RADEON 9600LE Acting Up

[Noema]

I have this Jetway RADEON 9600LE I bought around three months ago for a PC I built. It had been working fine until last saturday, when it started to crash the computer. It goes like this: The montor goes off for a second, as if changing resolution or refresh rate. Then it comes back...and the computer is already frozen, often with a lot of artifacts all over the place.

At first this only happened when playing games, specially WoW and Far Cry. Now it happens even when Windows is idle. I thought at first it was the card overheating (it doesn't have any fans, only a heatsink over the GPU) but it also happens right after I turn the PC on for the first time in the morning. Also, according to my high tech temp sensor (finger), the heatsink over the GPU doesn't feel hot at all, even after extended usage. It is to note that the Card gets very, very noisy when doing 3D rendering, specially in WoW (Orgrimmar is so loud I have to turn the music higher). This happens also when doing the 3D FPS test in ATI tool.

I alreadfy lowered the AGP aperture to 4X, trying changing the Voltage to no avail.

By the way, I haven't overclocked it. What is the problem? Is it busted? Should I start saving up for a 6800ultra?

 

[christopherzombie]

Did the passive cooling heat sink get knocked loose? How does it get noisy without a fan??!! It sounds junked. I'd take out that loan for a 6800ultra.

 

[Noema]

Mmmm...

Perhaps it's too early to cry victory; however, I reseated the card, removed the dust, got the voltage to 1.7 and the card has been working perfectly for almost 24 hours now.

But I'm sure Murphy's law will punish me for being so optimistic and it will explode sometime today...

Anyway, I'm on to WoW...darn...tuesday....forget that.