Defective video card?

D

dagas

Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
614
I've had my Gigabyte 8800GTS 512MB for almost a year now and I've had a problem with it for a long time. I have to manually set the fan speed on the card higher (at 70 %) or it gets graphical artifacts and the computer freezes (When playing 3D games). Should this happen!? It's running at around 54 Celsius at default 37 % fan speed at idle and when playing it goes to maybe 65 or so and that's when the card goes haywire. I have to raise it to 70 % to keep it below 60.

I've been fine with this for a long time, though I haven't like it. However I'm getting more and more frustrated by the fan noise and with the 180.xx drivers they have for some reason disabled manual fan speed settings so I can't use any drivers newer than the 179 =(

Is this normal for 8800GTS? (It's factory overclocked by Gigabyte to 700/1000 (not sure about the shaders but I think they are a bit overclocked as well) I haven't overclocked any myself just use the speed it came with from the factory.
 
You shouldn't have to set the fan speed under normal operation. The card is defective if it overheats that easy. RMA that sucker.
 
I got a BFG8800gt and it used to have the same problem but once I apply the bios update the fan speed would go auto when the card heats up.
 
Problem is I have to send that sucker to USA and most likely pay for shipping. I had problems with EVGA before, I spent around 70 bucks on shipping costs sending 3 defective cards to them until I gave up and bought an ATI card. I knew I should not have bought Nvidia again after that trouble, but I did...The only nvidia card I've had that has worked fine was the good old GF4 ti 4200 :p

Where can I get new BIOS? Will BFG work with a Gigabyte card?
 
The heatsink paste on the GPU is probably in a bad way.
Take the cooler off, clean the old paste off and apply MX2 paste.
You will get a noticeable drop in temps anyway compared to the normal thermal paste and even more if there is a problem with the paste as it seems you have.

If you dont want to ship the card back, using new paste or a better cooler are the best solutions.
I'm using the Accelero S1 + silent 120mm fan on my 8800GT and it gives awesome temps, never exceeding 50C on the hottest day.
Idle is in in the mid/lower 30s.
There is no fan control as there is no need for it :)
Its also pretty cheap.
 
Interesting. I've had Accelero products before (on my 9800pro and X1950GT) but this one seems a lot better than those. Do I need a fan and if so, can I mount any 120mm on it? I don't see any place to mount the fan on pictures.
 
You can get away without a fan and still get lower temps (with moderate case air flow), or fit a silent 120mm and get a really good overclock.

I modded my cards BIOS to feed 1.1V to the GPU (default was 1.05V) and now I get a 20% extra overclock (760/1945) with temps still not exceeding 50C (120mm silent fan fitted).
 
Right now I worry more about getting it to run stable at the current speed than overclocking it :p so I can fit any 120mm? I don't have to get some fan designed for this cooler?

I'm worried about something though. The cooler seems to be very good at cooling the core, but what about the memory? I read on tweaktown that they had problems with the memory overheating (at least without a fan) since the heatsink doesn't touch the memory and since I can't be sure, but I suspect it's the memory rather than the core that is the problem since the artifacts are similar to those that occur when overclocking memory too much.
 
The cooler comes with heatsinks for the memory.
You have to fit them right first time though.
I ended up having to get some Akasa thermal tape to stick mine down.
It has been reported that the ramsinks arent actually needed but I'd be sure to have air blowing at the memory if no ram sinks are fitted.

You can fit any fan you like.
I strapped on a standard case 120mm fan using plastic coated wire.
Its better to use wire so you can unstrap the fan to clean dust off every 6 months or so.
 
Well I ordered a Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo a bit more expensive than the S1, but with the price of a fan (not needed for the Twin Turbo since it comes with fans) the difference isn't that big.

I also took the opportunity to get a Thermaltake ultra 120 extreme and a fan for that. I hope the Scythe Slipstream 500RPM will be enough (I wanted 1200 or 800 but they didn't have any and I didn't want to wait several weeks or order from another place). It should be enough since I've seen people running it without a fan and my CPU runs very cool. Unlike my bad luck with video cards I was lucky got a very good CPU =) despite the overclock I can run it on lower voltage not higher as you would expect from an overclock. Only it's low multiplier and my slow memory stops it from going further.
 
Hehe, you'll have fun clocking with those, almost the same as my setup but with better GPU fans!
Note the Accelero already has MX-2 paste applied to it so you wont need to replace the paste the first time you attach it.

I recommend reading up on how to apply the ramsinks properly as they need to be done right first time.
They dont stick well once removed.
 
Thanks for the tip, I will do that. I noticed the Twin Turbo, unlike the S1, included heatsinks for the voltage regulators as well which is good since the reference design by nvidia have them cooled by heatsinks and if they thought they needed it, they probably do.

I've read that Zalman STG1 thermal paste can lower the temperature by one degree compared to MX-2, but that's splitting hairs or whatever the appropriate expression is.

The only problem is that because of my little shopping spree I will have to wait until next month before I can afford the Antec P182 I so badly want, oh well after that my computer will be complete and I will never have to change anything because it will be PERFECT! mwohahaaa (well...never is a long time, but at least for several months)
 
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