![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
BigMacAttack
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2006
- Messages
- 1,563
I'm on an older setup (Sapphire PCI-e X800pro 256 mb GDDR3) that has performed well in the past but recently was not doing so well. When I first got it about 15 months ago it would oc from 475/450 to 560/560 which was pretty good. Lately it was prone to getting quite hot (almost 80C under ATItool load testing) and oc'ing poorly (no more than 530 mem). I was about ready to ditch it or buy a better cooler and then decided to give it a cleaning so I took it out of the system and took the cooler off. It had some dust and a little debris (very minor) in it so I cleaned all that up but the thing that stuck out to me was how poorly the paste was applied. It was mostly gooped up at the outer edges of the gpu and hsf surfaces with little on the gpu itself. It was also hardened and nasty so I cleaned all the surfaces and applied a thin, even coating of AS Ceramique, put it back together and installed it. What a difference! Testing with ATItool again showed a max temp of 64C (down from near 80C!) and a max mem speed of 585 mhz!
So the lesson learned is don't trust the factory to use high quality paste or trust that they applied it very well. If you are having heat related issues with your video card take matters into your own hands and try reapplying hsf paste and cleaning things up a bit. It just might help.
So the lesson learned is don't trust the factory to use high quality paste or trust that they applied it very well. If you are having heat related issues with your video card take matters into your own hands and try reapplying hsf paste and cleaning things up a bit. It just might help.