Alarming overheating issues (X800 XT PE)

Morticium · 10-29-2006, 03:43 AM

Hello everybody,

I've been using this ATI Radeon X800 XT PE (Sapphire) for awhile and never had any issues with it until about two months ago. I only play World of Warcraft, so I couldn't really see if the problems would happen in other games.

At the beginning I would usually get total system freezes while playing the game, mostly only like twice a week, wich didn't worry that much... but I still knew something was going on. Only once during those two months I've had the same thing happen while I was burning a DVD, wich was pretty odd considering that my recent crashes seem to be linked to my video card.

For about two weeks or so, the frequent system freezes have stopped while playing and instead were replaced by temporary freezes (monitor blacking out) and VPU error reports from ATI. It is starting to worry me alot now, sometimes I can get up to three reports within an hour, and then my system can totally freeze again... requiring me to reboot. I've decided to check out the temperature on my Catalyst Control Panel while playing World of Warcraft and, granted I don't know much at all about hardware, the temperature of my video card would go up to 111 celsius! It wouldn't ever go below mid 90s... so I am really worried about this now. The temperature while only doing desktop is 65 celsius, I have no idea if this is normal, a confirmation would be great.

I know it isn't my PSU, it's new and pretty powerful. Nothing much has changed within those 2 months. I bought a new 20' Widescreen (1680x1050 for desktop and gaming) monitor and installed the recent ATI drivers. Can display drivers make a video card go totally crazy like that? I only have one screen available, so I can't really try out different drivers right now... this monitor is kinda weird and doesn't really display anything if I have no drivers installed, unless it is safe to install the new ones without uninstalling the current ones I have.

Any help would me more than appreciated, this is causing me alot of stress and I'd love to find a way to fix this, thank you.

mscott2273 · 10-29-2006, 10:31 AM

Its possible that the fan on the card isnt performing up to par, because normally the RAMDAC shouldnt get to 111 celsius not even 90, even under full load. Once I had installed some system RAM and forgot that I had unplugged the CPUFAN and it got to 104 celsius. Also the video card drivers shouldnt make the card act that way.

**TheMatt** · 10-29-2006, 06:27 PM

I would have to agreee that a dead or slow fan may be the culprit. Check that the fan is spinning normally.

Hegemon1990 · 10-29-2006, 08:48 PM

Not sure how good this information will be, but try getting Sensors View, to monitor the speeds of your fans. Recently when I installed my own video card I had some wires blocking one of my fans.

Morticium · 10-30-2006, 04:20 AM

Thank you all for the help. I cleaned all the dust on the fan (it is still working) and around the heatsink, also installed two extra fans in my computer but I was still having overheating problems with it. I just bought a cooling fan for the x800 series and will get it installed today, perhaps the default one isn't working well enough anymore (I'll check out Sensors View).

thanks again

dai · 10-30-2006, 02:33 PM

did you uninstall the old drivers before installing the new,and install by the method recommended by ati

10-29-2006, 03:43 AM	#1 (permalink)
Morticium Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Alarming overheating issues (X800 XT PE) Hello everybody, I've been using this ATI Radeon X800 XT PE (Sapphire) for awhile and never had any issues with it until about two months ago. I only play World of Warcraft, so I couldn't really see if the problems would happen in other games. At the beginning I would usually get total system freezes while playing the game, mostly only like twice a week, wich didn't worry that much... but I still knew something was going on. Only once during those two months I've had the same thing happen while I was burning a DVD, wich was pretty odd considering that my recent crashes seem to be linked to my video card. For about two weeks or so, the frequent system freezes have stopped while playing and instead were replaced by temporary freezes (monitor blacking out) and VPU error reports from ATI. It is starting to worry me alot now, sometimes I can get up to three reports within an hour, and then my system can totally freeze again... requiring me to reboot. I've decided to check out the temperature on my Catalyst Control Panel while playing World of Warcraft and, granted I don't know much at all about hardware, the temperature of my video card would go up to 111 celsius! It wouldn't ever go below mid 90s... so I am really worried about this now. The temperature while only doing desktop is 65 celsius, I have no idea if this is normal, a confirmation would be great. I know it isn't my PSU, it's new and pretty powerful. Nothing much has changed within those 2 months. I bought a new 20' Widescreen (1680x1050 for desktop and gaming) monitor and installed the recent ATI drivers. Can display drivers make a video card go totally crazy like that? I only have one screen available, so I can't really try out different drivers right now... this monitor is kinda weird and doesn't really display anything if I have no drivers installed, unless it is safe to install the new ones without uninstalling the current ones I have. Any help would me more than appreciated, this is causing me alot of stress and I'd love to find a way to fix this, thank you.

10-29-2006, 06:27 PM	#3 (permalink)
TheMatt TSF Enthusiast Join Date: May 2006 Location: Boston Posts: 13,701 OS: Win 3.1, 98, NT 4.0, XP Debian 4.0, Kubuntu 6.06 My System Blog Entries: 3	I would have to agreee that a dead or slow fan may be the culprit. Check that the fan is spinning normally. __________________ - Matt M - KB1OSC - Folding@Home 85015 [url="http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/"] If TSF has helped you, please consider donating. If I have stopped responding to a thread, feel free to send me a PM with a link to the thread. It is advisable to subscribe to threads so you will receive updates when replies are posted. You can subscribe to threads from the "Thread Tools" Menu. »Memtest86 »Prime95 »UBCD »SpeedFan »NHC Personal »Everest »Sandra »PC Wizard »RivaTuner »ATi Tool Click here for Useful Articles and Guides Last edited by TheMatt; 10-29-2006 at 06:29 PM.

10-30-2006, 02:33 PM	#6 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 56,609 OS: win 7 32x 64x rtm	did you uninstall the old drivers before installing the new,and install by the method recommended by ati __________________

10-29-2006, 10:31 AM	#2 (permalink)
mscott2273 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Florida, US Posts: 121 OS: WinXP Professional My System	Its possible that the fan on the card isnt performing up to par, because normally the RAMDAC shouldnt get to 111 celsius not even 90, even under full load. Once I had installed some system RAM and forgot that I had unplugged the CPUFAN and it got to 104 celsius. Also the video card drivers shouldnt make the card act that way.

10-29-2006, 08:48 PM	#4 (permalink)
Hegemon1990 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Greenville, Texas Posts: 18 OS: WinXP, WS03	Not sure how good this information will be, but try getting Sensors View, to monitor the speeds of your fans. Recently when I installed my own video card I had some wires blocking one of my fans.

10-30-2006, 04:20 AM	#5 (permalink)
Morticium Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Thank you all for the help. I cleaned all the dust on the fan (it is still working) and around the heatsink, also installed two extra fans in my computer but I was still having overheating problems with it. I just bought a cooling fan for the x800 series and will get it installed today, perhaps the default one isn't working well enough anymore (I'll check out Sensors View). thanks again