Overheating Video Card???

[ragtop]

I built a new machine several months ago & its been running perfectly until the past week or so when it started to have an occasional spontaneous reboot or black screen crash, usually when sitting idle or surfing the net.

Tonight, it crashed - and when I restarted it, I got garbled video and more crashes. I removed the cover and found the GPU and other components on the video card to be very hot even though the fan was still running and unobstructed. After shutting down and letting it cool off, it rebooted and ran for a couple minutes before the vid card got hot again and the garbled video and crashes returned.

I've been logging voltages, fan speeds and CPU temp and haven't noticed any irregularities up to now, although I haven't had a chance to check things out tonight.

Any ideas on what could be causing the vid card to all of a sudden start overheating??

FYI - System Specs:

P4 2.4Ghz @ stock speed w/retail HSF
Albatron PX 845 PEV Pro MB
Onboard LAN
512 MB Crucal PC2100
PNY GF4 Ti 4200
SB Live!
Maxtor 60 GB HDD
Generic CDROM, CDRW & floppy
Antec True Power 430 Watt PS
WIN 98 SE

[ragtop]

Any thoguhts??

One other question for those with GF4's........ How hot do these cards typically get?? On mine, the back of the card (just behind the GPU) quickly gets too hot to touch, as do the capacitors that are closest to the back of the computer. The RAM heatsinks are hot, but you can touch them without getting burned. The capacitors that are closer to the front of the computer are relatively cool. All of this is just while I'm viewing 2D graphics - no games or anything.

I'm assuming this is unusual, but I never checked it like this before.

[shawshank62]

Your getting garrbly video?? In my past bad luck with video card Whenever it gets scrweed up, lines everywhere, colors, just looks weird...Its done, if that is happening i would find your warranty and sent it in for a replacement. Also, was the card always hot? or does it feel hot because you never touched it before (you have nothing to compare it to)? The power downs, maybe the p/s is going?

[ragtop]

Last night I was getting all kinds of screwy lines, colors, etc. This morning its been working OK for about an hour now.

As far as the power supply, its a top of the line Antec True Power and its only a few months old. I've been logging voltages at 5 second intervals and haven't seen any fluctuations. Altough its always possible, I think the power supply is pretty low on the list of possible problems.

I'm not sure if this card always got this hot - I never checked before. I don't have another GF4 to compare it too, but its much hotter than my old GF3 ever got. After last night, I was kind of hoping that the card was completely dead - then I could RMA the thing. Unfortunately, its back to life this morning, and its always hard to RMA something with an intermittent problem like this.

[JimJRJ]

It could be the video card or possibly some software issues. I was having problems with my Ti4600, I would get a bunch of colored horizontal lines over the whole screen and some other weird graphical glitches and then the computer would freeze. I RMA'd the card but it still did it with the new card. I did everything but couldn't fix it. Sometimes it would run great with no problems, sometimes I would have to reboot one, two or three times to get it working okay.

One day while trying to partition my hard drive, being the noob I am, I totally screwed everything up and I was forced to wipe my hard drive clean and reinstall everything. Guess what, everything works perfectly now, no graphics problems or any other problems. I had some driver or software problems somewhere. I'm not recommending you wipe your hard drive clean and reinstall, but it might not be your video card. Can you get a friends video card and use it on your machine to see if you still have problems?

Oh yeah, I also replaced the mobo and power supply thinking that would help, but it didn't. OH well, at least I upgraded to a better mobo and power supply

[ragtop]

I'll be swapping vid cards with one from another computer, as soon as I have the chance. (the wife has a few other jobs planned for me right now )

[ragtop]

I put my trusty old GF 2 in & the machine has now been running for 8 hours with no probs. I guess I'll be calling PNY on Monday for an RMA.

[shawshank62]

good luck with that

[Dockins]

did you go to Nvida and get the latest drivers ? best way to do this is go to PNY.com then choose your card it will direct you to Nvida to get better set of drivers oh btw...my drivers that came with my card did the same till i got redirected to Nvida and on a dial up it took me 1hr and 30 min to download it...lol...but its rocking...

[beppodmime]

Doesn't sound like a software issue to me. Does anything like the capacitors look discolored or otherwise odd on the card? Sounds to me like your 4200 is taking the proverbial dump.

Hmm.... the card doesn't happen to say "Manufactured for PNY by Gainward", or anything similiar to that on it anywhere, does it?