ATI graphics card question

MrNightly · December 2005

I didn't know where to post this, so i thought here would be the best shot, with all the gamers.

I have a 9800 ATI pro about 1.5 years old. Recently i've noticed that during, and only during games, little speckles would appear on the map. Once during AoE3 trial, it completely fried and the screen went all pink and purple and a billion different colors. I had left the game on pause with the screen off, for oh, probably 3 or 4 hours. Maybe more. Regardless, ever since then, every game i put in, starts acting up, and some crash.

I swapped monitors out, and the problem was the same. I then started digging, and after removing the Graphics card, i noticed the FAN on the ATI wasn't moving. It appears stuck. I was able to blow the dust off of it, and get it moving again, but not nearly as smoothly as out of the box.

Do you guys think that I blew the fan on the card? Surely, having a game on pause for a few hours wouldn't fry a card would it? Has anyone had experience with this before?

Confused in Kansas...

lanion · December 2005

having a game on pause for a few hours certainly could fry a card if it overheated. If the card still works when you load a game, even for 1 minute, then there is no permanent damage, but you might want to get the fan working better or get a new fan.

personally, I do not use the stock cooling fan on my graphics card. I went and bought one of these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118116
from zalman (www.zalmanusa.com). This will cool your GPU pretty effortlessly, and do so without making any noise. If you have the techincal know-how to dust off your current fan, you can probobly install one of these.

joeparaski · December 2005

You didn't blow the fan on your card by leaving the computer on. My daughter leaves her gaming rig on 24/7. It's the accumulation of dirt and dust that causes the fan to seize up. Once that happens then your card is going to run hotter when you start pushing it. You can try to clean and oil the fan to get it working or replace the fan. But there is a possibility that the card is already damaged.

MrNightly · December 2005

lanion wrote:

having a game on pause for a few hours certainly could fry a card if it overheated. If the card still works when you load a game, even for 1 minute, then there is no permanent damage, but you might want to get the fan working better or get a new fan.

personally, I do not use the stock cooling fan on my graphics card. I went and bought one of these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118116
from zalman (www.zalmanusa.com). This will cool your GPU pretty effortlessly, and do so without making any noise. If you have the techincal know-how to dust off your current fan, you can probobly install one of these.

Hmm, yes it works for about 30 sec or less... after that, it starts acting up on any game. I want to upgrade to the X850 anyways, so maybe this is the excuse i need eh?

What do you think, ATI or the other, NVEDIA or however you spell it

MrNightly · December 2005

joeparaski wrote:

You didn't blow the fan on your card by leaving the computer on. My daughter leaves her gaming rig on 24/7. It's the accumulation of dirt and dust that causes the fan to seize up. Once that happens then your card is going to run hotter when you start pushing it. You can try to clean and oil the fan to get it working or replace the fan. But there is a possibility that the card is already damaged.

Ya, it was very dirty. I'm sure that is what happened. I didn't ever know i was suppossed to clean the things off. Do you think it's beyond repair, or spend the $30 bucks and pick up a new fan to see if that works?

Thanks for the replys.

PolkThug · December 2005

I got the x850 and it plays everything. Upgraded from FX5600 256MB just so I could play Doom3 with higher detail settings.

Schris22 · December 2005

x850 in Pciexpress...I have a 9800 as well but it's AGP so i'll have to upgarde my MOBO to do that and will most likely need a new cpu...so just gonna do a complete overhaul later...

9800 can still hold it's own.

but my friend did spend 300 on a X800 something plus a pci express mobo...and it'll handle whatever on high...

the prices for the 800's are slowly dropping b/c of the 1000 but they don't support pixel shading v 3? i believe....it's a small issue i think with water mainly but you can be the judge of that. Look to tomshardware.com got a lot of comparisions for you

Chris

MrNightly · December 2005

Schris22 wrote:

x850 in Pciexpress...I have a 9800 as well but it's AGP so i'll have to upgarde my MOBO to do that and will most likely need a new cpu...so just gonna do a complete overhaul later...

9800 can still hold it's own.

but my friend did spend 300 on a X800 something plus a pci express mobo...and it'll handle whatever on high...

the prices for the 800's are slowly dropping b/c of the 1000 but they don't support pixel shading v 3? i believe....it's a small issue i think with water mainly but you can be the judge of that. Look to tomshardware.com got a lot of comparisions for you

Chris

Ya, my 9800 Pro is AGP as well. My other comp has the PCI ports. I read that the X800 was almost as good as the X850 but half the cost. I hate computers, as soon as you get them state of the art, they become obsolete.

MrNightly · December 2005

PolkThug wrote:

I got the x850 and it plays everything. Upgraded from FX5600 256MB just so I could play Doom3 with higher detail settings.

How much you pay for that there X850? There are some X800's on sale for around $160 on the net. Seems like a good deal to me.

Polk65 · December 2005

MrNightly wrote:

I have a 9800 ATI pro about 1.5 years old. Recently i've noticed that during, and only during games, little speckles would appear on the map....

