XFX 7870 is it bottle necking

[vydex]

hi folks wondering if anyone can help as im having a bit of problem with a new graphics card and i suspect its bottle necking on the system
in which ive installed it.

The card in question is a XFX HD7870 2gb ram core 1000/ mem clock 1250 . I have installed it on an Intel Core Quad Q8300 @2.5Ghz which has
windows 7 installed on a 250gb SSD drive and 8gb of 800mhz DDR2 Ram(please see speccy pic.) Power Supply is 750 watt.

I replaced the the hard drive with a SSD in this system to speed things up and give a me a reasonable gaming rig the mboard on the system
is a dell inspiron and yes its a few years old but with the upgrades I was assuming that it would give me a performance increase which it
does except when im playing any new games.

What happens is when i start playing any newer games like rome total war 2 or hard reset they tend to work ok at full res and settings for a few mins
then the system crashes to black screen and reboots. AFter making graphics adjustments from low to medium to high on games the system still crashes
to black screen then reboots. I have found that under load the card temp shoots up to 80/90/100 degrees the fans go real fast then the system crashes.
I have tried the following:

1. Got the latest drivers
2. Underclocked the Card
3. Switched off HDMI sound
4. Made sure airflow is good
5. tried older drivers
6. Tried a burn in using furmark
7 Found that I cant use DX9 but am stuck with DX11 as its windows 7.


The current bios on the card is 015.015.000.002 and I cant find any newer so Im not sure its that. If someone could help me with some pointers or suggestions
I would be most grateful thanks. Im at a loss as what to do next as I dont think that the card is faulty.

Many Thanks

 

[HEXiT]

no. the 7870 is perfectly suited to that build...
but just in case try overclocking the cpu see and if you get more performance (which is unlikely unless the games are cpu bound).
if the card is reaching 80+ then you dont have good air flow in the case or your fans are down to low on the gfx card, bad air flow due to obstruction or lack of fans.
your options are. go into the ccc panel and adjust the fan speed to around 75% this should stop the card throttling and crashing. if it doesnt or you cant stand the noise then you may need better case fans. or tidy up your cables.

chances are its actually your case thats the problem. as its a dell it will probably only have 1 fan on the back of the case. if this is an issue then you may need to mod the front by making some vents (preferably hidden) and adding a front fan. to see if this is the problem just take the side off and run the system and see if it crashes, (keep an eye on your temps also.)
the end result may be that you need a better case with more fan options.
fractal design do some great budget gaming cases. (50bux or there abouts)
also as your running win 7 go into bios and make sure the high precision event timer is enabled (hpet for short) as this can cause random offs aswell

 

[vydex]

no. the 7870 is perfectly suited to that build...
but just in case try overclocking the cpu see and if you get more performance (which is unlikely unless the games are cpu bound).
if the card is reaching 80+ then you dont have good air flow in the case or your fans are down to low on the gfx card, bad air flow due to obstruction or lack of fans.
your options are. go into the ccc panel and adjust the fan speed to around 75% this should stop the card throttling and crashing. if it doesnt or you cant stand the noise then you may need better case fans. or tidy up your cables.

chances are its actually your case thats the problem. as its a dell it will probably only have 1 fan on the back of the case. if this is an issue then you may need to mod the front by making some vents (preferably hidden) and adding a front fan. to see if this is the problem just take the side off and run the system and see if it crashes, (keep an eye on your temps also.)
the end result may be that you need a better case with more fan options.
fractal design do some great budget gaming cases. (50bux or there abouts)
also as your running win 7 go into bios and make sure the high precision event timer is enabled (hpet for short) as this can cause random offs aswell

 

[vydex]

thank hexit will move everything into a new case shortly and try the bios tips

 

[HEXiT]

just take the side off and test or you may find you have wasted your money.

 

[vydex]

ive taken off the side as suggested and still same thing keeps happening Ive also done some more searching on this forum and others all still to no avail has anyone else got any other suggestions at all ??

 

[RobCrezz]

I would reapply thermal paste to the GPU and reseat the heatsink, but this sometimes isnt very easy on graphics cards. But it does sound like its overheating.

 

[HEXiT]

if a gpu is over heating you need to look at the fan speeds first. it sounds to me like its running to slow causing a heat buildup.

 

[RobCrezz]

if a gpu is over heating you need to look at the fan speeds first. it sounds to me like its running to slow causing a heat buildup.

The first post says that the fan is speeding up very fast.

 

[HEXiT]

have you checked it for dust? or blockages...