ATI RADEON Malfunction or Overheating?

[jmartinnel@lant]

Hi
I have problem with my ATI Radeon 9550 Dual view card. I am playing FS 9 alot and as you know we want as much FPS as we can get. You must have two monitors to setup navigation charts and other online stuff like Teamspeak for coms.
I've bought this card in Oct 2005 and it was doing great until 2 weeks ago.
Suddenly my PC just hangs wth a black screen while I am flying. Sometimes both screens or just the one. Sometimes I do get those typical screen card problem stripes or lines and dots and other times not. Other times only the bottom half of both screens are working.
It won't even start up Colin McRae Rally 2004. As soon as the graphics comes up. she stops.
I did load the newest drivers, but still nothing.
It do have a fan on and it is working.
I took it out and put in my old FX5200 and all is working fine.
It is still under warranty, but the shop says they are not going to swop it, but will test it first which they did. Bencmark okay but do not work still in my PC nor theirs. Still they want to send it away to be fixed. Okay thats my problem.
Can somebodey help regarding symptoms of overheating or plain malfunction.
Thanks
Martin

 

[Masque]

If it's a true ATI, then you can go directly through them (it may be quicker) for the repair if it's still under warranty. Check their web site for RMA instructions. Sounds like the card's overheating to me. Had similiar issues with a 9800XT a couple years ago....it was no problem for them to repair it.

 

[jmartinnel@lant]

How will I know if it is a true ATI. The shop has the box now. It says ATI Radeon 256MB 128bit by Colourfull

 

[mailpup]

By Colorfull? Could that be Powercolor? If so, you should deal with them.

 

[theholmboy]

Stock cooling?!

It does sound like the cooling ain't cutting it anymore. I have several Radeon cards, but I wouldn't ever dare try to run them with the games we play with stock cooling. In fact, I have 3 Radeon 9700's (2 with ATI Silencers & 1 with a Zalman VF700-Cu) and the stock cooling that was on them was utter crap. If you are thinking of keeping the card in action for a while longer and are not squeamish about light modding, I would recommend that you get a copper 3rd party cooler like the Zalman I mentioned above or a Vantec Iceberq 5. You can google to find all kinds of walkthroughs on how to do it and I know the Zalman includes great instructions, as well. If you send it in for replacement, it is likely that they will just put the same cooling solution on there and then you'll be in the same spot in a year (or less).