Hi!

Today I was playing Fifa 06 World Cup, and Re-Volt (very old game), and then my Powercolor X800GTO started to do some weird things. The games had missing textures, the sky had big gray blocks on it. I then touched the card, and it was damn hot.
So I think it is overheating. I have good case airflow (1 front intake, 1 back exhaust). The card is using the stock cooler (I'll post some pics later).
It didn't lock up, because I turned off the PC when I started to see that.
I'm looking for this cooler for it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835186129

Is this a good cooler? I will not use the card until I get the new cooler. I seem to be fine with the 6100 IGP card :haha:

I'll post some pictures of my card, and the stock HSF, if that helps. I just have to wait until my camera's batteries recharge to post the pics.

Thanks!

The cooler you mentioned will do you good, but bear in mind it'll take up 2 slots (Your current slot and the slot below it).

The card will feel hot, X800s run at above 60 degrees on stock (I think mine ran at 69 or 79 on stock HSF). Your hand burns at about 80 degrees, but 60 degrees will feel hot nonetheless. Use a program to determine the "exact" temp (its not exact, but it'll give us an idea). Everest (by Lavalys) seems like a good one, its a free download, just google it.

I wouldn't immediately suggest its the temp, although it is highly likely. But if you can afford the new cooler, install it and see if it helps.

Thanks for your response!

I am very worried about the card. I have removed the heatsink, and applied some AS 5. I ran AtiTool, and I got some bad things. The heatsink gets very hot while running AtiTool, and the VGA ram gets EXTREMELY hot. I can not even touch it one second, or it burns my finger :dead:
I took a screnshot of Atitool, but I can not upload it right now because IE refuses to do it :evil:

I will post them tomorrow, I will force IE to do it :stickout:

Thanks!

RAM runs very hot? did you overclock it? I used to have an X800XT, and the RAM doesn't run very hot at all, even without any heatsinks (which I added soon after).

And by not very hot, I'm talking about 45s.

How about case temp? Or maybe airflow. Bad airflow can cause bad temps . Might be a good idea to see if you can have an extra fan or two, or to make sure hot air is expelled from the graphics card area, and not being blown into the graphics card area.

Space is also another consideration. I noticed that I get 20C lower temps when I moved my soundcard (gigantic thing) down one PCI slot (2 PCI slots empty).



Again, I must say the extra hot RAM doesn't make sense. Even overclocked 20%, my X800XT showed a 67C RAM temp.

Well, here is the image distortion I've got:

Ati Tool Screnshot

I don't really think that is normal. I believe it has something to do with the VGA RAM. Hopefully that will dissapear with the arctic cooler, because it cools down the RAM too.

I took some pictures of my card, to see if the cooler fit:

Card without the cooler

Stock and very small cooler

Cooler fully assembled

Sorry for the fuzzy pics, but I'm not a professional photographer
I forgot to mention that I have good case cooling, 1 front intake fan, and 1 rear exhaust fan. Anyway, no matter how well my case is cooled, it will remain hot, because the ambient temp here in my room is 93 F and outside is 102 F :hotouch: .

Thanks for any suggestion for my video card!

Cooler for X800 GTO

Hey Wolfram,

I have just purchased a Sapphire Radeon X800GTO Model # 100131SL AGP card fpr my Athlon XP2600 machine which is slightly overclocked (200Mhz). This particular card has a reputation for running hot. I noticed you had picked AVC-AT5 cooler. In you photograph of your card I think I noticed you have only two mounting holes through the PCB. If this is the case I don't think the AT5 will fit. I have the same problem with my card. Although the Artic Cooling web site list it as fitting, it does not on some boards, check out the PDF diagrams there. I purchased the ATV-AT1Rev 2 cooler and it looks like it might fit the PCB, but is too short to reach the slot cover exhaust. Might have to do some moddeling. Will post again when when I get it installed.

Thanks for your reply!

What I like about the ATI silencer, is that it cools down the RAM heatsink, which seems to be VERY NEEDED, because they can easily burn a finger.

Thanks!

As I said before, its weird that you can overheat your card that much.... There might be some other factor, such as ambient case temp, which you should check out.

Thanks!

My case temp is 39 C. I think that shouldn't be a problem. The weird thing is that I played today for a few hours, and the card was hot of course, but it didn't show artifacts.

I'm not overclocking at all anything, just the CPU a little.
I'll play some GTA and PoP:TT and see if the problem comes back.

Thanks!

Ok, I've played wolfenstein online with 64 players, and the card didn't artifact. I guess it's fine.
Anyway, I'll buy the ATI silencer, and post back the results.

See you soon, and thanks a lot.

I have the X800GTO in my box and it has never gone over 65C even when gaming for hours i dunno why yurs is getting so hot kinda weird but ATI's stuff always does run hotter but i'm going to get a couple 7900GT's soon anyway and run SLi but i dunno is the HSF on GPU even working lol that seems way to hot for this card.

65C is pretty hot to touch. If you can get to touch it.

And its not way too hot, its normal load temp for this card.

I'm still waiting to get the ATI Silencer, right now I'm stuck with the Geforce 6100 IGP.

It seems that the Radeon will be in its box for some time.....

I had this card before. Mine hit 127C. Check to see if the stock cooler is even correctly mounted, mine wasn't. Stupid Sapphire...I RMAed it to Newegg after my second one had the same problem as the first. This card just sucks, period.

Edit: Bf2 was the game mine artifacted in, whole scenes where glitched out like crazy. AHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I removed the stock cooler, it was mounted properly. I cleaned the old thermal paste, and applied some AS5. After doing that, it didn't have problems. I played wolfenstein online for 2-3 hours, and nothing happened.

Anyway, I won't use it until I get the ATI silencer, as I don't wanna fry it
Something that really amazes me, is that my Geforce 6100 can run all my games very good, even BF2

Your ATI Silencer is taking forever too?

I ordered an ATI Silencer 5 for my X850XT and it's going to be a month or so before they can locate one for me

The main problem, is that I don't have money for it . I used all of it when I bought a new PSU

Ahh, makes sense. They retail for like $20 CDN though(the ones for the X800 series), you don't have that much?! Borrow it! Or sell your old card for cheap..ish

I'm 15 year old, I don't work yet .
The PSU costed me 45 dlls, around 500 pesos here in Mexico, which is a little too much for a teenager without a damn job....

Anyway, I think I can borrow some money. Heck, if I paid more than $100 for a CPU and video upgrade, why shouldn't I get a $20 cooler...

Well, I still don't have enough money, (bought 2 gamecube games ), but after "playing" COD2 with the 6100 IGP at no more than 10 FPS I decided to put back in the X800GTO. And what a difference!! COD now runs at a constant 60 FPS (vsync on)

And the card didn't overheat at all. No artifacts, nothing.
I will get the ATI cooler, but in the meantime, I can enjoy my X800GTO's power