7900GT - artifacts and temps

Finaly had the chance to play with my 'new' Gainward 7900GT that I pretty much got for free (it was my little brothers), however, compared to my trusty x800GTO2 I'm dissapointed.

ATITool reports that it idles at around 55oC, my x800 idles at around 40/45oC. The 7900GT warms up pretty quickly and then I get plenty of artifacts, far more than my x800GTO which has had the bios flashed and I overclock to x850 speeds or more.

My question is should I get a Zalman cooler for the 7900GT, I know the temps will drop and at least there will be some heatsinks on the ram !. But will this kill the artifacts ?, if not then I may have to buy a 8800GTS and be very short of cash for a few months :(

Check if it's Samsung or Infineon RAM on the card. If it's Samsung, it's likely one of the defective ones. The Zalman will reduce temps, but what you are seeing is not going to cause artifcting anyway...

Im sure it would help.

I was having the same problems with my 7800GT, as soon as it went over 50C I would get artifacts.

I was getting ready to purchase a new card when I thought of buying a better heatsink.

I slammed the Arctic Cooling NV5 on it and the temp never goes over 47C, with a slight performance increase too.

It has Samsung ram, there's no way of knowing for certain though that this is this root of the problem ?.

I've taken a pic of ATITool so you can see its output...

http://www.clivearnold.com/images/7900gt.jpg

... there's more yellow than anything else :(

The 7900GT is getting up to 75oC under load, I\'ll crank up my case fans later on when the wife\'s in bed and see if it\'s any better.

I realy realy don\'t want to spend £190 on a 320MB 8800GTS, however, I also don\'t want to spend £30 on a Zalman cooler and find that even though temps have dropped I still get artifacts...

First of all use driver cleaner to clean all drivers out, then download the latest drivers from nvidia.

When you have done that run 3D mark06 the card should crap out at the canyon flight/Deep freeze test, if it does then it\'s the memory on the card.

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Originally Posted by Mad-Max

First of all use driver cleaner to clean all drivers out, then download the latest drivers from nvidia.

When you have done that run 3D mark06 the card should crap out at the canyon flight/Deep freeze test, if it does then it's the memory on the card.

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Thanks for the advice.

From day one of playing with this card I would get lovely grey rectangles in both of those tests.

Spoke to my little bro last night (salt of the earth but not very bright, bless him) and chatted about it, explained to him what an artifact was and then I get...

Oh, you mean like odd triangles appearing on people in CS: Source ?.

... grrrr !. Well it cost me just a pizza so at least I have a backup 2D card now :rolleyes:

Check their warranty - you might be able to get a new card.

the warranty should be any thing from 1 year to 3 years, i'd love to tell you which but gainward's web site isn't very helpful.
There's no older cards listed, the 7900GT is hardly old and it's still for sale (correction, looks like it's discontinued)
And there's no search so I cannot get anyware with it.

EDIT: it looks like quite a few people got hit by bad 7900GT's and Gainward were rather bad about RMA's on this card.
Still worth a try. (PS I think the gainward warranty on the 7900GT was 3years)

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Originally Posted by Fatboy40

From day one of playing with this card I would get lovely grey rectangles in both of those tests.

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I would get blue and red stars on these tests :shocked2:

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Originally Posted by Fatboy40

Thanks for the advice.

From day one of playing with this card I would get lovely grey rectangles in both of those tests.

Spoke to my little bro last night (salt of the earth but not very bright, bless him) and chatted about it, explained to him what an artifact was and then I get...

Oh, you mean like odd triangles appearing on people in CS: Source ?.

... grrrr !. Well it cost me just a pizza so at least I have a backup 2D card now :rolleyes:

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Arr bless him:angst: I know what you mean, my brother knows sod all about pc's too but at least he is starting to use google :O_o1:

Mine got artifacts when temps are too low or too high also. Very strange

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Originally Posted by umaneko

Mine got artifacts when temps are too low or too high also. Very strange

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Run 3Dmark 06 and if it artifacts in that then RMA or replace it :eek: