FEAR killed my GPU?

S

sc4r4b

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2003
Messages
287
So the other night I was on a killing spree in FEAR MP and then all of a sudden my screen filled up with artifacts and my 2yo. BFG 6800GT OC died. I realize games are taxing but I was running at 10x7 no AA. BFG rawks so I'll be RMAing my card this week. I had to buy a new PSU just to confirm it's death. Kinda sucks I'm out 100 bucks... but at least I have a SLi compatible PSU now. I digress....

Now I had played through the entire single player game without any issues, so i find it kinda odd that my GPU would simply die while playing my first match of the day. Hell, just last week I cleaned out my PC with compressed air - I removed all of my fans, cards, and dusted them off. I'm wondering if maybe the recent 91.31 drivers from nvidia combined with FEAR may have contributed to the death of my card?

Another reason why I was thinking it was FEAR is because my office recently started playing the free multiplayer game during breaks and a few of the workstations locked up when we first gave it a try. I'm a professional 3D artist so our workstations are pretty highend so there's really no reason they shouldn't be able to play the game.

Anyway, after searching through google I've noticed a trend with FEAR and GPUs locking up and I was wondering if anyone else has noticed it as well?

BTW - my rig has a geforce2GTS in it now... :cries: :(
 
Well, its probably the hardest they've had to work for while as fear quite demanding.. But its not the fault of the game if your hardware isnt properly cooled.
 
Shocky said:
Well, its probably the hardest they've had to work for while as fear quite demanding.. But its not the fault of the game if your hardware isnt properly cooled.
Click to expand...

implying that the 6800gt stock cooling isnt good enough? thats nvidia's fault if its not

original poster: rma your card and good luck.

stick to official whql certified drivers next time.
 
why would cooling be a problem i thought when gpus hit there threshold they shut down or give u a warning and also my threshold is really high it is 130 but i never even break 50
 
Shocky said:
Well, its probably the hardest they've had to work for while as fear quite demanding.. But its not the fault of the game if your hardware isnt properly cooled.
Click to expand...

lol
So tell us, how do you "know" if his cooling is good enough or not?
What facts make you believe that the problem is caused by ineptness from sc4r4b?
Its good you spend your time making useful comments that make sense :rolleyes:

to sc4r4b
I and a few friends have been thinking for a while that drivers for graphics cards are optimising for graphics throughput and for power consumption/temperature.
I have seen sudden jumps in core temps well beyond the norm with my old 6800GT just by using beta drivers.
The cards may be able to do more but the standard cooling might not be up to it.

Maybe FEAR is using the core harder than was intended by NVidia and subsequently it did overheat?
This would be NVidias problem not your own.
 
To echo, FEAR has nothing to do with your card kicking the bucket. RMA it.
 
sc4r4b said:
Edit-
What's the likelihood that BFG will send me a 6800GT OC? Do they even make them anymore? :confused:
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I think they send a newer model that is not able to be opened up to 16 pipes or oc'd or something like that. I have seen one person complain until he got them to take it back a ship them another working older model.
 
Chernobyl1 said:
lol
So tell us, how do you "know" if his cooling is good enough or not?
What facts make you believe that the problem is caused by ineptness from sc4r4b?
Its good you spend your time making useful comments that make sense :rolleyes:

to sc4r4b
I and a few friends have been thinking for a while that drivers for graphics cards are optimising for graphics throughput and for power consumption/temperature.
I have seen sudden jumps in core temps well beyond the norm with my old 6800GT just by using beta drivers.
The cards may be able to do more but the standard cooling might not be up to it.

Maybe FEAR is using the core harder than was intended by NVidia and subsequently it did overheat?
This would be NVidias problem not your own.
Click to expand...

Obviously this cards either faulty or didn’t have adequate cooling/ventilation unless you think the game broke his card. I've not implyed that anyone is "inept"... .
 
BBA said:
I think they send a newer model that is not able to be opened up to 16 pipes or oc'd or something like that. I have seen one person complain until he got them to take it back a ship them another working older model.
Click to expand...


6800gt's come with 16pipelines default anyway
 
Shocky said:
Obviously this cards either faulty or didn’t have adequate cooling/ventilation unless you think the game broke his card. I've not implyed that anyone is "inept"... .
Click to expand...


hmm, you were a bit direct with this comment
Shocky said:
But its not the fault of the game if your hardware isnt properly cooled.
Click to expand...

You were telling him that his hardware isnt cooled properly.
So how do you know if his cooling wasnt good enough?
 
ure card was probably going to crap out before FEAR, it just killed it at the right timee.... sucks.... just wait for the rma and play some old games on integrated graphics or something, maybe theyl be outa the 6800gt's and ull get a newer card like a 7600gt or something... but fear did NOT kill ure card
 
Chernobyl1 said:
hmm, you were a bit direct with this comment


You were telling him that his hardware isnt cooled properly.
So how do you know if his cooling wasnt good enough?
Click to expand...

