Before yuu do all that try downclocking your memory because this was happening wif me so i down clocking my memor and it stoppped
Cheers again for the help dude, just sorting out rivatuner right now. It seems kinda weird because I can play Bioshock/Oblivion on full settings, when I first got the Shivering Isles I played it for like 10 hours straight with no issues, but for some reason 98% of other games it struggles with. And sorry to sound like a complete idiot for the 300th time but how do I access riva tuner's hardware monitor graph?
Okay found the monitor, just confused as to which slider I should be messing with. This one? And I generally agree that idiots like me should just buy prebuilt computers and deal with the hefty price tag at the expense of having to deal with problems you know nothing about =P
I assume you have checked the temperature and it is the same as hwmonitor's was, yes thats the slider for the fan speed, try moving that to 100%. Also below it theres an option for applying settings at startup, tick that too. try out the games that have caused issue with the fan at full and see if it helps also try to get another screenshot of the temps after the fan speed change, keep the case open as the cpu temps are also high. In an ideal situation with good airflow the temps inside the case should be very close whether the case is open or closed.
I'm using a Cooler Master Praetorian 730, just checked if all the fans are working correctly. I'm unsure if the Nvidia 7950GT actually has a fan as it seems to just have a massive heat sink that seems to take up a lot of the space inside my case, and I can't feel any air coming off it. Either way I've amped the fan speed up to 100% and checked in the BIOS (Asus P5B). There's an option for G-Fan control (Or something like that) under the power section.When on it gives the option of three settings of fan control in the BIOS menu. Wether it's on or of seems to limit my options of fan control in RivaTuner. There's one for the CPU fan and one for the Chassis fan, should they both be on or off? Also, should I mess about with these fan settings too?
There will not be a fan control for your graphics card in the bios, however all the options should be on. If you have set the first option in rivatuner for fan control to 100% you do not need to change the rest as the first option we changed will over-ride all others. It is highly unlikely that a high end card such as a 7950gt would not have a fan, the fan pulls air in so you will not feel it at the intake. You can confirm the fan is on and running by using riva-tuner's monitoring graph which I posted earlier to examine the effect on temperature of moving the fan slider which you posted a screenshot too.
Maybe you have one of the passively cooled 7950gt's from MSI or XFX, they are highly reliant on internal case temperature and airflow. Does it look anything like this:
lol command and conquer 3 error up there i got it before when it crashed my system but my computer doesnt do it all the time
Noticed a significant difference from changing the fan speed, just going to post a current screenie of the temps/graph under moderate strain (after being left on all day with the case open and running Neverwinter Nights, which despite being ancient is still rather weird resource wise) And yep, just found out that my card is passively cooled (xfx range?), which is a massive problem I suppose even with the decent amount of fans inside my case. Is there anything I can do about this? I don't really mind loosing some performance. It's pretty stupidly high as it is anyway. Ohh yeah and I just bought a can of compressed air to blast out the dust edit: Also, is there any danger/harm in leaving my fan at 100% all the time?
If the card is passively cooled the other fans in the case are of vital importance, leaving the fans at 100% should have no effect other than louder fan noise. The first screenshot is not visible (imageshack bandwidth problems I assume, might work later) but the real question is whether the lower temps have helped in stablizing your system?
Hey dudes, sorry for dragging this out for so long, but I think we've finally come to a theory about what's wrong here. Check the screenshot below, I ran dual monitor and checked the fluctuation in temperature as I played (case open) the GPU temperature just seemed to constantly increase by 1 every like 30 seconds until the card was too hot to operate, the heatsink was rediculously hot. Here's a screenie I took. It seems your help has definitely got my CPU temperatures to remain a lot lower than they used to be when they were under strain. I've took a few pics of my internal setup, I was wondering if there's anything I can do/add to solve this progressive overheating problem, because regardless of what's going on, my card should not be 99degrees running Gmod. Still dosn't explain why it wouldn't overheat playing Oblivion or CoD4, which as far as I know are more strenuous games, but meh. (bear in mind the compressed air still hasn't got here so tis a little dusty still)
My guess is you have a dust problem Give it a thorough clean see if that helps, otherwise take off the heatsink and replace the paste, same goes for the cpu.
from the first screen that with corruption garbage, its gpu overheating itself... Yea your cpu fan is dusted lol get it vacuumed, and try mounting a cooler on that gpu... i also have a stock cpu fan and i have the case opened by the side like 2-3cm just to keep out that hot air that's filling at the top by the psu... yea i need to drill a hole and mount one fan on top :O, so in a while there was some dust under the cpu fan, i've turned the fan in the opposite direction and the dust just popped out in one huge chunk lol, i've also vacuumed the fan and psu to make it dust free...so conclusion: the fan was more silent and cpu a bit cooler. ^^ and btw do you have this intel hotfix installed?, cuz it kinda solves some problems in games such as CSS, that have some issues with c2d cpus; and in Oblivion there could be a sound related problem, i might be a issue with ffds codec or something like that... -look for some info @ tweakguide on this page in audio section part...
Cheers dude, should I go all out with the Co2 or be gentle with it? I'm just wondering what level of force is advised with it. Also are you sure the cooling looks okay? There's like no fans anywhere near the GPU except for the ones at the front of the computer. Plus I have absolutely no hands on experience with cards ect. Is there anyone I can just throw money at to do this kinda stuff for me? (Maybe in the UK? ^^) Also, could I try installing any extra fans to place underneath the card (as I believe that's where the access to the GPU is) My point is that Oblivion and COD4 are fine! Hence why I thought it was weird I was getting GPU overheating on Gmod/TF2/C&C3!
Its always best to take it slow and gentle, try to take out as many components as possible during cleaning. Take it slow and check the temps on each step, if the steps already outlined in previous posts don't bring the temps down enough you'll have to get a different heatsink and fan.
i have the same video card (BFG GeForce 7950 GT OC 512 MB) and i had the same issues. The problem is clearly overheating. My card idled 56 degrees and 99 under load as the factory cooler is worse than CRAP. Now 7950 is still a good card for its age but for Gods sake don't try to push resolution above 1024*768, it kills the video card especially with the new hi end games. i managed to solve this problem by installing a custom cooler (Accelero S1) which dropped my temperatures from 90+ to just 45 under load. Or of course you can buy a new card don't judge based on cod 4 it is not as demanding as many people think
Thanks so much guys, you've all been amazing help and I'm glad we've got to the bottom of this. I'm too much of a human disaster zone to trust myself taking my graphics card apart, is there like anyone/stores that I can go to in the UK to pay to get this done? Cause it seems kinda sad that I can't even play past 1024*768 without custom cooling on a card that is only like a year old. Guess the morale of the story is, passive cooling seems pretty pointless when it's inevitable that you're going to have at least one relatively loud fan inside your computer anyways.
Unless you have a friend or relative who owns a store or can help, you will end up paying way too much for anyone to take a look and clean it out. Theres nothing too difficult about it really, there's quite a few guides on the net and in anycase once you start to do it you'll find it's really quite easy. If you really do want to pay someone else to do it for you then imho you'll be better off buying a new one.
Alright, me and my mate are going to have blast at installing an Accelero S1 to my card.(http://scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=627848) Is there any websites/diagrams I should check out?
