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Video Card overheating

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Hi I was just wondering if any of you knew why my computer keeps freezing up. I believe it is my video card, because it only freezes when I play games or any graphics program. All my drivers are up to date, and I have added more memory to my system. My system specs are:
WinXP Pro
800mhz Duron
384mb RAM
nvidia RIVA TNT2 model 64/model 64 Pro
Direct x9
I have one of those video card fans that fit into the PCI slot thing, but my video card is a AGP card, and the fan doesn’t really blow on to the card that well. It doesn’t even blow on the card, but sucks air away from the card. It is pointing straight at the fan on the card. Will this cause the PCI slot fan to not function correctly? Thanks

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Yes it sounds like you are having a heating problem. if you haven’t got mbo temp monitoring you should start there and track how your temp sensors are responding. inspect your case and make sure wiring to drives powersupply etc are as neat as possible (use wire ties ) You can improve cooling by having a clean case, extra case fans, heatsinks on video ram, memory heatsinks with fan, as well. Also directx 9 is known to cause problems with riva-tnt2 cards.

hope this helps
Rick

Reply To: Video Card overheating

In reply to Video Card overheating

The fan is performing the task that it was designed to do,and functioning properly read the following

PC case exhaust fan is an add-in cooling fan designed to fit in the PCI or ISA expansion slots of any computer. It is used to exhaust warm air out, preventing problems due to overheating components. The exhaust fan inlet faces adjacent PCI or AGP cards and makes a great video card cooler for hot running 3D accelerator cards like the Voodoo, TNT2, GeForce256 and others. A quiet running brushless DC motor coupled with a high efficiency blade design is capable of moving 36 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air. Power is supplied to the fan using a standard LP4 (hard drive power connector) pass through plug.

Reply To: Video Card overheating

In reply to Video Card overheating

May not be an overheating problem. I need to know which chipset you are running. If it was a heat problem then the lockups would not limit themselves to graphics intensive operations. As far as the fan setup you mentioned it is logical to assume that if the two fans are adjacent to and opposite to each other in airflow then the efficiency will be 0 since one will cancel the other. But thats if the airflow opposses each other, do they? You may have a driver issue. Also your BIOS setup may be involved. Heat is the low man on the totem pole here. In BIOS setup try enabling a memory hole at 15M-16M, see what happens. You are not overclocking are you? I think you may have a chipset driver issue (check for updates relative to AGP)Check for shared irq’s in device manager. Reboot in safe mode and delete all multiples of devices in device manager. Reboot, than let windows redetect all the hardware, have a disk with updated drivers ready in case XP cannot find them.

Reply To: Video Card overheating

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Sorry, but I am not very technically savvy. How would I find out which chipset I am running? And how do I enable a memory hol at 15M-16M? I know how to get into BIOS, but from there I do not know. I am not overclocking, and I tried the shared irqs thing but there weren’t any multiples of devices. I think the airflow do not oppose each other. One fan blows out, one in. And where would I look for updates relative to AGP for my chipset? Thanks for all your help, btw.

Reply To: Video Card overheating

In reply to Video Card overheating

The fact that the computer is freezing up may not bethe video card. Mismatched memory may be your problem. Since you have 384MB you either installed a 128 or 256 MB stick of ram. Try removing the older memory and see how it works. If it performs without stopping then get matching sticks or just get a new 512 MB ram that matches the specs of your motherboard. Run dxdiag.exe to see if all the drivers are compatible and to test all the multimedia functions of you system. Also the games you play may have downloads (patches) for your video card. Since the video card has a cooling fan move the the slot fan to the back side of the video card so that it pulls hot air away from the back of the card. Make sure the CPU fan is in good working condition. Relplace if running slow at all. If the fan stops on the AMD CPU it will burn up instantly. So keep an eye on that.

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Ok in BIOS setup go to the ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES, or some such label. This section usually contains more advanced features for controlling the behavior of your system. There are some settings here that you shoul adjust for maximum performance of your system. There may also be some features you will need to enable or disable if your system is exhibiting problem behavior. In that list should be one for MEMORY HOLE. It may say disabled, the other choice should be to set it to 15M-16M. Some (unusual) expansion cards require access to particular memory addresses in order to function properly. This parameter lets you set aside the appropriate area of memory for these cards. The typical memory areas that can be set aside are “512-640KB” (the upper 128K of conventional memory) and “15-16MB”. What is the make and model of your computer or motherboard? That is how we can discover your chipset beside opening the box and reading the chip label. You may not be able to recognize the chip yourself. The chipset driver, also known as the motherboard driver, is very important. Some chipsets such as VIA have needed patches in the past to work with newer AGP cards.

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i’m pretty sure that my problem is a hardware problem, as i was re-installing windows at one point and it would freeze every other minute…at least until i opened up the case. that’s why i believe it is an overheating issue, but i’m not sure of how to fix it

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