How does that make any implications towards him? Did he design or install the stock cooling... probably not... :confused: People like you on forums really do my head in... :rolleyes:
 
Shocky said:
How does that make any implications towards him? Did he design or install the stock cooling... probably not... :confused: People like you on forums really do my head in... :rolleyes:
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its people like you that do my head in.
You accuse him of having substandard cooling yet you have no idea if he has.
 
Chernobyl1 said:
lol
So tell us, how do you "know" if his cooling is good enough or not?
What facts make you believe that the problem is caused by ineptness from sc4r4b?
Its good you spend your time making useful comments that make sense :rolleyes:

to sc4r4b
I and a few friends have been thinking for a while that drivers for graphics cards are optimising for graphics throughput and for power consumption/temperature.
I have seen sudden jumps in core temps well beyond the norm with my old 6800GT just by using beta drivers.
The cards may be able to do more but the standard cooling might not be up to it.

Maybe FEAR is using the core harder than was intended by NVidia and subsequently it did overheat?
This would be NVidias problem not your own.
Click to expand...
Every stock heatsink on video cards these days are horrible. After a few years of having a video card like a 6800GT or 9800 pro or some other card you will notice it start to fail from heating. Every video card that I have and use often is warpped from the heat on the stock heatsinks. I'm just to lazy to buy 3rd party heatsinks because it gives me a great reason to upgrade.
 
yeah, sounds like a heating problem. But I doubt FEAR did anything to your card. I'm running a GMA950 on a step 2 revision 945chipset motherboard (yay, verification board) since my P5LD2 is in the shop and this motherboard has a problem and can't install PCIe port drivers. it runs fine, shouldn't kill anything. my 950 would have been long gone if software had anything to do with it. you sure the fan didn't die or something?
 
Chernobyl1 said:
its people like you that do my head in.
You accuse him of having substandard cooling yet you have no idea if he has.
Click to expand...

I didn’t accused anyone of anything... the only one doing any accusing round here is you so quite being a hypocrite and learn to read and properly interpret what people are saying instead of just reading what you want to read.
 
look, sorry if you didnt mean it like that. You did tell him his cooling isnt good enough though .
 
It's impossible for a game to directly kill a peice of hardware. There are other factors at work here which have already been addressed.
 
subcribed..............I'm interested to see what BFG sends you. Also, don't blame the game, and I know of some one that had a GPU mishap aftery they dusted off their case.....is dust a killer????
 
FWIW, FEAR: Combat (free multiplayer you mentioned) is my current choice for stress-testing the overclock on my machine.

I don't know WHAT the hell it does, but it does something. Running 2 instances of Prime95 (for each core)...running 3dMark03, 05, or 06...RTHDRIBL....ATI Tray Tool or ATI Tool's built-in artifact detector...etc...

...NOTHING causes my machine to power down from overheating. Except FEAR: Combat.

It actually seems like it's the motherboard chipset overheating causing the issue on my box - no idea *why* it would be, while nothing else does, but there ya go. When running FEAR, Shuttle's XPC Tools reports my chipset is a solid 5-6C hotter than any other stress test I've found for the system. Perhaps because it's hitting *everything* so hard at once? NIC (integrated), sound (integrated), as well as the PCI-E bus, hard disks, memory, and CPU? (Of course, I'd tried stress testing all that at once artificially - 2 Prime95s, RTHDRIBL full-screen with max AA, Bittorrent in the background maxing out WinXP's connections...still, not anywhere near the same temp)

Anyway, I dunno, short end of all that is...yeah, I've found FEAR's multiplayer to be the most system-stressful app I have ever seen
 
Good luck with the replacement sc4r4b, hope you don't have to wait to long for it.. :(

Chernobyl1 said:
look, sorry if you didnt mean it like that. You did tell him his cooling isnt good enough though .
Click to expand...

Theres a key word in that post, and it begins with I and ends with F... ... Im done here...
 
solobaricsrock said:
I agree.....Thats like saying the motor in your car blew up because you washed it too hard :confused:
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Bad analogy. It would be like your motor blowing up while racing and that does happen. After all he was stressing the card not cleaning it.
 
trek554 said:
Bad analogy. It would be like your motor blowing up while racing and that does happen. After all he was stressing the card not cleaning it.
Click to expand...

Did Ricky Bobby yell "Talladega wrecked my car!!". No. ;)
 
pandora's box said:
implying that the 6800gt stock cooling isnt good enough? thats nvidia's fault if its not

original poster: rma your card and good luck.

stick to official whql certified drivers next time.
Click to expand...

Well nvidia don't make boards and cooling system like fans and heat sinks, they make chipsets. I'll go for XFX or Asus. How well the cooling system depends who makes the board.
 
pArTy said:
Every stock heatsink on video cards these days are horrible. After a few years of having a video card like a 6800GT or 9800 pro or some other card you will notice it start to fail from heating. Every video card that I have and use often is warpped from the heat on the stock heatsinks. I'm just to lazy to buy 3rd party heatsinks because it gives me a great reason to upgrade.
Click to expand...
well except the 7800GTX 512/7900GTX, otherwise they are converted southbridge coolers
 
There's some interesting comments here...