Similar problem here, but mine began displaying mostly red pixels and a kaleidoscope of shading in any application or game that uses DirectX. I looked briefly on google and there are others with this problem.

About six weeks ago, one of my Western Digital hard drives started randomly clicking. The sound was almost like the click of death in IBM deathstars. I used the hard drive utility test on the drives but they all reported normal. Next I removed one drive at a time trying to find the clicking one without any luck. The sound disappeared for a few days but then things got worse. Non-boot, booting with errors, hard drives reporting the wrong name and size, the video card stopped working for DirectX applications, USB reported no device when I connected my camera, finally the OS would lock up almost every time I booted.

There was a sale on the ATI x700 on black friday so I picked that up along with a new hard drive. Eventually I found the drive that was clicking and tried making partition copies. The partition copy software reported a disk error and would not copy so I resorted to file copying. Thankfully this worked but each file took 10x longer than normal to copy. I made md5 sums before copying and verified the copy so I'm good there. I powered down to remove the old drive but when I powered up, the new hard drive instantly began a cycle of spinning up then spinning down with an alarming clicking sound. I tried the slave and secondary ide ports but it did the same thing. It surely couldn't be that expensive Antec truepower 480w power supply... or could it? I replaced it with a generic power supply that came with an old case and it booted up fine. The clicking disappeared but I noticed one hard disk on a external controller was not reporting it's name or size correctly. A reboot did not correct the problem, so a cable swap was called for. This fixed that problem and all seems to be going smoothly now for two days.

The original hard drive will no longer boot or identify. The Antec power supply brings back the same problems so that is also junk. I'm not much of a gamer but am happy with the x700 card. It seems to hold up pretty much with the 9800.

This computer is connected to an APC smart-ups 1400, so I'm not sure what failed but I am not thrilled. The casualties so far: 9800 pro, wd120 gb hd, antec power supply, and a 80pin ide cable. I could warranty the Antec but I think I'll get more pleasure introducing it to Mr. Sledgehammer.

lanion · December 2005

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/page18.html

There you go. Find something that fits your price / performance ratio well.

Note that ATI's best card (the x1800xt) seems to have disproportionately high scores on 3dmark2005 compared to actualy gameplay....

PolkThug · December 2005

You don't have to upgrade your mobo, my x850 is AGP.

MrNightly · December 2005

But isn't PCI and PCI e MUCH better that AGP? More pipelines. Now my 9800 has started to freeze on the screensaver. This is stupid. I want a CSi5 not a new graphics card right now!!!

No thoughts on the X800 over the X850? For half the price???

PolkThug · December 2005

As far as computers go, there is ALWAYS something better, it just depends on how much you want to spend. I'm sure the x800 will be fine. The x800 has good FPS for Quake4 which is basically the same graphics of Doom3.

I'm running an AMD 2500 with 1gb ram with an AGP Radeon X850.

Demiurge · December 2005

I would update my Motherboard if I were you. It's the most important component in your PC when you get down to it. With a better Mobo, the more options you have. It's all dependent on how much you want to spend in the long run. MOBO would be square one.

MrNightly · December 2005

Demiurge wrote:

I would update my Motherboard if I were you. It's the most important component in your PC when you get down to it. With a better Mobo, the more options you have. It's all dependent on how much you want to spend in the long run. MOBO would be square one.

Well, here's the deal. I have two computers, (one for me, one for the wife) and her's is a P4 3.6 HT with 1 gig of memory, all the works. She doesn't have a graphics card, so i'm thinking i'll go cheap-o for mine to replace the 9800 pro, then pick up the X800 for hers. Then, i'll secretly steal hers during the night, and swap it all out.

What do you think? And her MOBO is perfectly new... So that wouldn't need to be replaced. Plus I just bought her the new SB Audigy Z Sound card or something like that.

Anyways, I think i'll have to pick up a new graphics card no matter what for mine.. cause i don't think replacing the fan will fix it. Is there someplace you guys recommend for inspecting Graphics cards to see if they are burned up completely or not???

lanion · December 2005

If it works at all it is not burned out, it is just overheating and shutting down. Time how long it takes for a game to crash, then try again with the case open and with a large office fan blowing on your Motherboard. if the time is longer, you know cooling is the problem.

Schris22 · December 2005

about the whole x800 v 850....i just say for 160-200 an x800 or x800 GTO is the way to go...

and PCI-E is worth it...if you're going to the video card for 2 more years or so and all hell is breaking lose on everything else...might be time to upgrade everything...

Chris

MrNightly · December 2005

lanion wrote:

If it works at all it is not burned out, it is just overheating and shutting down. Time how long it takes for a game to crash, then try again with the case open and with a large office fan blowing on your Motherboard. if the time is longer, you know cooling is the problem.

I did this exact thing. And it did take slightly longer to over heat (approx 30 seconds longer). That could be good news. Thanks for the advice! A graphic's cooling fan sounds much better than a new card entirely!

