Need help figuring video card woes! Please Help!

[Sinjinx7]

I've been going round and round with this Visiontek ti4400 video card. I have both it and the system overclocked to 300/600 and p4 1.6A@2.12. 512 DDR ram and onboard sound, LAN. Motherboard is a MSI 845 Ultra-ARU, 40gig 7200 HD, CD-ROM and CD-R.

Problem is that EVERY game that I run slowly degrades to the point that it's nearly not fun to play. For example, Dungeon Seige (with FPS running) will start out and run nicely 50-60 fps for about 5-10 min and then slowly work down to a choppy 10-20 fps mess. I've reinstalled 2000 twice and XP once to try and alleviate the problem. Newest 41.09 drivers (among many others that I've tried) and a fresh XP install is what I'm working with now.

I'm posting in Hardware because I have yet to find a solution in software. I've tried different AGP aperture settings (64, 128, 256), etc. and have yet to make a dent.

ANY HELP IS APPRECIATED!! TIA!

 

[mechBgon]

It sounds to me like either your video card, or CPU, or both, are overheating. Pentium4's will begin internal throttling when they reach a certain temperature, which would certainly result in hitches and slowdowns.

Try clocking your video card and CPU at normal speeds as a troubleshooting step. If that helps, then examine your system's internal air temperature while running under load, using a Radio Shack digital indoor/outdoor thermometer or some other "real" method of measuring. If it's high, as in, over 35C, you need to improve your case ventilation. If it's not, you need to improve cooling to the CPU, the video card, or both. This may involve adding case ventilation fans, particularly rear exhaust fans, a better heatsink/fan unit for your CPU, and/or some kind of cooling for the video card, such as a PCI-slot turbine exhaust fan.

 

[Lonyo]

My Ti 4400 works fine at 310/620, normally the game would freeze totally due to vid card overheating I think (when I had a TNT 2 M-64 with no fan games kept freezing)

 

[Sinjinx7]

Much thanks to MechBgon!!

Turns out that it was indeed a heat issue! Somehow I had overlooked the CPU fan (which had become disconnected) when I was poking around inside my box. After a quick reconnect, the system was up and running sweet again!!

I was unaware of the ability of the P4 to throttle down in an overheating situation, so it never even crossed my mind that it could be the problem. Thanks a ton for the advice!

Anandtech never seems to fail me for help with my computer issues =)

 

[mechBgon]

 

[compudog]

That's why mechBgon is "elite!"

 

[PCMarine]

You better thank god you weren't running an AMD chip otherwise your comp woulda been toast

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: PCMarine
You better thank god you weren't running an AMD chip otherwise your comp woulda been toast

That might be true of older AMD boards that lack overheat protection circuitry, or newer boards running older AMD CPUs such as the Thunderbirds and Spitfires, which don't have on-core thermal diodes to signal overheat.

With a Morgan-core Duron, or an AthlonXP or AthlonMP and a recent-model board, however, the motherboard will cut power to the CPU in a split-second if the CPU is signalling an overheat. To date, I've done this myself four times: twice due to my forgetting to pull the plastic slip off a thermal patch on a retail AthlonXP heatsink, and twice due to my Thermalright SK-7 getting hung up on the cambox of the CPU socket. In both cases, the CPU survived despite very rapid thermal ramp rates, so a slow ramp caused by a failed fan would certainly be caught and dealt with too.

compudog, I think they promoted me to elite status partly/mostly for contributing some of the avatars used here, but I don't suppose helpfulness hurts one's chances either