Heat problems with ATI Radeon 850XT

[elmatto]

Hi there,

hmm, after unpacking the art archive I am able to run the game on my PC:
- AMD Athlon 64, 3500+
- ATI Radeon 850XT
- 2 Gig Corsair RAM

However, after playing for a view minutes, I get interrupted by an ATI Control Center warning message that states that the graphics card is getting too hot.
When ignoring the warning, the card seems to get hotter by the second and I aborted playing when it went over 90 degrees celsius.

I tried a game resolution of 1600x1200 first, then 1280x1040 and left all other graphic setting at the default.

I have the latest ATI drivers installed und just cannot believe that civ4 overheats my ATI card. The game should run smoothly at 1600x1200 and I have no clue why it is overheating even at 1280x1040?!?!? Other games that seem more demanding on the graphics card run without any temperature problems.

Anyone else got similar problems?
Any ideas what causes this and how to avoid overheating?

Tnx a lot,

Elmatto

 

[VimesUK]

What is your.....
Room temperature
Case temperature
GPU Ambient temperature

Do you have good airflow within your PC case....?

All the above can contribute to your graphics card running that hot. I assume that the HSF on the GPU is running ok and is clean of dust etc etc....?

You could get yourself a 3rd party cooler to replace the std HSF on the GPU but you shouldn't need one.

I assume that the graphics card isn't overclocked..?

BTW: I have an ATI X800 GTO2 card that I have enabled the extra 4 pipes and flashed it to an ATI850. I can run it at XT or XTPE clock speeds but it doesn't run as hot as that.

 

[elmatto]

Tnx 4 the reply, Morgan.

Room: ~23° C
CPU: ~48° C
Case: ~41° C
(while the ATI card goes up to 90)

I use a arctic cooler for the cpu but the standard ATI graphics card cooler.
I didn't overclock the card and didn't have any heat problems with this pc
so far...the ATI card never got near 80° C before, whatever game at whatever resolution.
The rest of the system doesn't get very hot so I am not sure any improvement to the air flow will solve my problem?! And it takes just about 3 minutes of playing until I get the overheat warning...

Greetings,

Elmatto

 

[bancki]

Hi elmatto,

Try to remove the siding (what ever it's called) to get more air inside the computer. And how I got my tempature to stop at 60c-63c, I changed grafick level to medium at 1024x ....

 

[VimesUK]

Depending on the sensor on your motherboard I am not sure if that case temperature is too high.

For example...
With my DFI Socket A board my case temp will show around 37c. I have swapped that motherboard with an Abit NF7-s ands the case temp then shows 27c. The case and fans etc have remained the same it is just the position of the temp sensor on the DFI board being above the Southbridge chip as to why it shows so hot.

So to me that case temperature would be quite hot for my DFI rig (I am using a system built around a DFI Ultra 4 board) and very hot for my Abit rig.

Your temperature for your CPU, I assume at idle, is quite high as well. I would have thought that the CPU should be around 10 to 15c lower.

You need to think about airflow in your PC.

I have found though that whilst running Civ4 it does raise the temperature quite a bit more than some of my FPS type of games, strange really as I wouldn't have thought that it would have been that way.

I assume that the card is getting the correct voltage from the PCI-express slot, unless it is an AGP type...?

 

[Old Dood]

What I do with my video cards is that I leave the PCI slot closest to the vid card slot open...and also take out the slot cover on the back. Others have suggested this trick as well....hope that helps some.

 

[elmatto]

Thanks for your replies, folks! They are much appreciated.

In fact the temperatures für case/cpu I state above where not
idle state values but the readings directly after playing civ4.

Idles values are
~ 37 ° C CPU
~ 34 ° C Case
~ 54 ° C ATI Radeon

I think those idle values are quite OK?
While civ4 heats up the cpu by 10c, the effect on the ATI card is around +40 ° C.

The ATI card is in a PCI-e slot on a MSI K8N Neo4.
I didn't tweak the voltages (CPU, memory) or bus frequencies (FSB 200MHz, PCI-e 100MHz). I couldn't find an explicit PCI-e voltage, neither in BIOS nor in the MSI Core Center tool so I assume the voltage is OK?
The system is very stable, except for the civ4 heat issue.

However the PCI slot next to the PCI-e is occupied at the moment.
I will change that since I have another free PCI slot and I will remove the PCI slot covers on the back to improve air flow.

However it seems very strange that civ4 is the only game to cause such problems on my system so far.
What is the civ4 3d engine doing with all those system resources?
I will do some more testing and post the results.

well, tnx again!

Elmatto

 

[Lahdoz]

I like to pop out one of the empty CD bay panel covers as well. Case heat rises right out. Both video and CPU temps will drop...

 

[WoodenEye]

again, if said, sorry- Temperature makes different. make sure that thing on your prosessor is clen, otherwisw your wind is just turnig and turning and makes no different to your pros.

 

[elmatto]

Hi everyone,

seems that the problem is solved:
First I improved case air flow as recommended and that lowered the temperature quite a bit but I would still get warnings atfer a while.

After removing the ATI card I could see dust that had had blocked about half
of the exit of the ATI fan. The dust was not visible when the card was in the slot but apparently had lowered the cooling capacity quite a lot.

After cleaning the card it now seems to stay below 70° C when running civ4.

Thank you all for the help!

Elmatto

 

[VimesUK]

I am very pleased for you in your success in getting Civ 4 to run, enjoy your game