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Problems with my arctic vga cooler on 6800gt

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

Associate
Joined
7 May 2003
Posts
668
Location
London
Hi guys,

Ive got an XFX 256mb 6800gt agp card which was working fine and with stock cooler I could overclock to 400 and 1010 (from 350 1000) with no problems but I only overclocked when actually playing games rather than always on.

I hated the loud noise and got my hands on an arctic cooler 5 rev. 3 which was pretty simple to install and was pleasantly surprised when the "find best clock" thingy setting went up to 413 and 1014 which was great and it was nice and quiet.

Problems started when playing call of duty 2 at these settings. I started getting massive tears and other things and the game would freeze for 10 seconds at a time. Since then I basically can’t overclock my card at all as it fails in the testing the settings stage.

It seems to run fine at default clock settings. Playing half life 2 at the moment with no problems but its annoying that I cant overclock anymore and stupid me, I threw out the old fan as I didn’t think I would need it as ive got a arctic vga cooler on my ati 9700 that’s been nothing but a pleasure for over 2 years.

Depending on whether the heating is on in the room my idle temperature varies from 45 to 51 with the arctic cooler.

Any ideas?
 
maybe replace the thermal paste with arctic silver or ceramique? Whats the load temps?

Also, never throw out your old cooler, when you did that you threw out the warranty too.

Tom
 
I bought it second hand on ebay about 4 months ago (stupidly when the demand for agp 6800gt was at its peak so paid through the nose) and its been working fine. I never even thought about warrenty or think twice about throwing the old fan out. I realise how stupid that was now.

Ive got some arctic silver lying around might have a go at that, but that sounds like a big job as you got all the heatsinks and the gpu. The joy with the vga cooler is that it had it all on already, just slap the cooler on.

Oh and I cant remember exactly off hand the load temp but again depending on room temerpature I think it goes anywhere from 60 - 69?
 
Right, thanks for that. Sounds much more do-able now.

Any ideas why it initially worked fine at the higher clock that it auto tested to and then got buggered? Did I overstress the card and should thank my lucky stars it still works at default clock?
 
it might just be one of those things mate. my 6800GT used to run great at ultra speeds. then I fitted an artic cooler. run ok for a while then strated tearing like yours. so i bought a zaalman cooler. still would corrupt at anything over a very slight overclock.

in the end i stuck it back to stock. it was dong my head in. at least i get no corruption at stock speeds.
 
Have you upgrade the drivers lately? As different drivers sometimes offer different overclocking limits. My XFX 6800Gt with an Artic doesnt like any overclocking. Was annoying at first, but tbh, you're talking 3fps in real world games with a little overclocking.

I actually think NV added something to their drivers at some point to stop overclocking, as there are a lot of people about whos cards used to goto Ultra speeds, but now only run at stock.
 
havent tried overclocking it for months mate. like i said it was doing my head in that much i gave up.

have recently done a full rebuild after upgrading mobo and cp (opty 146 running at 2.75 and asrock mobo ) so i might give it another go. be interesting to see what the upgrade has done to my score as well

when it was ruuning at ultra speeds though i got a great boost. added nearly 1k to 3dmark2005
 
Have you put the voltage of the 6800gt to 1.4v? My card overclocks at 410/1130 on the stock leadtek fan - I havent tried any other coolers but your arctic cooler is running it colder than your stock so I dont see why thats the reason - when I ran my card at 1.4v it wouldnt even last a stock for long.
Also have you added anything to myour machine since? Maybe your psu isnt providing enough power, if I run my leadtek 6800gt through my cold cathods (i.e not directly connected to psu, but well down the line) it would artifact and crash after about 5 mins because its not getting enough power - so no I connect al my hardware directly to the psu and all the weak stuff like cathods get connected via extra molexs.
 
yeah, i used to have to set the voltage to 1.4 to get it stable at ultra speeds. would get the odd glitch otherwise.

the PSU is a tagan 480 with the 6800GT on the dedicated blue molex. not much else in the case really. 3 hard drives, sound card and a TV card. oh and a DVD writer. I did try unplugging all those though and it still glitched out.

It wierd, the temps are great. so its not a poorly fitting HS, and iv tried reseating the thing as well. cant really send it back as it runs fine at stock speeds.

im defo going to give it another go tonight though. new build of windows, new system, new drivers. never a better time really :)
 
Well as for me, I have a dell so cant up any voltage but poped home for lunch (great working 5min away) and idle temp was 47 then after playing half life 2 for 30min (loving it, im up the nova place controlling the sand lions) the gpu temp was 54.

This is at stock so like kidloco im certainly not having a problem with the temp and if remember right, I think ive got the card connected direct to the psu.
 
just out of intrest mate what brand of card are you running. mine is a Inno3D, nice black PCB. i know at the time I bought mine. someone else on this forum got the same card. and was happily running theirs at ultra speeds. they even sent me their bios to play with
 
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