Artificats in games or overheating on my 7900 GS GO?

[wildlaser]

I have a dell inspiron 9400 / e1705 2ghz t7200 2gb ram with a 7900 gs go (128 or 256mb, whatever it came with a few years back?, first half of 2007, I think 256).

Anyways,

it gets really got, and I get causes artifacts/ crashing on many games.

I am unsure if this is solely due to the heat, or it could be this card / drivers, I've tried tons of different drivers.

Has anyone else had these issues with this card alone?

[mr_noname111]

Did this problem start occuring recently? If so, I think it might be starting to fail. Try playing a game you played back in 2007 when you first got the laptop, maybe even with the same drivers as then if possible. If it still artifacts, I think we know the answer.

[skier]

more commonly than heat is driver issues, a few weeks back i played L4D and it started to artifact after an hour and a half, then rebooted, and it artifacted after 1 minute or less after that, i was on the newest drivers(this is my epic driver choosing method- ) i asked a friend in ventrilo to say the first month that popped in his head, it was october, so i downloaded the most recent october driver release('08) installed, and i havn't crashed since.

[ibleet]

I have the same laptop with similar (not exactly) the same issues. Mine was overheating. I tore it down to find massive dust deposits in both the CPU and GPU exhaust fans. I cleaned that out and installed ik8fangui and now I run my fans at full speed. Those 2 things alone lowered my temps over 20c and I have been trouble-free ever since.

I also had a 9400 that had constant screen artifacts. After eliminating the LCD and cables as the culprit, I ran system diagnostics and found that the system failed every video memory test. I replaced the card and it runs like a champ. By the way, this laptop was also running hot and loaded with dust. I repeated the same process as above.

Things to try first...drivers: remove the device drivers, run driver cleaner pro, reinstall new driver. Hook up an external monitor to eliminate the LCD as the issue. Tear down the laptop...clean and reseat all components.

Hope this helps a little.

[wildlaser]

Thanks mucho for all the suggestions...

ibleet, glad to know....


I suppose it could be any of these issues... The timeline is a bit fuzzy, I bought this for gaming but didn't game much after buying it, till a while later (2+ years).

I know other games seem to work fine, it's the higher demand games/applications. Seems to run hot as is, but I recall it was kind of this way before too?

Seems like it..

I know the driver support is poor for some newer games, but it seems like a combination, or rather heat, as it would get worse as the system got hotter. Maybe it's different for some games... A bit, confusing, especially now, late at night...

skier, that is funny with the random suggestion working. sometimes synchronicity / the universe, works like that.

ill give it all a shot.