I have a 2 year-old Core 2 Quad CPU 6600 @ 2.40 GHz, 3GB ram, and an ATI Radeon HD 4800 512MB and they have been serving me very well in regards to gaming. I've played fairly recent games like Fallout 3 and Left4Dead2 at max settings with no problems, so I figured my hardware was fine.
But Mass Effect 2? Well, let me say that the game actually runs very decently at max settings when it comes to frames. But right from the start I was getting this weird flickering, like artifacting, that I couldn't figure out. I updated my drivers, lowered my graphics settings (turned off the fancy stuff like Bloom and Shadows) and I still got the flickering. And I did not force AA on through my driver settings (game doesn't natively support AA and doesn't much like it if you force it, supposedly).
I did some searching and I found that some people got artifacting as a result of their card overheating. I NEVER had this problem (I NEVER overclock) and have put my card through its paces by now. The fact that I could hear my fan slightly getting louder when I game told me that the card was working as it should.
But just to see for myself, I installed the utility ATI Tray Tools which enables you to modify your card's fan speed should it get above a certain temperature. Now I have the video card's fan running at 80% as soon as it reaches 80 degrees Celcius - and the artifacting is gone!!
Then I turned off Ati Tray Tools and replayed a part of all the games I currently have installed, (Fallout 3, GTA4, Left4Dead2, COD4) and none of them cause my card to get hot enough for artifacting (is 80 degrees celcius even THAT hot?)
So should I just keep using ATI Tray Tools and not worry, or should I get a custom fan for my video card?
Any information would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance!
But Mass Effect 2? Well, let me say that the game actually runs very decently at max settings when it comes to frames. But right from the start I was getting this weird flickering, like artifacting, that I couldn't figure out. I updated my drivers, lowered my graphics settings (turned off the fancy stuff like Bloom and Shadows) and I still got the flickering. And I did not force AA on through my driver settings (game doesn't natively support AA and doesn't much like it if you force it, supposedly).
I did some searching and I found that some people got artifacting as a result of their card overheating. I NEVER had this problem (I NEVER overclock) and have put my card through its paces by now. The fact that I could hear my fan slightly getting louder when I game told me that the card was working as it should.
But just to see for myself, I installed the utility ATI Tray Tools which enables you to modify your card's fan speed should it get above a certain temperature. Now I have the video card's fan running at 80% as soon as it reaches 80 degrees Celcius - and the artifacting is gone!!
Then I turned off Ati Tray Tools and replayed a part of all the games I currently have installed, (Fallout 3, GTA4, Left4Dead2, COD4) and none of them cause my card to get hot enough for artifacting (is 80 degrees celcius even THAT hot?)
So should I just keep using ATI Tray Tools and not worry, or should I get a custom fan for my video card?
Any information would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance!
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