Dust... Since I recently cleaned out my PC could that have been a factor? That really didn't occur to me until a previous poster mentioned it. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

I simply find it odd that my card would die when I have a geforce2GTS and a ti4400 that are still going strong to this day. Granted, I do realize that sometimes cards go bad under normal conditions.

Like I mentioned previously, a couple workstations at work shut down from overheating when playing FEAR so I thought it was worth creating this topic.

coolxboxgamer- I really hope BFG doesn't send me a 7600GS because that seems like a downgrade from my 6800GT. I'll take a 7800GT though! :p
 
hmm, i often use the air-compressor for dusting my case and untill now i never had any problems.
 
It's impossible for a game to directly kill a peice of hardware. There are other factors at work here which have already been addressed.
Click to expand...

I disagree. I once had my School Issued IBM Thinkpad R51 bluescreen. About 5 seconds after the bluescreen my wireless router erupted in a puff of smoke.

I was downloading at about 200kbps at the time, so I'm CONVINCED that POS laptop broke my router!

Anyways, back OT, OP, I agree with what most of the people here have said, It wasn't FEAR that killed your card. I'm sure it was dying eventually, and FEAR just stressed it a little too much.
 
Just last night my 7900GTX took a dive while playing Tiger woods after about two hours( had been playing fear since it came out, and it withstood that). So i know how you feel. Started artifacting on a game that isnt that demanding. It wouldnt artifact on other games for some reason. Then it would stutter, then freeze the computer. Then all games stuttered and would play like crap. I borrowed a 6200turbo cache while it is rma'd. the 6200 runs tiger just fine with lower settings. I tried the 6200 before i deemed my 7900 dead, but it is dead. Works fine in windows only, but you cant play any real game.
 
kvn5000 said:
Just last night my 7900GTX took a dive while playing Tiger woods after about two hours( had been playing fear since it came out, and it withstood that). So i know how you feel. Started artifacting on a game that isnt that demanding. It wouldnt artifact on other games for some reason. Then it would stutter, then freeze the computer. Then all games stuttered and would play like crap. I borrowed a 6200turbo cache while it is rma'd. the 6200 runs tiger just fine with lower settings. I tried the 6200 before i deemed my 7900 dead, but it is.
Click to expand...

I've got a 6200 TC as a backup, although I think I might have to bust out Diablo II and Tie Fighter as I only own current-games and I doubt the 6200 would fair too well.
 
My cards artifact like hell when I play FEAR at default speeds.. with that game and only that game does this happen. It's working cards harder than any other game out there.. even Oblivion.. it uses per pixel lighting, so each pixel is drawn with all light sources taken into account, rather than just casting graphic shadows behind objects... so I think that's just working the gpu <--> memory harder than anything else out there.. pretty crazy!
 
xtasyindecay said:
I've got a 6200 TC as a backup, although I think I might have to bust out Diablo II and Tie Fighter as I only own current-games and I doubt the 6200 would fair too well.
Click to expand...


hehe i used a 10 off coupon at the local shop and bought it for $50.00. For light duty and testing setup it works pretty good for that money. In order for it to run anything you got to put up with some crazy zig zags man, its nuts coming from always buying midrange and the occasional high end when i get on a streak of game buying. Whats even stranger is i can tolerate it for now :p On old gen games like ghost recon, tiger woods 2003 its ok. Yes it was tiger 2003 that killed the GTX, as i type i realize how unbelievably lame that is.
 
kvn5000 said:
hehe i used a 10 off coupon at the local shop and bought it for $50.00. For light duty and testing setup it works pretty good for that money. In order for it to run anything you got to put up with some crazy zig zags man, its nuts coming from always buying midrange and the occasional high end when i get on a streak of game buying. Whats even stranger is i can tolerate it for now :p On old gen games like ghost recon, tiger woods 2003 its ok. Yes it was tiger 2003 that killed the GTX, as i type i realize how unbelievably lame that is.
Click to expand...

I bet the 6200 TC would last 5+ years too.... lol.
 
I got my BFG 6800GT OC RMA today...

After some brief testing it seems that the the core is overheating. :rolleyes:

The Idle temp 75C... My last card was idle at like 50C. Seems like a big jump especially since the new card has the copper bfg cooler on it. My last 6800GT was a nvidia reference design that BFG put their name on.

Anyway, during testing I enabled the "notify when GPU core temperature exceeds threshold" and in both FEAR and Darkstar One I was exceeding 120C. :eek: I added an old PCI slot cooler I had laying around but it doesn't help at all.

I currently have an Antec Sonata Case with 2x120mm fans. The fans have been sufficient in the past but currently I'm not sure what to do.

Should I even worry about the GPU temp? Or is it time to look into some better cooling?
 
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