$#!+! I think I damaged my video card!

[coredumperror]

Hery Guys, I was hoping that you could let me know if there's anything I can do about an issue with my X1900XTX that just came up.

In 3DMark06, on the Canyon Chase and Deep Freeze benchmarks, I start getting really nasty artifacting about half way through. It looks like textures are being stretched out and attached to other ones, and sometimes black spots flicker across the screen.

I'm afraid that my foray into OCing may have damaged my card! Does it sound like that to you experts out there?

I'm running the Catlyst 6.9 drivers, with the regular clock settings (641/774 in 3D). The only non-standard thing I'm doing is using ATI Tray Tools to ramp up the fan speeds to keep my card under 70C (without it, the fan doesn't ever kick in, and Control Center says my card starts getting into the low 80C range during 3DMark).

 

[40sTheme]

Hmmm... that is strange. 70C shouldn't damage your card.. How high did you OC it? I have a question though... why did you OC it? It's powerful enough already..

 

[coredumperror]

Originally posted by: 40sTheme
Hmmm... that is strange. 70C shouldn't damage your card.. How high did you OC it? I have a question though... why did you OC it? It's powerful enough already..

Before I discovered the ATI Tray Tools, my fan wasn't ever ramping up to speed for 3D apps, and my card was reaching 80C+ acording to Control Center (even without OCing). I OCed it to 680 core, 801 ram, as per a suggestion of the card's OC capabilities in another thread. I think I also bumped the voltages by .1V that time, thinking it'd lend more stability. As for why I OCed it... I was being greedy, lol . I'd gotten a really good OC out of my C2D e6300 (1.86GHz to 2.8GHz) and I was trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of my system.

 

[40sTheme]

Phew, that's a high OC for something running that hot. Well, it may be damaged... I don't know what to tell you. Leave your computer off for a day or two and let the card stay cool for a while, and start it up with normal clocks and the fan at its highest speeds. Then run those benchmarks and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I have no idea what will... it shouldn't be a driver problem if it worked beforehand.

 

[hans030390]

Did you get artifacts without messing with the fan settings?

 

[coredumperror]

No, the artifacts didn't start showing up until after I got my fan to run faster when the card got hot. Could that cause artifacting?

 

[Matt2]

before u dismiss your card as dead, turn the texture preference and mipmap quality to high.

On both Canyon Flight and Deep Freeze I got horrible artifacting when I had those settings set to high performance. Turning those settings up fixed it right away.

I too thought my card was toast.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: 40sTheme
Phew, that's a high OC for something running that hot. Well, it may be damaged... I don't know what to tell you. Leave your computer off for a day or two and let the card stay cool for a while, and start it up with normal clocks and the fan at its highest speeds. Then run those benchmarks and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I have no idea what will... it shouldn't be a driver problem if it worked beforehand.

It's a lot harder to damage a video card than most people think. I give it like a 1 in 5 chance he toasted his card.

has anyone asked if he tried the card with any actual games? If not, see my above post.

the other day I was playing around with GRAW using different clock speeds to test the fps difference and I was using 700/820 with 1.5v. When I fired up GRAW and loaded the mission, CCC kicked me out after about a minute and said it terminated the application because my card was "exceeding maximum safe temperature".

I looked at the temperature and it was 105*C. While running 700/820 and the voltage upped to 1.5v.

Turns out dust has completely clogged the intake of the stock cooler. Myc ard was choking on it's own hot air. So hot, I couldnt touch the card for about 10 minutes. I cleaned, reapplied AS5 and still runs 690/800 completely stable at stock volts.

As I said, I think it'll take more than 680/801 at 80*C to cause a lot damage.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

try RMA? ati warranty?

 

[coredumperror]

I tried playing Far Cry today at absolute maximum settings (it was preeeety, though only around 30fps while outside, and even less in dense jungle). It looked perfect, no artifacts, except in one place. On the carrier ship in the first level, there were two places where it looked like a texture was stretched all the way across the screen. It only showed up from certain angles, and it didn't flash or anything... so I dunno if it was a bug in the game, or my card being borked.

BTW, how do you enable HDR in Far Cry? I heard it's possible, and i'd like to see it. I didn't see any option for it, though. I have the 1.4 patch installed.

 

[Matt2]

r_HDRrendering 0-12 (I think it's 12). "7" seems to be the best looking and performing.

 

[josh6079]

I don't know, 3 has a nice touch as well. I think I might have used 5 or something though.

 

[coredumperror]

hmm, I don't see an r_HDRrendering setting anywhere. Where do you find it? I've looked through the "Video options (advanced) customize" dialog and not seen it.

