I have been having some artifacting playing games with my Sapphire X800 XT PE. I found that it stops occurring when I underclock my ram to 500 mhz with ATI Tool. ATI Tool is also reporting extremely high temps. I assume there is a problem with the temp probe because it is reporting temps of 80+ degrees Celsius. If I play long enough even with the vram underclocked substantially the artifacts eventually return to a lesser extent. Do you think this is a cooling issue? If so would you recommend the Artic Cooling ATI Silencer 4 rev. 2 or the Zalman cooler or something else keeping in mind that memory cooling is important. If you suspect its the vram itself is there anything I can do. Also if you need any more info feel free to ask.
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VGA Cooling
- Thread starter zutme
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2005
- Messages
- 2,205
digitalx0 said:How is the air flow in your case? If your card is in fact getting good airflow, then most likely there is something else wrong with the card, and you should RMA it (especially since you are underclocking the ram).
I agree. If you have to underclock your card just to get it to work properly, there is probably something wrong with it. This is assuming that your case has good airflow and that it hasnt been damaged by overclocking or something. RMA it.
Seeing as how underclocking helps your problem, but only for a little bit, it really does sound like a heat-related issue. Try underclocking even more dramatically and see if the artifacts go away completely. If they do, this lends more credence to the heat theory. Also, what are your ambient temps when your GPU reaches 80 C? Because the memory has no active cooling, or even a heatsink, high ambient temperatures could be causing your problems.
Before I put an aftermarket cooler on my x800xt pe (also a Sapphire card), my load temps got into the 80 C range - just like yours. I didn't experience any artifacting, but 80 C is still hot.
If your card is still under warranty, you are probably better off getting a replacement and then adding cooling to prolong the new card's life. If your warranty is up, I recommend the AC Silencer. My load temps dropped 20 C and it cools the memory in addition to venting hot air from the case (dropped ambient temps by over 5 degrees). I think it was worth the $30.
Before I put an aftermarket cooler on my x800xt pe (also a Sapphire card), my load temps got into the 80 C range - just like yours. I didn't experience any artifacting, but 80 C is still hot.
If your card is still under warranty, you are probably better off getting a replacement and then adding cooling to prolong the new card's life. If your warranty is up, I recommend the AC Silencer. My load temps dropped 20 C and it cools the memory in addition to venting hot air from the case (dropped ambient temps by over 5 degrees). I think it was worth the $30.