Asus 8800GT issues

[Neilsson]

I started seeing some serious issues re: artefacts with this card recently, so I installed HWMonitor (CPUID), loaded up Fallout 3, ran it for a little while and it had recorded a max temp of 79 degrees.

Now I don't know whether that's an abnormally high temp for this card, so would like to hear from other owners.

[synaesthesia]

79 is warmer than most, or warmer than it should be, but it's not stupidly overheating. That sort of temperature would just indicate it's time to whip it our your system, de-fluff the fan (can of compressed air and/or a horsehair brush will be ideal here) and whilst you're at it do the same with the rest of your case fans to ensure good airflow through the system


As for the artifacts, it appears to be happening a bit often on 8800GT's and similar parts but before writing it off as a hardware fault get it all cleaned out first and see how it goes Any problems in other games? FO3 is rather (badly coded) sluggish, like too many games these days and might unnecessarily stress it.

[shadowmaster]

79c is indeed on the warm side, but it not unheard of. With the small cooler/fan they put on it, the 8800gt was well known to get quite hot and I do know a couple of people who ran their 8800gt's just fine with a load temp about 80c.

Anyhow I agree with above, take it out and give it a good clean. By the way is 80c the temperature of the core, memory or both?

[Neilsson]

... before writing it off as a hardware fault get it all cleaned out first and see how it goes Any problems in other games? FO3 is rather (badly coded) sluggish, like too many games these days and might unnecessarily stress it.

I was waiting to see what others had to say before contacting Asus. I had cleaned it however. Had the same experience in Vegas 2 as well.

By the way is 80c the temperature of the core, memory or both?

It's the core temp.

[synaesthesia]

Difficult one, if you can find someone willing to let you do it, it'd be great if you could slap it in another machine and verify a fault like that before binning/RMA'ing it.
Artifacting like that is normally something that would happen due to overheating and/or damage to the memory (more commonly) or sometimes the core (not as common). It's rarely a software issue but always worth trying as much as you can that doesn't cost you anything - so a good driver cleanup and reinstallation might, if not just, rule out a software problem.