HD4670 issues. Oveheating, perhaps?

J

jjz-

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
302
Hello!

I bought a Radeon HD4670 a few days ago and I notice that it seems to be having issues with the driver.

I am using it at stock clocks. My system is using an E6420 overclocked to 2.66 ghz from 2.13 ghz (obviously it can go a lot higher than 2.66 ghz; however, I am using a MSI Neo-f motherboard on the p965 chipset, which has quite a few limitations. One limitation of this board is the inability to go beyond 333x4 fsb.)

I use a 17 inch CRT using 1024x768 @ 75hz refresh rate, if that is of any importance.

Anyway, with any game and at any resolution, the VPU Recover feature will kick in after gaming for a while saying that my graphics driver stopped responding and was reset. Usually I can continue gaming again for a while until it happens yet another time. Sometimes; however, I lose my signal to the CRT and I have to restart the computer.

My question is, does this sound like an overheating issue, or some sort of driver issue? The fact that it happens over time (and not at an exact duration of time either), makes me think it's overheating; however, I turned on the fan to 100% using rivatuner, and it still has the same issues.

Another thing to note is that the heatsink on this thing looks pathetic. It is maybe 35-50 grams in weight, almost plastic-like. Maybe around 3 inches in diameter.

Also, I am using an extremely old case with absolutely zero airflow. It has no fans in it because it only has one old odd-sized fan mount, and I cannot find the right mm diameter fan for it.

Anyway, obviously it sounds like I am making a strong case for the card overheating; however, the only thing holding me back from completely believing this is that the driver issue occurs no matter how bad the game is and at any resolution. The issue presents itself while playing a game as recent as Fallout 3 or as old as Unreal Tournament 99/Quake3. Would such old games really be able to overheat the card? Perhaps they can because they are pushing so many frames out and thus still working as hard as while processing frames in Fallout 3?

Any help here would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

jjz
 
jjz- said:
Also, I am using an extremely old case with absolutely zero airflow. It has no fans in it because it only has one old odd-sized fan mount, and I cannot find the right mm diameter fan for it.
Click to expand...

Antec 300 for $45 at newegg (plus usually $15 shipping = $60). I don't know if this is the cause of your problem, but zero airflow will give any system trouble sooner or later.
 
Ahh, I didn't mention that I am in Japan, so shipping would be much more than $15 :).

And I do not plan to bring the case back with me to America, so it would really be quite a waste of money. I don't want to spend money on things I will not be able to cheaply ship back home.

Thanks though!
 
easiest thing to do would be to find a 40mm fan somewhere and stick it onto the heatsink somehow.
 
So you do think this is an overheating issue then? Would it be more effective to put a 90 mm intake fan on the front of the case and an outtake fan w/ twisties on the pci-cover area in the back of the pc, to get some airflow? Or would upgrading the heatsink on the card be better? I am tight on money, I doubt I can spend more than $25-$30
 
Take the side panel off the case, point small room fan at internals, test. If it fixes it, it's something overheating. If it doesn't, you'll need to look elsewhere. If you've had any previous non-ati graphics card installed you should probably run drivercleaner and then reinstall the drivers.
 
Yeah, I did as you suggested. It's definitely not overheating. It hangs around 55C generally. I am not putting the graphics card under much stress, considering the low resolution I need to run on my CRT.

So,

I have the latest bios for this piece of crap Neo-F P965.

My E6420 at stock clock, and my ram synched 1:1 with it at the specified voltage (0.05 above actually, because the motherboard won't let me go any lower. the ram is rated at 1.8v)

I have the latest catalyst whql drivers (8.11)

I get VPU recovery or sometimes a complete freeze in any game, sometimes within a minute or two, sometimes as long as 20 minutes.

What the hell.
 
Well, it seems like I fixed it on my own after a bit of tinkering with the bios.

For some reason Disable pci auto clk (or some similar option, I cannot recall the name) was disabled. Enabling this fixed it.
 
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