Overheating Issues

[Cheesemold]

I have an ATI 9600XT 256MB. It has what looks like a fairly large heatsink, and it has a fan. Recently I've been having some problems, when my computer is on for a long time it crashes with an error caused by my videocard (or it's drivers), and a while ago my videocard was giving me artifacts (or at least what I think are artifacts, random splotches of color) when I was playing a game for a while. I'm only guessing that the card is overheating because I have no way of actually checking the temperature. I am not overclocking the card, but I've thought of possibly underclocking it with ATITool. What should I do about this? Should I get one of those PCI mounted fans to help cool it? Should I consider replacing the fan/heatsink? Should I plan on saving up for another card?

[Bum]

It does sound like a heat issue. I'd check to make sure all your fans are working, video card and case fans. If your card isn't under any warranty, you might want to check to see if the heatsink has come away from the GPU. If that interface isn't solid it will heat up to much. Obviously if you still have a warranty on it, have them check it out. Also, have you added anything into the case that may have blocked airflow?

[ack ack]

sometimes vga heatsinks use a thermal adhesive, which don't conduct heat as well, to connect the HS to the pcb. removing the adhesive and applying artic silver usually cure cooling woes and enhances the performance of the card.

[MisterChief]

sometimes vga heatsinks use a thermal adhesive, which don't conduct heat as well, to connect the HS to the pcb. removing the adhesive and applying artic silver usually cure cooling woes and enhances the performance of the card.

Bingo. And keep the HSF clean and free of dust, especially in the motor shaft, where it'll get gummed up. Believe me, if you own animals, fans get plugged up pretty easiy. My brother's friend had a problem with his comp, and it turned out that is CPU fan was clogged with cat fur.

[Kaolian]

make sure your case isn't pushed up against a wall or something else that is blocking the exhaust ports as well.

[Cheesemold]

I've been wanting to read up on how to modify my videocard's HSF and stuff, but I have yet to find a good tutorial out there. Since posting this I've taken out an old modem I don't use that had a PCB that extened over the top of the fan. The fan of the videocard is an intake so I thought that wouldn't be an issue because it seems like it had more than enough room for it to suck air in. From what I can tell, the HSF looks like it's secured by plastic clips because I can see two white clips comming through the back of the PCB, so maybe the HSF isn't secured by a thermalpaste adhesive. I was thinking that maybe I should buy one of those PCI slot fan things, like you pop it in and it has a sideways fan that either blows air out of the case or sucks air in, I would probably have to find one that serves as an intake.

Oh, and how does one go about installing a temperature sensor?

[Bum]

If that heatsink isn't sitting solidly on the GPU it won't matter how much air you throw at it. The heatsink has to make full contact with the chip in order to be able to absorb the heat. Basically all the heatsink is doing is increasing the surface area of the chip with it mass/design. If the contact is poor then it isn't really doing anything useful and is actually preventing cooling from happening. I'd really make an effort to determine how well that heatsink is seated before you try adding fans and such.

[HandsomeRob]

the ATI Radeon XT series has a temperature sensor on the board, and you can check the temp of the chip by (if you're running windows) right clicking on the desktop, going to properties, then to the settings tab then hitting the advanced button near the bottom right of the window, then a window should pop up with a bunch of tabs, hit the one called "Overdrive(tm)" or "ATI Overdrive(tm)" there are two little thermometers, the one on the left is your GPU temp, the one in the right is its clock speed, it comes with a nifty little overclocking check box... its a miniscule change, but its there. I run an ATI Radeon 9800XT, so my drivers may slightly differ from you, but i think the XT cards all have the overdrive option, and there is a temperature gauge there. I switched out my gpu cooler for a CPU cooler rated to cool a AMD athlon 3000+ and my gpu still idles around 50 C. so it could be overheating, and i think i can find the tutorial i had from when i switched out my stock HSF for this new one. if ya need it i'll start diggin around

[Cheesemold]

Unfortunately I can't seem to locate my "Ati OverDrive" tab:
http://meepmeep.com/no%20overdrive.jpg
Strange how it says 9600, instead of 9600XT, maybe I was ripped off when I bought my videocard.. I probably was. But AIDA32 tells me that it's an XT.. so I don't know.

And I'd love if you could find that tutorial, HandsomeRob.

In the meantime I think I'll poke around a bit on my card. The HSF is held on with these plastic clips that go through the board and they have springs on them. I think using a pliers I can remove them quite easily. When I do that I'll put some thermal paste that's leftover from my CPU on the GPU, if the GPU doesn't have any already.

When my videocard crashes, the heatsink feels very very warm, so I would think that it's definately getting the heat from the GPU, maybe my problem is I need a better way of cooling off the heatsink.

[Zeus]

if you will notice, it says 9600 series which means that it is using the same driver for all 9600 cards. Including the XT. this is not a rare practice as the main diff is the hardware actually attached to the card. Not how the card works.

[Cheesemold]

I sort of hoped that was how it worked. But where's my overdrive? Do I need to hunt through ATI's downloads to find it, or is it offered somewhere as a modified driver?