O humm...another 4850 Q

[buwish]

Hey all,

I did a bit of searching throughout the forum and could not find anything in concern to my issue.

On a whim while at BestBuy today I decided to get the VisionTek 4850 (512MB model), as it was on clearance for $100.00 and give the boot to my 2600 HD XT (again, 512MB model). I'm not a big gamer, but I figure it would be of assistance in watching blurays, other various flicks I have on my HDD's, and a few video editing projects that I take on every now and then. Heck, for $100, I think a fair amount of people on here would go for it (or have)!

Anyways, after installing it and letting it run for around 8-9 hours watching a flick and just idling, I checked the temperature on it in CCC and it was in the upper 70's, which is a bit high for my taste. So I got into overdrive and adjusted the fan speed to cool it down. That was fine, but when I decided to toy with the GPU and memory clocks, I ran into a bit of an issue. I adjusted the settings on both, but when they would fail the test, I set them back to default. At some point in my testing, something got messed up and my GPU clock speed that was at 625Mhz (apparently this was stock or I could be wrong) went down to 500mhz and the memory clock went down to 750Mhz from 993Mhz.

After a bit of toying with the autotuner, I got the memory clock back up to 993Mhz, but for the life of me, I cannot get the GPU clock back up to 625Mhz. As I said, it keeps failing the test and hence, will not change. The driver keeps crapping out if I just apply the settings without running the test, i.e. the infamous BSOD. I've even ran CPUID and it verifies that the GPU clock is at 500Mhz.

So the question is, should I go ahead and try to jack the GPU clock back up via Riva Tuner? Are there any other methods?

If it matters, here are the specs on my newly built system: Q9400 (not over clocked-yet), 6GB of DDR2 @ 800Mhz, Intel MOBO, etc...

 

[buwish]

Hey all,

My apologies, I have resolved the issue. I gave Riva Tuner a try and reset the stock values and it held just fine. I even bumped both the memory and GPU clocks up a little bit (670Mhz for the GPU and 1Ghz for the memory). Again, I do not game, so no need to push it very hard.

One other question though if no one minds. Right now I set the fan for 40% and for it to be on constantly. The temperatures are in the mid to upper 50's. Can I go lower on the fan speed or are the temps alright?

Thanks again all.

 

[kingnoobe]

Video cards are fine running at 70c so ya you could lower the speeds.

 

[EXT64]

500/750 is the 2-D clocks for some models. That probably has no relation to your problem, but it looked suspicious so I thought I'd mention it.

Upper 50's is OK. is this the single slot cooler, or a larger one?

These cards can survive up to 110+ C (my old one did, and it is still running great) but you want to shoot for the 40-80C range.

If you don't game, don't OC it. All you are doing then is increasing instability, heat, and shortening its life. Just leave it at default.

 

[buwish]

I agree, I have set it back to stock. I thought I'd see what it could do in concern to 3D Mark 06 for the heck of it (ended up with 13004- not bad for a processor that isn't OC'ed). As long as it can survive high temperatures, I'll leave the fan alone as well. Never the less, this is a huge step up from the 2600 model.

Thanks for the input and time everyone.