MrNightly · December 2005

Schris22 wrote:

about the whole x800 v 850....i just say for 160-200 an x800 or x800 GTO is the way to go...

and PCI-E is worth it...if you're going to the video card for 2 more years or so and all hell is breaking lose on everything else...might be time to upgrade everything...

Chris

Chris, good idea. I think i'll keep my old 9800 and put a new fan on it, and then just pick up the x800 for hers. Then i'll swap her's out for mine, since it will be a faster rig. She only uses her for the internet, and school, so there shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks again.

David

Schris22 · December 2005

No problem the x800 gto is really cheap and famed for being overclockable to past an XT....but thats up to you.

Hopefully all goes well with the wifey.

Chris

MrNightly · December 2005

lanion wrote:

having a game on pause for a few hours certainly could fry a card if it overheated. If the card still works when you load a game, even for 1 minute, then there is no permanent damage, but you might want to get the fan working better or get a new fan.

personally, I do not use the stock cooling fan on my graphics card. I went and bought one of these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118116
from zalman (www.zalmanusa.com). This will cool your GPU pretty effortlessly, and do so without making any noise. If you have the techincal know-how to dust off your current fan, you can probobly install one of these.

Question for you Lanion:

Answered my own question!!!

Thanks anyways.. hehehe

neomagus00 · December 2005

a note for those of you that have ATI cards: ATITool is an easy-to-use overclocking utility written by the ATI tech guys (I believe that I read this in the documentation, but a quick scan can't find the sentence again, so take that statement with a grain of salt)... for someone looking for better performance without having to know a huge amount of technical stuff (like me) this is a very reliable tool...

i have a mobility radeon 9700, and was able to overclock the GPU by 42%, and the video memory by 16%... not too shabby for a very user-friendly tool, and i didn't even push it very hard... and it is definitely a noticeable difference, not just in numbers, but also in playability of graphics-heavy games...

MrNightly · December 2005

Well, My new fan should be here tomorrow. Hope i can install it without blowing up my house

Tricky tricky...

And thanks for the overclocking site. I'll have to give that a shot when i get back up and running.

Merry New years

MrNightly · December 2005

Ok guys. Here's the question for you today. I got my new fan, VF700-AICu as recommended above. I've installed it according to the directions, skipping no steps

I know i know.. amazing to believe.

When i put it into the computer, and booted up, during the Windows XP while still booting, it's all blue and square boxes covering the entire screen. Then once it got to the desktop, under every icon and the mouse icon, it's real blury. This didn't happen even when the fan was not working at all!!! Did i do something wrong? Any one ever have this happen before???

Thanks.

David

stereo55 · December 2005

My previous 9800P (R35) also had the fan go out and caused atifacts , overheating and pc crashes . Luckily my card was still under warranty (2yrs 10months old out of 3yr) *whew*.
I contacted ATI (online and phone) and they said no problem to replace the WHOLE card . I said ... just replace the card for the fan going out .. ATI said , YES no problem .
Well I sent the card in and got a brand new 9800P with the newer R36 chip in about 10 days . Sold the new 9800P card and upgraded my card to an X800XT-PE
Pretty good customer service from ATI if you ask me .

Send that puppy back to ATI if problems persist and its still under warranty .

My .02

Mjr7531 · January 2006

MrNightly wrote:

Ok guys. Here's the question for you today. I got my new fan, VF700-AICu as recommended above. I've installed it according to the directions, skipping no steps I know i know.. amazing to believe.

When i put it into the computer, and booted up, during the Windows XP while still booting, it's all blue and square boxes covering the entire screen. Then once it got to the desktop, under every icon and the mouse icon, it's real blury. This didn't happen even when the fan was not working at all!!! Did i do something wrong? Any one ever have this happen before???

Thanks.

David

Have you checked your BIOS recently? Just an off-chance but maybe it got reset and you need to reoptimize it?

MrNightly · January 2006

How would i do that?!? And what would i be checking for?!

i'm game.

ApollosWorld · January 2006

If you want an extremely simple solution to your problem.
Buy 2 of these:
http://www.xoxide.com/vantorfan.html

One for intake, one for exhaust, problem solved as far as overheating.
Downside, loud noise.
You could also buy one of these which solved my problem without tornado's
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2237328/search=pci+fan/skd=1

MrNightly · January 2006

ApollosWorld wrote:

If you want an extremely simple solution to your problem.
Buy 2 of these:
http://www.xoxide.com/vantorfan.html

One for intake, one for exhaust, problem solved as far as overheating.
Downside, loud noise.
You could also buy one of these which solved my problem without tornado's
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2237328/search=pci+fan/skd=1

Actually, The card is shot... so I don't think that adding a fan will work. I checked my BIOS out yesterday, and everything appeared normal.. (Not that i know what i'm looking for mind you

) I have contacted ATI and the card is under warrenty. Hopefully they'll replace it. We shall see. Now i just need to decide if I want to spend money on a X800 or X850... Choices choices (Oh ya, one black card port means its a PCI - Express right? The white ones are PCI, Green is AGP and Black PCIe?)

ATI graphics card question

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