My graphical card going south ?

[janar737 0]

Hi All,

I have an AMD 5870HD graphical card that have served me well for several years, but recently it started to give problems, especially while using FSX.
Five to ten minutes after starting Flight Simulator X the screen goes black and the graphical card fan goes to 100%.
I checked the graphical cards temps with GPU-Z and it came out that the graphical card stops working as soon as the temperature rises above 62  ! ! ! degree Celsius.

Cleaning of the card with canned air did not help.

 

Any suggestions how this card can be saved ?

 

See you, Jan

 

http://home.wxs.nl/~jarkest/fsx/fsx.html

[OneWhoKnocks53 51]

Maybe the fan motor is dying, is it noisy?

Also the thermal paste might be cooked, try removing the heatsink and putting fresh paste on the processor.

[stans 702]

It might also be a failing power supply starving the card of electrical current.

[Djang0 1]

Q1) Are you using any OCing or fan controlling software?

Q2) Is your case well ventilated?

Q3) Is your graphics card covered in dust and c***?

[janar737 0]

Thanks to all for your input.

 

Before the problem started both CPU and GPU clocks were at their default setting, GPU clock and fanspeed controlled by the driver.

The fan is not the problem, it is very silent at low speeds and becomes audible from ~2000rpm.

In my opnion the case has adequate ventilation: While flightsimming the CPU stays below 60 degr Celsius and the motherboard temp does not rise above 42 degr Celsius.

 

I did a lot of additional testing and in one of these tests the graphical card stopped working while all its temperature sensors showed values below 48 degr Celsius.

 

For the time being I use a work around by UNDERclocking the graphical card.
The GPU clock has been limited in the driver to 750MHz (default 850) and the GPU Memory clock to 1000 MHz (default 1200) and the fanspeed is fixed at 35%/2000rpm.

With these settings the graphical card keeps working, while the temperature after 10-15 min stabalize around 67 degr Celsius

 

See yo, Jan

[OneWhoKnocks53 51]

This sounds similar to an issue I had in the gtx 470 days. Same issues, random unprovoked failures at low load conditions. Turns out the card just died. Look on the bright side, good excuse for an upgrade if that is what is going on with your card.

[Djang0 1]

Q1) Can I have your full system hardware spec?

Q2) How old is the system?

Q3) Where is the PC located in your dwelling and where in the room (e.g. on then floor, by a window etc)?

[janar737 0]

1. Some more info on the system :

-The system is 5 years old, roughly 10,000 hrs of use

- A hardware overview and physical setup picture can be found on my FSX page : 
  http://home.wxs.nl/~jarkest/fsx/fsx.html

-Relevant hardware components
  Case Antec P183, PSU Antec CP-850
  Mobo Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD5, RAM 8GB DDR3 Corsair XMS3 1600Mhz

  CPU i7 860 2.8GHz, Cooler Scythe Mugen Rev 2 B

  Graphical cards Sapphire HD5870 1GB and Sapphire HD5770 1GB

  2 SSD"s en 1 HDD

 

2. Yesterday evening, after playing with the flight simulator for half an hour I stopped and quit FSX and left the PC alone. Five minutes later, while the PC still was 'free-wheeling' the graphical card stop working

This and earlier experience let me think it is most probably not an heat or powersupply issue . . .

 

See you, Jan

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

1. Some more info on the system :

 

If you overclocked your gpu - you smoked it - does not take much to do that - get an nvidia next time and dont OC it