pci slot coolers = bad?

[subzero813]

i've got a Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT, bought it used off eBay. works like a charm, got similar scores to everyone else in 3D Mark, and i'm running my ram at 66% of FSB speed! (temporarily using 133mhz ram until i get my new stuff in, and i didn't feel like underclocking to 1.5ghz in the meantime).

i fired up ATItool, and got no artifacts, i ran it for like 4-5 minutes after running 3DMark03 and 05...

i turn the clocks up to 520 core, 540 memory....then i ran it...every 30 seconds to a minute it would flash a bunch of yellow dots and then register 'artifacts' then keep going on for another short while until the next batch. so i turned it down to 500/500 and no artifacts.

is it supposed to be this tight? is this card worn out maybe? i used a air duster to clean out the heatsink/fan, btw. i read in reviews where people got it to 520/575 without problems.

the kicker is, i have a pci slot cooler (stick 'em in an expansion slot, and they exhaust air) right next to (ok skipping one slot) the video card. is this bad? does the video card's fan suck IN air and out the side? because wouldn't that cause a loss of pressure between the two fans which are both exhausting air

 

[hans030390]

Take out the fan on the pci slot thingy, and if the whole is right below the fan of the card, the fan draws in cold air from outside.

or something...have you done that?

 

[subzero813]

you mean keep the cooler, but literally remove the guts so its an empty pathway to outside air?

thing is, i have a side panel 80mm intake fan that's blowing down DIRECTLY onto the video card from above. like exactly through the middle. i think that's enough intake air?

should i just remove the pci slot cooler? (its an exhaust fan).

here's a quick diagram i made, blue lines mean airflow

http://subzero.mine.nu/files/airflow.JPG

 

[lein]

I like your pic (sorry I dont have anything productive to say)

Edit: I may actually have something productive to say...Maybe your PCI fans are sucking too much "cooler" air, leaving little air for the HSF to suck up (I think the video card fan sucks air into the chip. Take it out and see if your temps change. I wonder, could you change something to make the PCI fan intake air instead of exhausting it?

 

[Banzai042]

Even if you could get the fan to blow into the case instead o out i don't know that you would want to do that, because the air in the back would be heated up by the rest of the exhaust air in the case. I would guess that the fan on the card isn't getting enough air because it is competing with an exhaust fan, and if you have a side intake that blows almost directly onto the card that's probably the best intake option. Removing the extra fan should help you decrease temps on the card.

 

[volrathy]

sounds like it could be shifty ram chips on the video card

 

[subzero813]

i tried it again using AtiTool .24, i locked the fan at 100%, had the temperatures being monitored, and put core up to 520, left memory at 500...started getting artifacts. not just one small little yellow dot. the entire thing would flash yellow. the temperatures never got over 60 C. i put core back to 500, and turned memory up to 560...same thing. temperatures never got over 60 C, and yet i got artifacts every few seconds. and usually giant blotches of yellow. it was reporting temperature every 5 seconds so it wasn't lagging where the temperature spiked and i didn't know.

i've had the card at 70+ C with stock clock speeds without artifacts. i got completely normal 3DMark scores for this card.

its a Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT (these memory chips should be good to 600Mhz). i got it off eBay used... i guess i get what i pay for. i should be happy it just works normally...it doesn't look at all like its been tampered with physically. just figured i might try X800XT PE speeds.

EDIT: i just ran 3DMark05 at 520/540 and didn't see any artifacts, and went up 160 points from 500/500 run. using cat 5.8

 

[Rock Hydra]

PCI coolers are just exhausts to remove dead air, so I wouldn't worry about it. You might actually be stealing some airflow from the card with one of those.

