When GPU overheats, does it crash or artifact first?

klam · Post by **klam** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:47 am

Last night, gave Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow a spin on my Radeon 9600 Pro using my new Zalman heatpipe 80C. The game crashed about half an hour in. Completely froze the system. I didn't see any artifacts, but the heatsink was quite hot to the touch (guess doing it's job?).

My question is, if the card was in fact overheating would it artifact first or could it be possible to just crash out of the blue?

apocalypse80 · Post by **apocalypse80** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:09 am

From what I've seen , unstable memory usually leads to huge artifacts while an unstable GPU can lead to random crashes and freezes.

So probably the GPU is the problem.

Just try putting a fan near the Zalman or maybe underclock the GPU a bit just to make sure.
You also might want to reseat the cooler.

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:37 am

Yeh, that's how I remember it.

Artifacts usually come from memory problems.

GPU's can just "lock up" on their own, without prior warning, if overly baked.

See if it gets better if you let a fan cool the card?

klam · Post by **klam** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 12:24 pm

The problem was that Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was spontaneously freezing on me when I had the stock cooler without overclock. I just accepted it as a driver issue. So it's hard to determine if it is related specifically to the driver or heat. That's why I wondered if the heat issue would be related to artifacts.

Thanks for the bit of info though. I'm going to rebuild the Zalman heatpipe thing and try again today.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:58 am

I've had mixed signals from my GFFX when overheating. When I ran it without a heatsink it started to artifact (sparkly pixel heaven). When it overheated more slowly (fan dropped off the ZM80C), the result was a more progressive development of stuttering, disappearing textures, etc. In neither case did the system freeze.

Maybe ATIs react differently. Do they have a built-in thermal sensor? The GFFXs do, which can be quite useful for working out if they're running close to their limits.

klam · Post by **klam** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:31 am

I only think some of their more recent cards, like the 9600XT have thermal sensor capability.

Cerb · Post by **Cerb** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 6:35 pm

What little I OC'd my 9600, even 1MHz too far and the RAM gave away artifacts big time. checker patterns, white dots all over, etc.
When the GPU was clocked too high, polygons generally got out of place, and textures would sometimes become their negative images.
It never did overheat, but usually overheating will just freeze the PC.

Try another game or two with the settings up and AA/AF up pretty far. If it freezes a half hour to hour into another game (save maybe Tomb Raider:AOD), it's probably heat.