Overclocked 7900gt getting WAY too hot.

[zylander]

I have a 7900gt overclocked to 705/810 at 1.5v, up until yesterday I have never had overheating problems, my temps never went higher than ~75C. Yesterday I installed the latest nForce drivers (169.21) and now I get a lot of artifacting in games and my temps are getting up to ~102C. My slot fan and Zalman CU-700 are both working fine and I havent touched the speeds. What could cause the card to suddenly start overheating?

 

[NinjaJedi]

Is the card clean? dust-off!! Other than that try to reinstall the drivers. Check fan speed. If that does not work go back to the old driver and see if that fixes it.

 

[zylander]

Yeah the card is clean and so is the heatsink. The only thing I can think of is that the new nforce drivers are not compatible with my current version of rivatuner and that is somehow causing a problem. Ill try reinstalling rivatuner and see if there is a new version, then Ill try the old nforce drivers.

 

[zylander]

Well I went back to my old drivers and I am still having the high temp problem. Anyone have any idea why my temps are getting so high? After being overclocked for so long can the video card start to degrade and start to get even hotter?

 

[Cookie Monster]

The card maybe degrade but it doesn't mean it will get even hotter.

Have you tried checking your heatsink more thoroughly? For example, the heatsink and the GPU contact could have been degraded (due to the thermal paste breaking down over time) overtime i.e resulting in poor contact bteween the two.
Or it could the software reading such high temps. If so, check to see if the heatsink gets hot during load by either physically touching or measuring it using the proper gear.

Video cards do degrade but they are fine til they reach a point where you would see artifacts and all sorts of nasties til no video signal is detected i.e blank screen. Hope this helps.