 

[Powermoloch]

I would try to put the pci exhaust right below your card...maybe low enough from the case to make some good air movement. Don't want both fans competing for air although I have a pci exhaust fan right under my x850xt . I got 2 btw

 

[gac009]

check your voltages if those are fine then perhaps you shouldnt overclock this particular card.


edited (stole advice from another post p)

 

[Aries64]

Originally posted by: subzero813
i've got a Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT, bought it used off eBay. works like a charm, got similar scores to everyone else in 3D Mark, and i'm running my ram at 66% of FSB speed! (temporarily using 133mhz ram until i get my new stuff in, and i didn't feel like underclocking to 1.5ghz in the meantime).

i fired up ATItool, and got no artifacts, i ran it for like 4-5 minutes after running 3DMark03 and 05...

i turn the clocks up to 520 core, 540 memory....then i ran it...every 30 seconds to a minute it would flash a bunch of yellow dots and then register 'artifacts' then keep going on for another short while until the next batch. so i turned it down to 500/500 and no artifacts.

is it supposed to be this tight? is this card worn out maybe? i used a air duster to clean out the heatsink/fan, btw. i read in reviews where people got it to 520/575 without problems.

the kicker is, i have a pci slot cooler (stick 'em in an expansion slot, and they exhaust air) right next to (ok skipping one slot) the video card. is this bad? does the video card's fan suck IN air and out the side? because wouldn't that cause a loss of pressure between the two fans which are both exhausting air

Personally, I would definitely ditch the PCI slot cooler. They typically don't work very efficiently, especially if your system is not an inverted layout (like the Lian Li V1000, V2000, ect) because (a) heat rises, (b) slot coolers don't move a very large volume of air.

I think that since you have a side panel fan blowing cooler outside air directly onto the videocard you should remove the PCI slot cooler. This will increase the air flow around your videocard and should provide better cooling for your X800 XT. This should help.

However, the X800 XT puts out a lot of heat, all of which is still being released into your case. Sure, case fans and the PS fan suck alot off this air out, but not all of it. You may want to try an Arctic Cooling Silencer, which not only exhausts most of the heated air drawn off of the GPU directly outside of the case, but also runs much more quietly than the stock (reference design) GPU cooler that came on your X800 XT.

Since you didn't mention whether your system is AGP or PCI Express here is the link to the Arctic Cooling Silencer page:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga1.php

If you aren't sure which Silencer you need you can email or fax Arctic Cooling's tech support at their New York office to be sure you order the correct Silencer. My X800 XT PE came "standard" on my videocard (see full system specs in my sig below). Good luck.

 

[subzero813]

agp voltage is at 1.5v...and its locked to 66MHz in BIOS. i really don't wanna mess with that. i shouldn't have to.

i made a new post later on, disregarding the pci slot cooler, btw:

i tried it again using AtiTool .24, i locked the fan at 100%, had the temperatures being monitored, and put core up to 520, left memory at 500...started getting artifacts. not just one small little yellow dot. the entire thing would flash yellow. the temperatures never got over 60 C. i put core back to 500, and turned memory up to 560...same thing. temperatures never got over 60 C, and yet i got artifacts every few seconds. and usually giant blotches of yellow. it was reporting temperature every 5 seconds so it wasn't lagging where the temperature spiked and i didn't know.

i've had the card at 70+ C with stock clock speeds without artifacts. i got completely normal 3DMark scores for this card. its a Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT

EDIT: i just ran 3DMark05 at 520/540 and didn't see any artifacts, and went up 160 points from 500/500 run. using cat 5.8. but ATiTool still shows those artifacts when i run it.

i'm thinking of inverting the PCI slot cooler and putting it above my video card (a slot for some kind of onboard-modem thing that i never use, its the only thing motherboards have above video card slots). basically so it exhausts air right from the back of the video card. (take off the bracket, flip it upside down and put it back on the cooler). it does exhaust at least as much air as any 80mm fan i have.

 

[harmonjoe255]

Yeah, I got a PCI System Cooling Fan from Hardware Cooling and it does a great job keeping my PC a few degrees cooler.

 

[gac009]

I meant check the actual voltage your PSU is delivering, if as you run ATI tool it flucates alot the we may have the cause of your problem.

