Is my 9800 broken forever?

Hello, I recently tried to get a fan from thecoolingshop.co.uk, it arrived and I fitted it. This is a letter I sent to them:

Hello, I recently ordered a "Titan Cooler" for my 9800 Pro. The screws
did not fit completely correctly and so that fan did not function
properly. My Radeon 9800 Pro is now permanantly broken and often goes
into strange colours when in windows. I have installed the stock
cooler and it has not corrected the problem. Please can you give me
some advice onto what to do. I can send the Fan to you to show that
the screws do not fit completely. Please get back in touch with my
soon and advise me on what to do, many thanks, Alex


Would these multicoloured screens even after fitting my stock cooler suggest permanent damage? Or would it just suggest temporary overheating, it has happened in windows and in Half Life 2 (the only game I have tried). It crashes with this multicoloured screen for about 5 seconds and then I can use the PC, after it working again I try and scroll through pages and the movement is very jumpy and slow allround. If it is permanatly broken would I get any sort of compensation? I have a shuttle SN45G by the way, please, please can you suggest me onto what I need to do, many thanks, Alex

I don't think you could get any sort of compensation - "you break it, it's your fault" sort of thinking.

But if it was a faulty cooler then it is their fault is it not?

Under the warranty of the card you're not allowed to change the Heatsink or fan on the card. This means that you've voided your warranty which means it's broken, no money back, no replacement etc.

EDIT: Sounds like it's overheating to me, have you fitted the stock cooler back on correcltly?

The Pusher pins are kinda crushed so I dont think there is proper contact. Has anyone got any pusher pins for a 9800 Pro Sapphire? If they do then they would be very much appreciated, many thanks, Alex

Im not sure if the ATi's GPU's have any sort of throttling when overheating, im guessing they dont (atleast google isnt throwing up anything that sounds convincing).
If thats the case, its probably got to hot and damaged itself.
If the screws did not fit correctly, why did you install it...nevermind power it up !?
Its the same as fitting old SDRAM in a DDR motherboard....with a hammer so it fits, then expecting it to work.

Your only hope is to get the old cooler fitted on properly and hope for the best !

Do nvidia cpus have thermal throttling?

Apparently the FX series did (not that ive had the balls to take the HSF off and try it though :p), so i would assume the Geforce 6 series also does.

Yeh you may well be right just had a search through the control panel thingy and found 'core slowdown threshold' in the temperature monitoring bit.

By default it is set to 127C, which seems very very high. My card is idling at 50, 33 ambiant.

I belive it also does it at hardware level (for those not using Windows), which is the ideal way.
You need to keep in mind that these chips are designed to run at much higher temps than a CPU. 127 may seem hot, but it'll go higher before it dies.

Why can't they design CPU's like that :(.

Heat wise of throttle wise ?
Throttle wise, its been either done on the chip (p3/4) or by the chipset (AMD's socket A platform) for a while now (Intels has had it on chip since the P3 days, AMD's is more of a dirty BIOS / chipset hack)

Heat wise : They are based on entirely different architectures, so even though they are both microprocessors, inside, there is huge differences.

Yeah I was talking architecturaly. It's a shame really. I think things are starting to steady out now in terms of CPU's. There was a point where it looked like we would need bloody vapochills to run next years chips :p