9800GT vid card issue, heat related?

[valden83]

About six months ago my trusty 8800GTS died on me and I replaced it with a 9800GT that I got a good deal on sale. Unfortunately, after the fact I realized this is an energy saving version of the 9800GT with a rather small cooler and it isn't exactly as fast as standard 9800GT cards. With that said, it still ran WoW with pretty much everything maxed at my native res (1650x1080) and plays the other few games I play (Starcraft 2, fallout, Darkspore) just fine.

Lately however, probably for the last two months or so, I have been getting constant device driver crashes midgame. It doesn't happen in WoW a ton, but enough to be annoying, but some of my more GPU intensive games tend to cause it to crash repeatedly every few minutes. Basically in order to keep it from crashing, I have had to open the side of my case and blow an actual fan inside. Using MSI Afterburner I can see the GPU temps approaching 95-100 degrees, which if I turn the box fan on high, and crank the air conditioner, I can get it to drop below 80 degrees. Even then, sometimes the crashes will still happen when it seems to "Spike" in temperature.

Could the vid card just have horrid cooling? Or is something else afoot here...

I have the latest updates running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and the most recent Nvidia drivers. have tried a few other versions with no luck.

[redmund]

That's definitely too damn hot. If you have the option, add a 120 or 140mm fan to your side panel over your card. I'd also recommend taking out the card and giving the heatsink a good cleaning. Get any dust out from between those fins. A can of compressed air works wonders here, but be sure to hold the fan still if you use it, you don't want to risk any damage. If you know what you're doing, you could also remove the heatsink entirely, remove the old thermal paste and apply some fresh stuff.

[DeltrusDisc]

Funny.... I have a 1680x1050 native res. monitor and my old video cards were first a BFG Tech OC 9800 GT and then a PNY Green Edition 9800 GT....

Your temps are much hotter than mine were, you may want to see about reapplying the TIM and cooler.... If you can, look into a new GPU. The 9800 GT's run ridiculously hot anyways.

[valden83]

Ok, at least its not just in my head then hehe. The fact that the crashes seem to coincide when the card hovers over 90 degrees pretty much points me in the direction of the video card. I did some research and apparently this particular card has a tendency to run hot whenever stressed and the fan has a tendency to only run at 40% speed. Going to try some tools to change the fan speed and see if it works, but if I don't have any luck, I think I will probably end up picking up a 460 or 465, or maybe a 560.

[mijjy]

I had this card and it recently died on me. before it died the most recent drivers were causing a lot of problems for me. this happened within the last 3 weeks or so. i had to drop back a version on the drivers and the crashing stopped...however, a few short weeks later the card completely died on me and i'm guessing it was from the heat. inadequate fan and heatsink.

i'm now running the nvdia 560GTX, it's a beast. it has decent cooling at least, the video card runs around 55 celcius (131 F) which isn't bad.

good luck!