 

[josh6079]

You have to force it through the console.

 

[coredumperror]

ah ha! I found it in the system.cfg file. Wow this looks NICE! It's like I'm watching a movie!

 

[coredumperror]

Originally posted by: Matt2
before u dismiss your card as dead, turn the texture preference and mipmap quality to high.

On both Canyon Flight and Deep Freeze I got horrible artifacting when I had those settings set to high performance. Turning those settings up fixed it right away.

I too thought my card was toast.

I tried 3DMark06 again with everything at High Quality setting, and the artifacting was a bit different, but it was still prevalent and ugly. Any other suggestions?

 

[Ike0069]

If it doesn't artifact during games, I wouldn't worry about it. I agree with Matt that it's unlikey you damged your card with that OC. 680/801 is definitley not really pushing it.

One question though; when you said you incread the voltage by .1, what exactly did you have the core voltage set at? If you actually increased to to 1.525V (stock 3D core voltage should be 1.425V), then that is pretty high IMO. Personally I wouldn't go above 1.45, but I haven't really read waht is too high for these cards, so it may very well be just fine, or it may be capable of causing permanent damage.

 

[coredumperror]

What I did was using the program called Overclocker from DriverHeaven.net. I bumped each value (Engine Settings: Core Voltage, Memory Settings: Core Voltage and I/O Voltage) by 2 "clicks." That was bumping it to 1.25 Engine Core Voltage and 2.2 Memory Core Voltage and 2.2 Memory I/O Voltage. Hmm, maybe that's the problem? Maybe this thing is keeping my voltage too LOW, and it's causing artifacts? 1.25 should be way too low for 3D on this card, right? How do I check my my actual voltages are during 3D, anyway?

 

[Ike0069]

1.2V is for 2D mode, where 1.425 is for 3D mode. AFAIK, RAM voltage stays the same in 2D and 3D modes.

I'm not familar with overclocker, but there is no way you're hitting 3D speeds at 1.25V. The Video would simply lockup. So I'm not sure what is happening. I suggest you start the ATI TT monitoring graphs and set one up for core and RAM speeds and core voltage, then start up a game. The graphs will show whatt 2D and 3D speeds/voltages your card is getting.

Have you tried OC'ing with ATI TT?

 

[Matt2]

You need the vcore to be 1.425 or else your card will be extremely unstable.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Matt2
You need the vcore to be 1.425 or else your card will be extremely unstable.

Perhaps. MADSHRIMPS' guide claims that the stock voltage is 1.425, but before I found it I had my XTX stable at around 1.375 or 1.4. Still, if you want to be completely safe and sure that it is 110% stable, 1.425 won't hurt and is very likely the actual intended voltage.

 

[coredumperror]

Hmm, ATI TT is not telling me my actual current speeds/voltages. It always says 499.5/594 at 1.2V, even when I'm running 3DMark. I know it IS ramping up the speeds, because I'm getting full scores (6200+) while I was getting 5200 range scores when I'd somehow borked my card into not ramping up to speed in 3D mode a few days ago. I've disabled the ATI HOtkey poller, rebooted, and it still doesn't show the right speeds. Any idea why?

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: 40sTheme
Phew, that's a high OC for something running that hot. Well, it may be damaged... I don't know what to tell you. Leave your computer off for a day or two and let the card stay cool for a while, and start it up with normal clocks and the fan at its highest speeds. Then run those benchmarks and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I have no idea what will... it shouldn't be a driver problem if it worked beforehand.

Haha, 680 core and 800 mem isn't that high at all. And supposedly, the x1900 series can take up to the 90c range, as many told me when I was first concerned about my own XTX getting near that w/o manual fan speed turned up

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: coredumperror
Hmm, ATI TT is not telling me my actual current speeds/voltages. It always says 499.5/594 at 1.2V, even when I'm running 3DMark. I know it IS ramping up the speeds, because I'm getting full scores (6200+) while I was getting 5200 range scores when I'd somehow borked my card into not ramping up to speed in 3D mode a few days ago. I've disabled the ATI HOtkey poller, rebooted, and it still doesn't show the right speeds. Any idea why?

It only shows 2D speeds. To set an OC, you need to manually raise the core volts to ~1.425, and then raise the core and memory speeds. Check for artifacts, then save as OC or something.

Also you can save the stock 2d Settings. Then go to auto overclocking, enable, and put you saved profiles in the 2d and 3d modes.

The start your monitoring graphs, load up a game, then check the graphs to see what your speeds and volts are doing.