SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - Graphics card overheating on Aliens vs Predator 3

Arclight · 04-07-11, 02:41 PM

Well like I said it's all assuming peak currents and beefy components. Gaming is just rather stressfull on a PC: the card is likely running full tilt, the CPU has a constant, hefty task and there's a lot of RAM in use, with frequent operations to fetch contents. And the motherboard is working hard to keep al that stuff communicating and playing nice. There's not a lot of types of applications that tax a system quite so thoroughly, so at least where gaming is concerned I'm a strong supporter of the "plenty power" aproach.

I can't gaurantee that it'll work or not, chances are that if it ran on 160W, moving to 300 and plugging in that card will see it continue to run happily. If you however at any point are faced with seemingly random CTD or BSOD problems, or failures to boot, the PSU would be my first suspect.

About the overheating: I've had such trouble with a number of console ports. My 8800 would overheat not far above 80C, but it always seemed to be the memory (not artifacting, but simply corrupted image, shortly followed by a lockup). My guess is it's because of texture streaming: it's a technigue where the higher detail mip levels of textures are not pre-cached in VRAM, meaning that when the player aproaches an object and the game tries to load a more detailed texture for it, it would need to come from the disc (likely regular RAM in a PC, consoles don't have the luxury of plenty of memory to work with). This means a lot of work for VRAM, thus more heat and thus more likely to overheat. A lot of cards have a cooling solution that's really only effective in transfering heat away from the actual GPU, not so much the memory chips.

I fixed it by making the fan on the 8800 more aggressive (custom profile made in Rivatuner), and lowering quality settings for the game, particularly texture detail. Think shadows take up a good chunk of rendering work and VRAM as well.

Can't say for sure it's what's plaguing you LS, but it might be something to try.

04-07-11, 02:41 PM	#16
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Well like I said it's all assuming peak currents and beefy components. Gaming is just rather stressfull on a PC: the card is likely running full tilt, the CPU has a constant, hefty task and there's a lot of RAM in use, with frequent operations to fetch contents. And the motherboard is working hard to keep al that stuff communicating and playing nice. There's not a lot of types of applications that tax a system quite so thoroughly, so at least where gaming is concerned I'm a strong supporter of the "plenty power" aproach. I can't gaurantee that it'll work or not, chances are that if it ran on 160W, moving to 300 and plugging in that card will see it continue to run happily. If you however at any point are faced with seemingly random CTD or BSOD problems, or failures to boot, the PSU would be my first suspect. About the overheating: I've had such trouble with a number of console ports. My 8800 would overheat not far above 80C, but it always seemed to be the memory (not artifacting, but simply corrupted image, shortly followed by a lockup). My guess is it's because of texture streaming: it's a technigue where the higher detail mip levels of textures are not pre-cached in VRAM, meaning that when the player aproaches an object and the game tries to load a more detailed texture for it, it would need to come from the disc (likely regular RAM in a PC, consoles don't have the luxury of plenty of memory to work with). This means a lot of work for VRAM, thus more heat and thus more likely to overheat. A lot of cards have a cooling solution that's really only effective in transfering heat away from the actual GPU, not so much the memory chips. I fixed it by making the fan on the 8800 more aggressive (custom profile made in Rivatuner), and lowering quality settings for the game, particularly texture detail. Think shadows take up a good chunk of rendering work and VRAM as well. Can't say for sure it's what's plaguing you LS, but it might be something to try. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.