Legit Reviews

Hi,

I've got a Sapphire HD2600XT graphics card in my computer.

Running Windows and other regular apps works out just fine, but when I start a game, I can play for about 5-10 mins, and the game crashes, and my computer reboots.

The card runs 50 degrees celius idle and 90 when at load, which I find too hot.

Underclocking the card a bit helps - it stille crashes, but after a longer while. Although decreases its already poor performance too much, I think.

Is there a known issue / fix here?

Thanks in advance,

Troels
Denmark

I would take off the heatsink and reapply thermal paste to the core

IF that don't work, a third party heatsink might be in order.

Is that known to fix the problem?

Adding an extra 120mm fan to the casing dropped the temp of the GFX to 73 degrees celcius, but the temperature was not stable when the game crashed - so it still might be temperature related.

www.ibangit.dk/gfx see some graphs here...

no, 73c is well with in safe range (some graphics cards are rated to run fine up to 100c )

What am I supposed to do then? I don't get why the graphic cards' temperature just rises and rises - in my world it should go to, i.e 60 degress, and just top there... In my case it just goes on and goes on accelerating...

what kind of case you have? what kind of ventilation? if it just rises and rises its probably due to poor ventilation, because if you blow hot air on a heatsink it wont disapate nearly as much heat then if you blow cooler air on it

Those graphs sure are handy

The increase in temperature follows an inverse exponential curve, which means that the temperature jumps sharply at the start, but gradually steadies out. It will take about half an hour for it to steady out, but it doesn't look like it is going to get that much hotter than when you stopped the graph.

Do you have access to any thermal paste to try re-applying some fresh paste?

Dan

Its a Gamebomb casing, should be just fine. High quality. Intake 120mm fan in the front for cool air in, outlet 120mm fan in the back for warm air out.

Should be vented just fine?

I've got access to some thermal paste, yes - but I'm not sure if I dare disassembling my graphics card.

But, what the heck, it's not any good anyways.

What if that doesn't help?

If it doesn't sort it, we start eliminating other things as being the problem

Dan

New thermal paste dropped the temp to 60 degrees celcius, still crashing though

BTW, it's not Sapphire. It's MSI.

http://global.msi.eu/index.php?func=pro ... od_no=1281

OK, try grabbing ATITool, and run it's scan for artifacts mode.

If it beeps at you that it has found artifacts, then stop the test and report back here, else if it works fine up until the point where it crashes tell us.

How old is the card, and is it at stock settings?

Dan

It's standard clocked, and has never been anything else NEVER overclocked it. Just about 6 months old. It has ALWAYS been like this - it's just now I've got the time for gaming :D

ATI Tool seems to never start up :S My HDD just runs and runs, it eats up 50% cpu load, but nothing then happens.

It cannot read out my temperature, or my clock rates.

It just goes "Not responding" in Windows

ATI Tool 0.26.

Rebooted.

ATI Tool still can't start up.

0.27 beta 3 was alot better.

Scanning now.

1 min, 40C, no errors

2 min, 47C, no errors

3:00 - 53C - No errors
3:30 - 56C - No errors
4:00 - 58C - No errors
4:30 - 60C - No errors
5:00 - 61C - No errors
5:30 - 62C - No errors
6:00 - 64C - No errors

6:27 - 65C - No errors - CRASH!


Temperature chip claims to be at either 98 or 99C all the time. Changes randomly between these two.

If it has always done this then I would look at returning it to get it fixxed under warantee.

Get in touch with the place you bought it from and ask for an RMA.

Dan