuck with the likes of Furmark, ATITool and MSI Afterburner when stress testing, they look like shit. Hairy shit.

 

[Thor_Odinson]

Ok, so it's either Furmark or Rthdribl. But before proceeding, I recall reading somewhere (will post the link when I find it) that using Furmark will shorten the lifespan of ones GPU. Or is it only a myth?

As for the card, it has been working fine without any issues. My only problem was when I uninstalled the old NVIDIA drivers (was using a gt 240) yesterday and installed 258.96 (7-19-10). It got past the bios and post screen but wouldn't go into Windows. I opened up the case and reconnected all the pertinent cables (GPU, HDD, DVDROM) just to make sure ... and then everything seemed to be fine again, as if nothing had happened. I still can't pinpoint the cause though, since everything booted up smoothly and the card was detected the moment I first installed it. It was only during the driver installation that the computer acted up. Well, "as long as it aint broke" ...

Oh and thanks for the welcome, Idontcare!

 

[Keysplayr]

I suggest maybe playing games for your burn in. Welcome to the forums!