Soldato
- Joined
- 5 Sep 2005
- Posts
- 11,742
- Location
- Northern Ireland
See this post onwards for up-to-date details. I'd greatly appreciate any help at this point. 
Ok, so I have had a portable cooker of a 4850 in my PC for about 3 weeks or so now, and its giving me headaches. Artifact headaches.
Wasn't really a problem before, was only playing WAR Online and it would bring up that "Graphics Driver has Failed and been recovered" about every 5 hours or so, usually less. I just put it down to being a problem with WAR Online, everyone seemed to be having CTD's so I mentally filed it as a fault with WAR, and kept on going waiting for a patch or something.
But no...that was silly of me. Bought FALLOUT 3 on Friday there and while ti runs fine for the first 30 minutes or so, after that this happens:
(Pic has been brightened for clarity)
Nasty nasty triangular "things" that extend to infinity everywhere. So, I thought, the fault is with me, not WAR Online. Whoops.
So I've been through the usual checklist (not in this order):
Check temps in ATi CCC - Fine, reads 64 degrees under load.
Try Memtest see if thats causing it - Nope, no errors for 18 hours.
Try Furmark (ATitool wont work, Vista x64) to see if its stable - Oddly yes. Happily runs overnight.
Update drivers - Problem still occurs.
Update Motherboard Drivers - Problem still occurs.
Update motherboard BIOS - Problem still occurs.
Re-seat Graphics Card - Problem still occurs.
Kick PC - Problem still occurs.
After all that and still getting the problem I decided that perhaps I didn't trust ATi's CCC and it was reading the temps wrong. So I ran Fallout till it crashed, then stuck my fingers on my Graphics cards heatsink too see if it actually melted my fingers. It didnt...the core part was fine.
HOWEVER, on the other side of the card I notice that there is some copper sheets covering some memory:
And they are absolutely scalding. Definately not the 64 degrees that ATi CCC is reporting. So....I guess that ATi CCC doesn't read the memory temps.
Questions:
If the memory is scalding hot, would this cause artifacts? (Big, for emphasis, in case I'm barking up the wrong tree here)
Should these copper "slats" not have fins on them if they are for cooling?
Does anyone else have a Powercolor 4850 1GB PCS (I think thats the name) and would like to poke their copper slats and let me know if theirs are scalding hot under load?
How can I remedy this? A bit of Artic Silver Cement and some little memory heatspreaders I was thinking, but then wont this void my warranty?
Any suggestions? I've a Nuclear Wasteland to explore and I'd rather like to get back to saving it without being attacked by the faceless triangles of DOOM!
Ok, so I have had a portable cooker of a 4850 in my PC for about 3 weeks or so now, and its giving me headaches. Artifact headaches.
Wasn't really a problem before, was only playing WAR Online and it would bring up that "Graphics Driver has Failed and been recovered" about every 5 hours or so, usually less. I just put it down to being a problem with WAR Online, everyone seemed to be having CTD's so I mentally filed it as a fault with WAR, and kept on going waiting for a patch or something. But no...that was silly of me. Bought FALLOUT 3 on Friday there and while ti runs fine for the first 30 minutes or so, after that this happens:
(Pic has been brightened for clarity)
Nasty nasty triangular "things" that extend to infinity everywhere. So, I thought, the fault is with me, not WAR Online. Whoops.
So I've been through the usual checklist (not in this order):
Check temps in ATi CCC - Fine, reads 64 degrees under load.
Try Memtest see if thats causing it - Nope, no errors for 18 hours.
Try Furmark (ATitool wont work, Vista x64) to see if its stable - Oddly yes. Happily runs overnight.
Update drivers - Problem still occurs.
Update Motherboard Drivers - Problem still occurs.
Update motherboard BIOS - Problem still occurs.
Re-seat Graphics Card - Problem still occurs.
Kick PC - Problem still occurs.
After all that and still getting the problem I decided that perhaps I didn't trust ATi's CCC and it was reading the temps wrong. So I ran Fallout till it crashed, then stuck my fingers on my Graphics cards heatsink too see if it actually melted my fingers. It didnt...the core part was fine.
HOWEVER, on the other side of the card I notice that there is some copper sheets covering some memory:
And they are absolutely scalding. Definately not the 64 degrees that ATi CCC is reporting. So....I guess that ATi CCC doesn't read the memory temps.
Questions:
If the memory is scalding hot, would this cause artifacts? (Big, for emphasis, in case I'm barking up the wrong tree here)
Should these copper "slats" not have fins on them if they are for cooling?
Does anyone else have a Powercolor 4850 1GB PCS (I think thats the name) and would like to poke their copper slats and let me know if theirs are scalding hot under load?
How can I remedy this? A bit of Artic Silver Cement and some little memory heatspreaders I was thinking, but then wont this void my warranty?
Any suggestions? I've a Nuclear Wasteland to explore and I'd rather like to get back to saving it without being attacked by the faceless triangles of DOOM!
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