ATI Radeon 9800 Pro _dying_?

kony wrote:

> As for your aftermarket fan (is it the heatsink too)?

Yeah, I have the RAM heatsinks too.

> I presume you've checked to make sure fan is still spinning
> at proper speed. If it's using a cheap sleeve-bearing fan
> it would be good to lube that fan _before_ it starts making
> noise due to chewing up the bearing, with a high quality
> moderately thick oil (almost grease consistency).

Yeah, funny thing ... errmm ... there's apparently a power switch for
the aftermarket videocard fan. I guess when I moved my computer around
I must've flipped it, because I just turned it back on and my problems
seem to have disappeared.

Who in the hell makes a power switch for your video card fan, anyway?!
 >> Stay informed about: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro _dying_? 

I've got the 9700Pro with a nice aftermarket wrap-around heatsink and fan. I
used to be able to run it at 9800Pro speeds but now even at stock speeds
it'll sometimes (1 out of 25 starts) boot up with black vertical bands. I
just quickly turn it off (just rebooting doesn't fix) and back on and it
usually runs fine. If I don't see the bands on the initial boot it'll run
perfect (at 9700Pro speeds). I'm guessing one of these boots I'll see black
bands and not be able to correct them by turning it off and back on, but
this card has served me better than any I've ever had so I can't really
complain.
....anyway, yes, you may have damaged your card slightly by OC'ing. But I'd
try some of the older Cat's and give your case and fans a good cleaning
before sending it out to pasture.
--


"I don't cheat to survive. I cheat to LIVE!!"
- Alceryes


"Cyde Weys" <cydeweys DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127431971.836433.260480@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> It seems like my 9800 Pro is dying. The problems first started roughly
> when I updated to Catalyst 5.8 drivers. Textures would simply start
> disappearing or warping to really strange colors starting at around 10
> minutes of gameplay. Quitting the game and reloading seemed to fix
> that, but who only plays games for ten minutes at a time? So I
> reverted to the 5.7 drivers. It's not quite so bad anymore, but I
> still get the problem.
>
> What is going on? My 9800 Pro worked for over a year before these
> problems started showing up. Do you think I'm having an overheating
> problem? I did replace the stock fan it came with with a large
> fan-type dealie that takes up a whole PCI slot, and I was overclocking
> for awhile. I got these problems and stopped overclocking, but it's
> not seeming to help.
>
> How do I tell if my GPU is overheating, anyway? Is there a temperature
> probe like there is with CPUs?
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
 >> Stay informed about: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro _dying_? 

kony wrote:
> On 24 Sep 2005 08:28:02 -0700, "Cyde Weys"
> <cydeweys.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Sooo ... any suggestions on a new videocard? I don't want to spend
> >tooooo much.
>
> I'd get a 6800 (non-LE, non-GT) and try to unlock it and o'c
> it till the wheels fell off. Seems hard to justify an
> expensive AGP based card these days though.

Just browsing on NewEgg I see that the cheapest cards based on the 6800
chipset are AGP and the more expensive ones are PCI Express. I don't
have PCI Express on my mobo so ... would that really be worth it?
Also, is there any big difference between the 6800 cards from the
variety of manufacturers, and if so, which should I get?
 >> Stay informed about: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro _dying_? 

On 24 Sep 2005 13:15:43 -0700, "Cyde Weys"
<cydeweys.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>kony wrote:
>> On 24 Sep 2005 08:28:02 -0700, "Cyde Weys"
>> <cydeweys.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Sooo ... any suggestions on a new videocard? I don't want to spend
>> >tooooo much.
>>
>> I'd get a 6800 (non-LE, non-GT) and try to unlock it and o'c
>> it till the wheels fell off. Seems hard to justify an
>> expensive AGP based card these days though.
>
>Just browsing on NewEgg I see that the cheapest cards based on the 6800
>chipset are AGP and the more expensive ones are PCI Express. I don't
>have PCI Express on my mobo so ... would that really be worth it?
>Also, is there any big difference between the 6800 cards from the
>variety of manufacturers, and if so, which should I get?


No, not worth it "now", but given the pattern you've alreay
shown, that you will use a card like 9800 long enough to get
some value out of it, the same might hold true for another
card, with any AGP based card being a stop-gap until your
next motherboard and CPU purchase.

I haven't surveyed all the 6800 recently, you might seek
benchmarks of the current models as they tend to change a
little over time and as nVidia drops price of the GPUs,
more vendors start making budgetized versions of them.
Generally speaking it's the same old thing, compare memory
speed & type, bus width, pipes, GPU speed. Fans I can't
tell you about as I always throw my own 'sink on cards if
I'm keeping it for myself.... except that none seem to have
a reasonable lifespan.
 >> Stay informed about: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro _dying_?