Hi, I currently have a QuadCore Q660 PC that I have been relatively satisfied with. My Graphic card is nVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 1GB. And my memory is 4GB. I bought this computer 3 yrs ago. I managed to play most of the games without any difficulty (Crysis had to be played in medium settings because high settings made the game drop it's frame rate) until now. Recently I have been having some issues with my graphic card. I'm not sure exactly what is causing this. Whether it's the graphic card or my DirectX or my Windows update or my memory cards. I recently started playing Mass Effect when I I have noticed framerate dropping from 20+ FPS to 2-3FPS for a few minutes before going back to normal. It stays normal for a few minutes and then drops again. This issue started to happen when I watch DVD too. Then I tried to run Crysis (same installation that I left installed in the comp) and encountered severe frame rate drop right from the beginning. Now I know something is wrong. I don't know which one is at fault here. I had installed DirectX 11 a while back and I have updated my Windows 7 64bit to SP1. No changes in my memory or graphic card. If it is the graphic card that is at fault, can I put GTX 570 into my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H)? The motherboard spec says it has 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, 1 x PCI Express x1 slot. Is that the same as PCI-E 2.0 x 16 that GTX 570 requires? Or is it different? I would really appreciate it if someone can give me some insight into my problem.
I've identified what the problem is. Now all I need is some advice on how I can fix it. I'm not a hardware expert and I have not done any motherboard configurations or cooling installations. My skills are limited to knowing what is what and connecting hdd or memory or other expansion cards. The problem seems to be that my Graphic Card's GPU is very hot. While the temp is below 115C, it works fine but when it jumps to 125C, the framerate drops. It takes a while for it to cool down and then it heats up again. Any solutions pls?
Hi, You may need to reapply thermal paste to the gpu/fan for the card. If the thermal paste gets old or dries out it will not perform as well as it used to. You would need to take off the fan from the card, clean its base as well as the chip it was on with alcohol or a chemical pad, then reapply the paste such as arctic silver ceramique or something similar to see if that will resolve the problem. If the fan on the card seems to be failing, you may want to look for a different fan to replace it with as well, but I would try reapplying the thermal paste first. I found this link where someone explains how they changed it on their card. It may help you out http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/392860-how-gpu-reapply-thermal-paste.html
Hi Wildcard, I did figure out the problem eventually. The fan had failed to work. The graphic card was heating up because of that. When the temp went above 120C, framerate dropped and stayed that way until temp came below 120C to 115C. I thought about replacing the card's fan but a good fan will cost somewhat equivelant to a replacement card. And I don't know how much of the heating had already damaged the card so instead of buying a fan, I bought a used Radion 4670 1GB DDR3 card. Now it works smoothly and much better than the card I had. Thanks for the link anyway. Appreciate the help.
WOW, you can fry an egg on that thing. I would've suggested you buy something like this, but hey you got the 4670.
