9800 Pro Overheating

[Cyruz (Dotdash)]

I was running FarCry yesterday for the first time and my pc kept restarting after about 1hour of gameplay. Slowly it started to restart more often. I thought it was a bug in the game and updated to the newest version but alas I still had the problem. I figured the graphics card might be getting hot or I removed the side of my case and touched it. I can't hold my finger on it for more than 5 seconds it's so hot!!

It's not oc'ed (anymore). I have no problems running intensive games like Doom3 and don't know why FarCry would put more pressure on the card.



Now I'm going to buy a Arctic Cooling Rev.4 which should hopefully sort the problem. I'm just wondering if it's anygood or anyone knows a better way of cooling the gfx card.

Btw Sapphire Radeon 9800 pro 128mb Atlantis

[da.Guvna]

Before you go and buy one, I'd recommend you have a look at the wire for you GFX card's fan. If it has 3 wires (red, black, white) then you've got yourself an XT in disguise (XT chipset, Pro BIOS). The white wire means that it will be monitoring the temperature (I've been told that anything beneath a 9800XT doesn't do this), so you can download ATI Tool and check what temp it's running at. Mine runs anywhere between 73C and 80C - which is perfectly normal for these cards and shouldn't cause you any problems.

I bought an arctic cooling Rev 3 because I wanted to O/C my card, but when I went to install it, I couldn't even get the sodding heatsink off my own card, and the fan control only consisted of 2 wires (red and black). I then realised that the compatability list said it wasn't suitable for 9800 XTs, and the fan connection didn't fit.

I'd recommend you check this out before you buy. More info can be found at:

http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/sho...threadid=15557

[G4Z]

Yeah, I broke a 9600XT installing one of those things, although to be fair It doesnt say it fits the XT variant of the 9800 or 9600.

[Cyruz (Dotdash)]

My card is a definate 9800 pro there is no white wires and ATI Tool doesn't detect a temperature on the card. I'm gonna invest in one of these so that when (if) HL2 is released I won't have to play in 15 minute bursts.

Thanks for the advice guys

btw da.Gunva www.overclockers.co.uk do a 9800XT version now if your still intrested

[CrapshoT]

Is your core no a 350 or 360 ?
My 9800 pro behaved this way as well.I stopped it by dropping my o/c a few mhz.Far Cry is a pretty intensive game tho.

[malfunction]

Have you tried cleaning the dust and fluff out of the heatsink and off the fan? The 9800s do run horribly hot anyway... It also might be a sign of something else (software or hardware) though it does sound like the card it might be worth doing some stability testing - I favour prime95's torture test for that (www.mersenne.org)

[pre]

Hi, if you've used ATiTool before I suggest you run it for 1hr without errors on the core and 1hr on the memory. At those sort of stability levels you will definitely be able to run anything else for hours on end since Farcry/D3 barely heats things up as much as ATiTool.

Note memory on a 9800 might overheat and reboot before producing errors especially if its of an unheatsinked variety - just set a limit on max memory speed to test for it if it does.

[SilentDeath]

These cards put out maybe 80 watts.
Stock cooler has a c/w of 0.8c/w or something like that (depending on card. 9700 was 1.27c/w!!!)
Thats 64°c rise above ambient.
Your ambient is probably around 25-30, that gives your gpu temp of 89-94.

ACS rev3 (the old alu one) is 0.57 iirc. 45.5 + 30 = 75.5c

The newer coolers are copper. At a guess they are 0.35c/w = 58°c. That should make it finger freindly for about 10 seconds.

Changing cooler is definatly a good idea esp if your having problems with overheating!!