video card overheating or???

[wolfman11]

Hello all,

I have a strange problem I've been trying to nail down. I have assembled the following machine approximately 2.5 weeks ago:

Antec Super Lan boy case, 120mm intake and 120mm exhaust fans
FSP 450w power supply with 120mm exhaust fan above CPU
AMD Opteron 146 2.0 @ 2.4
2x1 gig OCZ Platinum (had this for 1+ years)
eVGA 7600GT video card

Originally I set this up and benchmarked the heck out of it and all the while had the side of the case off. All of this benchmarking was done with my Hitachi 120 gig 8 meg cache 7200 RPM PATA drive. This past weekend I cloned that drive to a Raptor 74 gig and put the side on the case.

Since then I can't run 3dmark2001 straight through. It *always* fails on test 13 of 17 (verex shader). I've tried this with the Raptor as drive C, the Hitachi back in as drive C, with the CPU at 2.0 stock and at 2.4 (the CPU temp is the same in the bios when I reboot the machine regardless of it's setting 2.0 vs 2.4).

So....I believe that my issue is video card cooling. The MB temps are 37C and the CPU is at 44C under load.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm trying to decide if I should get something like a Zalman VF900 or would a slot fan blowing on the video card do the trick (I *think* the 7600GT stock fan pulls air in versus exhausting it - if it's exhausting I can't feel any air coming off it)? I'd really like to hear the advice of some of you pros.

Thanks.

 

[Fistandantilis]

what are the temps on the card? the other temps look OK. are you overclocking the card at all?

 

[wolfman11]

Not overclocking the video card at all. I've been trying to get a temp from the card...eVGA's site said to download SpeedFan and install it, which I did. However, I can't seem to get a video card temp from it. It shows the Raptor at 33C however.

I'm new to nVidia - been using ATI cards for years - is there a temp monitoring utilty that is the "prefered" or "common" on? I can grab a copy if there is a recommended one...

Thanks!

 

[wolfman11]

Hmmm...I found the temp setting - silly me. And it is showing up in SpeedFan now that I can compare the two.

That said, I stopped it on the test before the fail point and here's what I see:

GPU 43C
Raptor 33C
CPU 47C (higher than I had measured before)

I'm wondering now if I'm blaming the video when it is the CPU overheating?

 

[SparkyJJO]

47C isn't overheating on the CPU. My Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2.86GHz gets up to 48 sometimes in a warm room when under load and its fine.

When you say the test fails, does it like crash to desktop, artifact, BSOD, reboot...?

 

[wolfman11]

Sorry, I should've been more clear - the video toggles like it is switching video mode before showing the next test. However, it'll do that 8-10 times in a row. I can't escape or toggle out of the test. I did uninstall and reinstall the benchmark software. I was able to break out of the test once and the video display was a mess - there were blocks of black where windows had been, outlines of all the windows were black, etc -

I'm really stumped. My power supply is a good Fortron unit, 450 watt and is new with this build. Thanks.

 

[Operandi]

Those temps are ice cold. To me it sounds like a bad graphics card.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: Operandi
Those temps are ice cold. To me it sounds like a bad graphics card.

QFT, when you start seeing black "holes" in stuff that is a bad sign. Last card that did that to me had a memory failure

 

[wolfman11]

Yuck...well I contacted eVGA. I haven't overclocked the card at all, so hopefully a replacement won't be a problem. Thanks a lot everyone.