Video Card overheating with SoR?

[mrshad]

Hi All!

I got a spiffy new Gforce card, and it works pretty well, except with SoR.
Oblivion runs fine
Prey runs fine.
Battlefield II goes okay.
etc.

It seems to be overheating, although the core temp gauge in the card rarely goes above 65 while I am playing, and it has crashed at temps much much lower. The reason i think it is a heat issue is that when I open the case and put a floor fan on the card, crashes come far less frequently.

I have swapped out the card with an older one, and SoR does fine with the older card.

I have tried lower graphics settings in SoR, turning down the clock rate on the card, Installing more system RAM (though I was going to do that anyway) and I have fiddled with an array of different drivers. None of that seems to help. Voltage meters on the MoBo all read fine, although a split second drop or spike would freeze the machine before that was logged.

It would seem an area on the graphics card that doesn't have a temp gauge is getting too hot.

So my quesiton, to any who might have an answer, does SoR do anything "unique" or at least not common with its graphics. Maybe it deals with antistrophic filtering in a clever way? Anything at all that you can think of that might help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[rabcaz]

I have swapped out the card with an older one, and SoR does fine with the older card.

OOC :

One thing that struck me was, can your PSU manage the new graphics card ?

//Drakfot

//OOC

[mrshad]

Thanks Drakfot!
Suspected the PSU as well, but a few things lead me to belive that is not the problem:

The internal monitors don't register a problem with voltage. (not they they are always acurate)

Other games seem to be okay, even ones that I would consider to be more graphically intense than SoR (oblvion, for example.)

I tried removing unnesisary devices in order to lessen the power drain (spare hard drives, sound cards, optical drives, fans) and it didnt' seem to help.

[rabcaz]

OOC :

Ok

Other thing I can think of is the gfx drivers, a complete remove and reinstall might do some good.
What error do you get when it crashes out ?
What card did you get btw?

//Drakfot

//OOC

[mrshad]

It is the Gforce 6600 AGP.

I reloaded the OS on a different drive, and came up with the same result.

[mrshad]

The very latest drivers (released on septs 1st, I think) really helped this problems a lot. I still get a few lock ups, but they generally happen when I am exiting the game.

[rabcaz]

The very latest drivers (released on septs 1st, I think) really helped this problems a lot. I still get a few lock ups, but they generally happen when I am exiting the game.

OOC :

Glad to hear that it has come to some sort of working state.
One thing that I thought of was, might it be some sort of hardware problems between your new Gfx card the the motherboard ? I had one once with my old Radeon 9700pro and a MB with a Via KT800 chipset, it turned out to be a known hardware issue / bug between them two and sorted when I changed the MB. Otherwise I kept getting VPU Recover errors when it failed out ( eg when playing DoomIII).
Are the old gfx card the same brand as the new one ?
Just another thought to add since it seems as you have tested most , if not all, of the possible things and the driver update mended some things.

//Drakfot
//OOC

[mrshad]

I thought that might have been the problem, too. So, I put the card in a second machine (where my old card is now) and tested it out. Same lock ups, sadly. Of course, that doens't mean that both MBs don't have the same problem with the card.

Still, the new drivers leave me fairly happy with how it runs. I might go crazy with some power tools and see if I can mount an external fan to the side of the case in order to help clear up the remaining issues.

[sc30002]

I had some problem's one time w/ what you were experiencing w/ the Graphic's card and MB not compatible, w/ a BIOS update it did fix my issue and a couple other's, the problem I had was back when I was using Socket 754.