Video card artifacts...

[iceshooter161]

Hey, I have an EVGA 6800gt pci-e video card, under windows xp media center 2005, and have had no problems for the last year or so. Within the past week I noticed that about 5 minutes into any game that I play I get a ton of artifacts on the screen making it impossible to play. Right now i have the 81.98 drivers installed and have tried 91.31 and 91.33 beta but they both still produce the artifacts. According to the video control panel my card is idleing at 82 degrees celcius I belive. It is set right now at defaults which it says the threshold is 135C. However, 82C does seem extremely hot just to be idleing. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might fix this? I was looking on the evga website for a number to call but all they have is email which is never any help. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[eViLoNe]

I had this problem with my graphics card a few days ago. You may need to clean the heatsink and fan on the card. Dust inside the fan/heatsink will cause the card to get hotter than usually, and when the card heats up, you'll end up with artifacts.

 

[alvino]

Yeah, check the heatsink and fan. 82C is very hot for any card to be idling at.

 

[eViLoNe]

Yeah, check the heatsink and fan. 82C is very hot for any card to be idling at.

Agreed.

My card is only a 6600GT, but it idles at about 35C. I'm happy with it there, Anything higher usually means it's stressing at something, or is getting stressed by something, and it getting hotter can easily be caused by dust. Best bet would be to clean it out any way possible.

 

[iceshooter161]

see the thing is though in the control panel it says its at 82C but when I ran another temp program which I forget what it was called it said it was idleing at 77 degrees F. Should I get another good program to get the true temp?

 

[alvino]

Well some programs will be accurate and some won't. Usually the one in the ForceWare Control Panel is pretty accurate, so just go with that one. Even then, 77C is pretty darn hot for idle speeds.

Find some time, take the card out, do a maintenance check on it. That means take the heatsink out, check to see if the fan or the heatsink fins are clogged with dust. After you do that, clean the old thermal paste from the card and the heatsink contact plate (just use tissue and dab it with rubbing alcohol), and when it's all clean, apply thermal paste. Make sure you don't apply too much; just a dot the size of a rice grain is the maximum you should go, or it'll insulate the heat, not conduct it. NOTE: Make sure you use Arctic Silver 5 for the GPU core and Arctic Ceramique for the memory, or just Arctic Ceramique for everything. Arctic Silver 5 is conductive, so it'll short out your RAM.

 

[BigLu]

so i left my computer on while i took a shower and while taking the shower i heard a strange noise but thought nothing of it. so i get clothed and start playing f.e.a.r. and i start getting artifacts, i minimize it and look at my temps and it says 99c!!!!!!!!!!! so i immediately reached around and turned off the psu. come to find out that a wire had stopped the fan on my arctic cooling heatsink and fan on my x850xt, so i rearranged some wires, turned it back on and it went back to it's normal idle of 40c, and there's no permanant damage, been playing f.e.a.r. on it alll lday at max settings. that was a close one, whew!

 

[alvino]

Haha, left it on a bit longer like that and instead of posting what you were going to post, you would probably be posting some grievance letter about your poor X850.

 

[iceshooter161]

Ok, I took off the cover of my video card and cleaned out a ton of huge chunks of dust and tried to clean it as best as I could. I then tried to play half-life 2 and the game works perfectly fine again. No more artifacts! Thanks for all of your help!

 

[X1337]

you sure should use newer drivers, 81.98 drivers where the last drivers to support my Ti 4200 before it didnt detect it.