 

[Marsumane]

First off, remove that cooler. Second, that is not how u overclock. Start with either the core or the ram and up it by small increments till u find the max (not 20 at a time, more like 5) Then do the same for the other one. That will narrow down if the core or mem is giving you the artifacts. Then write an email to ATI because you didnt get the card that oced as high as other peoples' card have.

Basically im saying dont expect much of anything for an overclock on a card. You do not have a defective card, you just dont have a blessed one like the others that you saw. Find your max oc and be happy

 

[tvdang7]

i have a x800 xt pci-ealso and i got mine off a forum last week and it dont overclock welll either the best i can do it like 520/535 i think the guy i got it from o/c it too much or im just ulucky cuz i went high and it would artifact alot and yet it would get lower scores on 3D mark wierd

 

[subzero813]

i'm tempted to think its ATITool's fault. i mean...temperatures are more than okay. 3DMark went up, even if only by 160...

plus i read from more than a few places that the Gigabyte X800 has ram that can do 1.2GHz (like, that's what its rated for).

the GPU is stable at 510 core though...i just don't get why it can't do 'PE' speeds of 520/560 though...card looks the same, has fast ram, etc. is there any other way to test for artifacting besides ATITool?

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: subzero813
i'm tempted to think its ATITool's fault. i mean...temperatures are more than okay. 3DMark went up, even if only by 160...

plus i read from more than a few places that the Gigabyte X800 has ram that can do 1.2GHz (like, that's what its rated for).

the GPU is stable at 510 core though...i just don't get why it can't do 'PE' speeds of 520/560 though...card looks the same, has fast ram, etc. is there any other way to test for artifacting besides ATITool?

It cannot lie... Different games/benchmarks stress different parts of the card differently. 3dmark may not stress the same part as AtiTool does and thus wont artifact. I had my 9800p oced to a specific amount for over a year. When i played the F.E.A.R demo my gun had a few artifacts in it. First time i ever saw them at that speed in any game/benchmark. Its smart to turn it down a notch each time you notice any sign of overheating because 1) its not good for the card 2) its annoying and 3) it probably will happen in another title. Just accept that something is over what it should be clocked at and throttle back.

Temps are just there for comparison. Say it probed the middle-top of the chip. whose to say the back isnt much hotter? You cant take temps as an endall for overclocking.

 

[pottyjohn31]

ok than, how do you overclock?

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: subzero813
i'm tempted to think its ATITool's fault. i mean...temperatures are more than okay. 3DMark went up, even if only by 160...

plus i read from more than a few places that the Gigabyte X800 has ram that can do 1.2GHz (like, that's what its rated for).

the GPU is stable at 510 core though...i just don't get why it can't do 'PE' speeds of 520/560 though...card looks the same, has fast ram, etc. is there any other way to test for artifacting besides ATITool?

I used to use ATItool for my 9800 pro. I then switched to Ray Adams' ATI "tray tool" for the features, and also after awhile ATIT was telling me my 9800p was artifacting at default clocks. (I had a zalman and great case flow). ATITT reported stable operation at 430/370, so go figure - it was also rock solid in HL2, racing sim, fear demo, etc.

I recently got the Gigabyte X800 XT PE, brand new. As soon as I fired up ATIT and hit "stress test" on default clocks (520/560) the entire screen started artifacting yellow dots.

Now I'm really paranoid..... uninstalled ATIT and won't install it again. My card is rock stable in everything, haven't tried overclocking it yet. I still run ATITT.

 

[impemonk]

I never use PCI slot coolers as they just recirculate hot air. I suggest you dremel 2 80mm holes in the side of your case near your video card and have that blowing on it. I did that with my 7800GTX and now its 6-8 degrees cooler.

 

[Fraggable]

I don't have much to say that hasn't been said before, but I can't get my X800 XT AIW above 531\531 with a ATI Silencer 1 rev. 2 and AS5. My temps don't get too high, I just get artifacts. I guess it's just the luck of the draw on if you get a OCing card or not.