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overclock failure modes

J

jamsomito

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 29, 2010
Messages
3,202
I have a 9600gso (I know... it kind of sucks), and I'm trying to get the most out of it. It's an EVGA card, so it came with their "Precision" overclocking tool. I turned up the core clock, shader clock, and memory clock to the edge of stability and actually got 5-8 fps out of it, which makes me happy because it's the difference between 19fps and 27fps sometimes lol.

However, it seems as though once the card heats up, it's not exactly stable. After an hour or two of gaming, it will suddenly go black for 10 seconds or so and then return to normal. Once it's happened once, it happens every 10-15 mins or so. I do have a HUD showing my GPU temps, and they usually get to 70-72 C when it cuts out, and when it comes back it shows 65-68 C. Is this some sort of fail-safe overheating protection? I have an aftermarket cooler in transit right now, should be here in a couple days to test this.

I had an old, old GeForce 4 Ti 4200+ (Gainward Golden Sample) way back in the day which also came with an OC utility. When I cranked that one up a whole couple Mhz, it would actually display artifacts on the screen. It's been a while now, but I believe that was due to undervolting the vram...?

What do you think is going on with my 9600gso? Undervolting, overheating? I'm interested to see what you guys think.
 
I used to have a 9600GT & then added another in SLI, being single slot cards those little things heated up my case quite a bit, especially in sli with no air being exhausted outside the case.

First make use there is no dust build-up in the fins under the shroud, this added at least 5 to 7 degrees when it happened to me, cleaned every month or so. That would cause me artifacts due to heat.

Try running open case with a room fan on it, does it work better? If so add fans to your case.


I think it may be time to consider an upgrade though... ;)


Y.
 
Thanks, Yakk. The card is actually still pretty new, at least to me. I bought it 6 months ago and thoroughly cleaned it when I took the HSF off to re-apply the thermal paste (which dropped temps 3C idle, 10C load) a month or so ago. Before that, it got upwards of 75-80C after overclocking... showed the same symptoms.

I'm actually currently running my system out of the case, sprawled out on my desk. It runs slightly cooler, but still does the same thing after a couple hours of gaming.

If I back the card back down to stock settings, the problem goes away, so I know it's something to do with heat, voltage, or power.
 
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Could anybody shed some light on typical problems that are encountered when overclocking, or provide some sort of reference where I could find out about this?

I've got it narrowed down slightly, but it would be interesting to find out exactly what's happening...
 
Can't think of anything else offhand, been too long now. If the card runs fine at stock settings, then it's good, just that the GPU barely made the binning process I guess. Upping the voltage helps somewhat get chips stable at the cost of extreme heat buildup & power consumption vs. the performance gained.

Luck of the draw on an OC...


Y.
 
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