Issues with my Sapphire X1800XT

[greatromances]

Hey everyone. I'm having a couple issues with my X1800XT in 3dmark05. I'm running everything at default settings with no CPU tests, and i'm only hitting 4135 3dmarks. Also what's happening is when I run the test, every 20 seconds or so i get a 5-10 second screen lockup, and then it resumes the test from where it would be if the test were running fully without locking up. It's like the test is still being run, but the graphics card isn't displaying what's happening for a brief time and suddenly picks back up after 10 seconds. The card gets around 3800 on stock settings and 4135 when overclocked to 665/765. I thought those scores where a little low, since i was getting 4000+ with my old athlonXP system running an x850pro, so I went to the Futuremark website and compared my scores with comparable systems. The majority of scores were 8000-11000, which is far far higher that what i'm hitting. I'm running a pentium D 945 at 3.6ghz with 2gb pc5400. Anyone know what i'm doing wrong here? I've tried updating the graphics drivers to ati's latest, but that didn't fix the problem.

 

[Munky]

Did you try the card in regular 3D games, if it also locks up for a few seconds? From my own experience, that usually happens either when you've OC'd it too far, or it's overheating. Seeing how you score so low even at stock speeds, use a program like Atitool to log the temps while you run 3dmark or a 3d game, and let us know how hot it gets.

 

[greatromances]

Yeah the weird thing about it is that it's not locking up with in-game performance. The only thing I notice in-game (with both F.E.A.R and HL2) are very short hiccups about a half of a second at most, happening every minute or so but it seems completely normal, so that's not a big deal for me. It locks up in 3dmark05 even when it's at stock settings as well, no overclocking. I use RivaTuner for overclocking, and it reads 60-65C steady at stock speeds throughout the testing, and 70-75C when overclocked testing with the fan at 70%. Another forum stated it may be a temp issue, so I went ahead and ordered a Zalman VF900 to replace the stock cooling from newegg this morning, but I have a feeling that is not the issue here for one reason or the other.

 

[happy medium]

Your cpu overclock is the problem turn it down to 3.2 and see what happens. That fixed the problem for me. Games don't usually use alot of cpu power. 70/80 %

If not how about you PSU?

 

[greatromances]

Unfortunately that didn't solve my problem either. I reverted back to stock speeds on both my cpu and gpu, and it's still having a pause, and the score is even lower when it's at stock now .. Any other suggestions?

 

[greatromances]

bump