This a heat prob?

[zybch]

I'm using a Gigabyte Radeon X800XL with the passive cooling heatpipe thingies http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Product...-RX80L256V.htm

Sometimes when I've been playing FarCry for a while (45mins+) my display goes nuts all of a sudden. Small squares appear in a regular grid pattern with the colours inverted. The game still maintains the framerate though, but eventually crashes back to the windows desktop with ATI's VPU recovery util saying that a problem has occurred and asking me to send an error report back to ATI.

My case is very well ventilated (Thermaltake Soprano with a Big Typhoon CPU Cooler) 3x120mm fans, 1x90m, and although the heatpipes on the card get hot they don't often get too hot to hold onto for more than 5 seconds. Case temp sits at around 25-35.

I'm right to think that this is probably a heat issue anre't I?
I've toyed with the idea of strapping an old celeron fan to the back of the video card but I'd rather not due to the extra noise.

[Comage]

Well, routine procedures would call for the below:

- Check that the card itself is seated and screwed to the casing tightly. If necessary, re-slot the card.

- Make sure the latest drivers are installed for the ATI video card. If using a newly-released driver, you might want to roll back to the previous existing version?

- Try to run your system with the casing opened up, to determine whether it is a heat problem.

- Lastly, you should have a PSU that is supplying enough power to your system (You'll need to list what hardware you currently have inside your casing).

Hope it helps.

[zybch]

Card is seated properly and locked in with that fiddly little catch in the PCIe slot.
Tried a few different driver revisions, currently using 5.6
The case runs cooler with the side on, the ventilation of the case has been designed really well
Using a Thermaltake 480W PSU, should be plenty of power left. SLi might be a different story though

I've sat an old P2 heatsink's cooling fan on top (the back) of the video card and it seems to have made the difference. I've been playing farcry since the previous post.
Looks a bit strange though so I'll check out a few cooling sites and see what else is available, perferably a 70mm fan with a thermal probe so its not going to be working flat out the whole time.

[Someone Stupid]

Just grab a low to mid speed spare case fan, 7 volt it and be done with it IMO. That should keep it cool enough if a piddly p2 HS fan can keep it cool.