Gaming Issue's

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Not Bman

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Since I have been having different kinds of problems related to gaming I thought I'd make a general topic in the gaming section.

First and most important problem is Half Life 2: Episode 1....

Now this is the only one I have played so far in the Orange Box collection. I don't know if having all of them do the same thing is better or not, I will test out Portal and see if it does the same thing.

The problem is that, well look at these screenshots. They come and go, and get worth and get better, it all depends.

Second, not sure if this is only HL2 or Quake Wars as well, but my sound was off before, I fixed it with a driver update, yet in HL2E1 it only sounds normal if I have it set to 4 speakers or less, which I have 5.1.
 
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I wonder if it's a card related issue here.

Maybe the new games are pushing the card so much that the temperatures are going up and causing artifacts to appear.

Do these artifacts occur under all resolutions and load levels?

Check it out and see what's up.

Regarding the audio, no idea. Might be driver related.
 
So I changed the resolution, down to not widescreen and smaller, and it does not seem to do those things. Now this means that my videocard is over heating? I don't see how HL2E1 is much different then HL2 and I had full everything in HL2.

Is there something that I can do? or to test that it is my vid card overheating?
 
Are you using the latest Nvidia WHQL drivers for your 7900 (clean install)?

Those pics look similar to what you would get from an overheating card which is odd.


Nvidia has a built in tool on their latest drivers to let you monitor Temp. I'm not sure if this is accurate though. It's on the Nvidia Control Panel and called NVMonitor. You could compare temps from when it is doing this vs when it's stable.
 

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I just ran Portal for like awhile, like 9 levels or more, and it ran full everything perfectly, until it crashed and my system restarted.

It seems like it is overheating, so I will monitor it, but I don't think it should be. Could my card some how got damaged or just started to die? I hope not.

And yes I have the latest from their website and on a clean install.
 
This time I ran Half Life 2 Episode 1 for at least (i am bad with time) 25 mins. With the ntune performance running in the background. The game, for what ever reason ran really good this time, no crazy graphics or anything, but it did go from 59C up to when I closed the game 95C. Now that looks like a matter of time before it does over heat.

Portal did the same thing as the last time I played HL2E1 as stated above, so it really makes no sense. It does look like my card is over heating, but only screwes up graphics sometimes and only crashes sometimes.

Is there anything I can do? I am planning on getting a 8800 GTX soon anyways, but would like this card to last, and be good so I could try and sell it.

HELP, ideas please?
 
It only shows GPU1, then the one beside it says nForc

I don't know what the nForc is but it is about 10 degrees cooler the the GPU1.

If I was to increase the voltage for the video card, would that make it better or worse?

I was talking with someone about over clocking RAM, Video card, CPU and such and they were talking about if I am correct some Nvidia program that runs tests and increases speeds and voltages untill the system can't take it anymore. I can't seem to find anything like that. Does anyone know what I am talking about, or something like that? I think when I got this system most of the parts had some weird problems from the beginning, like got the crap end of things, and I have been having problems since and buying new things since. I don't know what I can do to help this card except to get a new one (one I want anyways)

I was hoping that program to auto-overclock my system would help the card in some way. Or does anyone else have a solution to overheating, or thinks its not overheating that is the problem..
 
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Nvidia makes a program that will overclock your system called Ntune. Doing this would most likely increase the temperature of your video card or system though. I don't believe it does voltages.

If your card is hitting 95C that's pretty hot. The software may not be very accurate though, and the card may be designed to handle that heat so it's hard to say if that's bad. Increasing voltages can increase stability, but usually you can only increase the voltage to the PCI-E or AGP bus which probably won't help.

It may be worth taking the card out of your system and inspecting it. There could be a lot of dust built up in the fan/heat sink which could be causing problems with heat distribution.
 
Yea the card has been in the system for awhile, it could be the heat. Nothing else really makes sense, the card should work fine. I will take the card out (which is hard becasue my watercooling system is in the way) and clean it out and see if it makes a difference.

I installed Ntune, and ran the tests, but it didnt tell me anything afterwards or change anything.. I don't understand it
 
Ntune is a bit tricky, but it attempts to overclock different parts of your system. It usually starts with the PCI-E / AGP bus, then moves onto your FSB, and ends with memory timings. I've never gotten it to work with the GPU before.

In any case, I don't think it will lower the values from what they currently are or add any stability. At most you may see your system get hotter after running Ntune.

This is what it looks like:
 

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Yea I got it working, and all it did was put my PCI-E Bus up from 2500 to 3000, and well even if it is running at that, its going to just heat up faster, so I put it back.

Is it really just time for a new card, I really didn't have it long.
 
I was not exactly trying to tweak it, that was just extra in my head because I thought maybe it would help, but it would only make it worse.
 
I started playing Episode 2 and it is even worth then Episode 1 or Portal. I have it at the second lowest resolution and it is crap. It makes me think that it is not overheating doing it, since in Episode 2 it almost does it from the beginning.

I don't know what 2 do, arg.

*edit, yea its overheating, or at least something making it overheat, it tends to run better if I have widescreen full resolution on, but no AA or no AF on. But then after awhile it does start to screw up from overheating, reaching 100C and over.
 
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-edit-

I think it is over-heating just from the symptoms. Episode 2 is a lot more gpu intensive and has far more effects than Episode 1. Portal is a relatively simple game where I get 2 - 3 times the frame-rate I do in Episode 2.

-/edit-

Bman, download and use the trial version of Everest.

http://www.lavalys.com/

Use it to measure your temps. Your card does seem to be getting ridiculously hot. 95 at the time of exiting from a 3-D application means you are likely pushing over 100C in-game and that is quite a bit for your card.

I wonder if there is an issue with the contact of the HSF on the core?

Take it apart, dust it clean, re-apply thermal paste and re-attach and run and see if it continues to heat up. Hopefully that will resolve issues.

DO NOT OVER-TIGHTEN THE HEAT SINK SCREWS.

I cannot emphasize that enough :) If you do, you'll crack the core or the PCB.
 
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I didn't remove the heatsink and such because I don't know how and I don't want to not be able to put it back together, I did though clean it and remove all dust in which there really wasn't much of it. I don't think it made any difference.

You think if I get new thermal paste and all that it will change anything at this point?


*edit I am not doubting that it is overheating problems, but the card does act weird. With everything I have explained that has happened. I just played HL2 Episode 2 for about 2 hours at full resolution and full everything, except AA and it ran perfectly that whole time. I stopped playing, it didn't crash or anything. Weird I tell ya. Either way, I am getting the 8800GT 512MB tomorrow and I should have no more problems.
 
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Yea it seems to play 100% all of the games after a full day or using it. lol
 
So after getting my system back up and running, I just had to test out my new videocard and see how it works. The games are running amazing, full everything, full full full. I don't know if this is a problem yet, cause I was playing once but the games (valves) would keep minimizing to the taskbar. No errors, no nothing, and I could click them back open.

Now it might of been a weird one time thing, so I will watch it, but say it keeps up. Got any ideas what it could be, or mean?
 

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