ATI 1900 overheating

[miracleboy]

I have an ATI xtx1900 and it's starting to overheat really badly - I get a flicker and the ATI warning about overheating comes up. The card isn't overclocked or anything so not sure why it's happening.

I have 2 large 12cm fans drawing air through the case, and have had this card for 18 months or so without any issues.

So far it's done it playing MTW2 and WWIIOnline - even when it doesn't acutally overheat, I can hear the card fan going beserk quite often.

Looking at the ATI CCC right now it says the temp is at 90-95 C, when I got the message it was running around 105 C.

Any advice?

 

[marc2003]

have you removed the card and inspected it to make sure it's not clogged up at all?

 

[Wilst]

On my 1900xt loads of dust builds up and starts to clog it. I give mine a quick vacum every so often and temps will generally drop about 6 degrees at idle and the fan seems to back off a bit as well. If you havent given it a clean for 18 months it's probably pretty bad by now.

 

[James J]

Exactly what the other 2 people have said. It'll be dust getting rammerd into the heatsink next to the air intake stopping air getting inside and circulating through it. Happens to mine quite often and only needs the crap picking out of it for it to work flawlessly again for a few more months hehe

 

[Spacedman]

Ive got one of those cans used for cleaning keyboards guessing its just compressed air, not on me so i cant check. Would that be ok for unclogging it?

Having the same issue myself recently where the VPU recover thing kicks in and resets my GPU. Never cleaned anything like this and ive had my pc for a year now, could explain a few things

 

[marc2003]

yup, using compressed air will be fine.

i certainly wouldn't use a vacuum like someone else above...

 

[miracleboy]

Yeah it was pretty clogged, so I used a cotton bud to clean the fan elements and generally dust it all out.

The problem I have now is that in the ATI CCC tool, in the ATI Overdrive section it says my temp is 76C at idle - but it says that the Requested VPU is 648MHz but the Current VPU is 500MHz.

And the Requested Memory is 774MHz but the Current Memory is 594MHz.

Does this mean my card is running below what it should be? Is there a problem meaning that it cannot reach the Requested levels?

 

[bluemistywaters]

I just sent my HIS X1900XTX back as it was overheating(fan on slow all the time),
Been 11 months in pc and no dust build up at all.
Tsunami Dream case has front filter so could be that to why so clean.

14 days and counting on RMA