Ok something for you guys to think about:
Bought my 4870X2 roughly back in Feb 2009. Have enjoyed every second I've had with it. It's watercooled (didn't do this until around June 2009) but never been overclocked.
Now fast forward to July 2010 and I don't know if it's the heat from the weather we've had lately but I've noticed that my card may have been playing up.
I say this because a few weeks ago, when I went to turn on my gaming rig, the screen suddenly had dots all over it. When it continued to boot, there were 3 rows of red and green lines down the screen. At first I thought maybe it was the fact I updated the drivers from 10.4 to 10.6. So I put 10.4 back on. Didn't do the trick. It does boot into Windows (Windows 7 home premium) eventually and I can play games (but they have started to crash more often than before). There were even times when it would just blue screen (the horror!!), not to mention it would ask to launch the repair. Which I did run but never did a thing.
So I swapped the DVI port, no change, swapped the cable, no change. Tried a different monitor and again no change. So in the end I concluded it had to be the GPU.
I took it out, cleaned the water block and applied new (yet very limited amounts) of thermal pasting (Arctic Cooling MX-2 btw). Put it all back together and this time it was even worse than before.
This might be down to the fact that a) the aforementioned limited amount of thermal pasting I had left b) cos of said limited pasting the card began overheating and c) I'm also out of sodding thermal pads for the VRAMs on the card. There is also option d) the card could be telling me it's ready to go to GPU heaven. But I am going to give up that easily on a £330 card that has done me so well for this long (otherwise 5970 here I come
)
So I'll be purchasing more of both very soon. So in the meantime the gaming machine is out of commission.
I am not really looking for advice, just wanted to write this out so I know I have record of it somewhere and where better, eh? lol.
Goodnight chaps and chappettes.
Bought my 4870X2 roughly back in Feb 2009. Have enjoyed every second I've had with it. It's watercooled (didn't do this until around June 2009) but never been overclocked.
Now fast forward to July 2010 and I don't know if it's the heat from the weather we've had lately but I've noticed that my card may have been playing up.
I say this because a few weeks ago, when I went to turn on my gaming rig, the screen suddenly had dots all over it. When it continued to boot, there were 3 rows of red and green lines down the screen. At first I thought maybe it was the fact I updated the drivers from 10.4 to 10.6. So I put 10.4 back on. Didn't do the trick. It does boot into Windows (Windows 7 home premium) eventually and I can play games (but they have started to crash more often than before). There were even times when it would just blue screen (the horror!!), not to mention it would ask to launch the repair. Which I did run but never did a thing.
So I swapped the DVI port, no change, swapped the cable, no change. Tried a different monitor and again no change. So in the end I concluded it had to be the GPU.
I took it out, cleaned the water block and applied new (yet very limited amounts) of thermal pasting (Arctic Cooling MX-2 btw). Put it all back together and this time it was even worse than before.
This might be down to the fact that a) the aforementioned limited amount of thermal pasting I had left b) cos of said limited pasting the card began overheating and c) I'm also out of sodding thermal pads for the VRAMs on the card. There is also option d) the card could be telling me it's ready to go to GPU heaven. But I am going to give up that easily on a £330 card that has done me so well for this long (otherwise 5970 here I come
)So I'll be purchasing more of both very soon. So in the meantime the gaming machine is out of commission.
I am not really looking for advice, just wanted to write this out so I know I have record of it somewhere and where better, eh? lol.
Goodnight chaps and chappettes.
and try with the stock cooler
thanks for the help guys