Issues - Help Please!

Hi,

Starting to have a few problems with my PC, here's the spec.

C2D E6600 (stock settings)
4GB Geil DDR2-800
8800GTX
Corsair 520W PSU
Asus P5B Deluxe
Vista Ultimate 32-bit

Been playing very graphically intensive games recently such as Fallout 3 and GTA IV and I have noticed I will be playing for 15-30 mins and suddenly my monitor will go black and say 'no signal', but the sound will continue playing, like it has gone to sleep. Then i can't recover with Ctrl+Alt+Del so need to hard reset.

I know this could be a number of things but what would be your gut instinct, and how would you go about diagnosing the problem?

I was thinking it could be overheating, or maybe even my PSU doesn't have enough power when going full tilt?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Sounds like overheating, could be the graphics card ram.
Try taking one of the side-panels off, and run your games like this for a while, if it still shuts down then it's prob not an overheating problems.

If this helps, then it's time to sort out the cases cooling.

Cheers for that,

Any programs let you monitor GPU/ GP RAM temps in game?

Fraps may have the option to ad temps to the overlay, I know ATi Tray Tools will but have no idea if its compatible with nVidea cards. Rivatuner may have an overlay I'm not sure alternatively get GPUZ and set it to log the temperatures then after it dies and you reboot you will have a record of the temps.

My final suggestion is FurMark http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/ run it in stability mode and it will give you temperature monitoring as well as pushing your card to its absolute limit.

I'd second vinnyT with that.

My Sapphire X1950Pro has a known issue with the VRM's not being cooled properly and I get the exact same symptoms (mostly in the summer, and opening the case doesn't help then).

Yep you were right, running furmark for about 5 minutes the gpu goes from 60 degs up to about 83 degs then it locks.

The weird thing was I couldn't hear the fan ramp up as the temp increased. Is this a driver problem? I have the most recent ones off nvidias website.

83 degrees should not be enough to lock up the system it is probably a different component getting to hot (probably still on the Graphics card though).

Get a copy of GPU-Z and go to the sensors tab and see what temperature probes it gives you depending on your card it may give you many or only GPU temperature. Check the log to file and continue to update when hidden boxes and then run furmark again (only worth doing this if you have more sensors than just GPU temp) see waht they get to in the log file after you recover the system.

Success! Kind of...

GPU-Z didn't reveal anything, there's 2 more sensors but neither looked particularly high.

I then installed ntune, but for some reason the fan speed controls were greyed out. Then tried Rivatuner and managed to directly adjust the fan speed, and after about 20 mins of stress testing with furmark it didn't hang, so i'm happy.

I think you can get Rivatuner to automatically control when it reaches a certain temp, but haven't figured that out yet.

Cheers for all the help

I would guess it was a different component that was getting hot (probably one without a sensor) increasing the fan speed has cooled them all more so its no longer too hot and so its stable again :)

I don't have Rivatuner installed (I use ATI Tray Tools for all my ATI needs :)) so can't help you out with the fan speed settings what I would do is set it to a level which doesn't bother you at all noise wise and see if that fails the stress test if its fine just leave it there all the time, if its too noisy then you will need to make a fan profile of some sort so that it can ramp up in games etc.

Try this link for Rivatuner

http://www.guru3d.com/article/rivatu...erclock-guide/

Make sure you are using supported driver versions. This is a great little App once you get it working as you can set differing fan speed depending on the core temps, or either you can just set the fan speed to 90-100% before you start gaming

Thanks for all your help guys, much appreciated.

I'm sure that card used to automatically adjust the fan speed though, little confused why its doing this all of a sudden. Something to do with Vista/new drivers maybe?

Quite tempted to get one of those AC Accelero Xtreme coolers now, although I found out to my dismay that Scan no longer stock them!