Just thought I'd share my experience: Well, I haven't been playing very many video games lately.. probably a couple of weeks between 30 minute World of Warcraft sessions. So I logged on WoW one day and about 30 seconds in, I got artifacts accross my entire screen and the system seemed to have locked up. I rebooted, and tried again.. which locked up in about the same time, but this time, I was able to go to bash and kill the program. Long story short, I opened up my nvidia-settings program and watched the thermal monitor as I played the game. My video card's core got to about 72 C before my computer locked up. Yeah, that's right, 72 Celcius! So... I opened up my chassis and felt my video card, which was burning hot. I blew everything out (which was very much needed) and booted the computer up. The video card fan was spinning and there is definetly plenty of airflow in my chassis, although it was hot enough in my room that i was sweating. To my dismay, the same thing continued to happen when I played any game. So, that night, I ordered this beast and a couple of days later, when it arrived, I promptly put it onto my video card and booted my computer. As soon as the monitor came on, I got artifacts across my entire screen (similiar to this. I took the video card back out, cleaned off the contact thingys.. and tried again. Same thing. Out of desperation, I took off the gigantic heatsync and put the old, stock heatsync back on and booted it up to the same effect. Sucks for me. I got an older video card and booted my computer up... It looked fine. Put the 6800gt back in and back to the artifacts. Next, I took my 6800 to a different computer and booted it up. Whelp, same ol artifacts. This is when I realized that I am going to have to buy a new video card and that I built my computer right before they came out with PCI express. So, instead of upgrading my video card with another AGP card and staying out of date, I went ahead and ordered a new motherboard AND video card. So, I spent about 420 dollars that I couldnt really afford and didn't want to use even if i could afford it. On the bright side, I get a pretty nice upgrade. Yeah, so I thought I'd share that experience with you.
I feel your pain fellow gamer. I would be in the same spot if my card was to die on me . I have a big money sucking device called a girlfriend . So she is clueless about PC's . Go figure?
Thats right! Most expensive device in the world. We can find it anywhere but just have to make ourself ready to dig a big hole in our pocket. For the Fred, look for the good side might. Now you can play more heavy games on your computer without overclocking. Which will increase your computer's life and reduce temp problems. But Rememba, don't repeat the mistakes as its the only way to success.
Actually, I never even tried overclocking that video card. I have no idea why it just up and overheated. There was definetly some dust in there.. and its dang hot up here in the desert, but still 70c?! that's really hot. Maybe a manufacturer's defect... dunno. Doesn't matter now, I guess. I'm too much of a lazy bastard to RMA things. Although I dont know if they'd even take it. Not only have I tampered with it, but it's probably almost a year old.
RMA it if you can. Can't say I'm too surprised if it was seriously clogged with dust, amazing how much it can affect the temp.
The good news/bad news part. Yeah, dust is a pain, although I wonder if the card didn't simply have something come loose. Don't feel bad, I've had the hard drives and a power supply go down the toilet this week...but at least it was on my secondary box. Still, I've dropped about as much as you have on computer parts over the last 2 weeks.
