GeForce FX5600 VIVO w/ 256MB VRAM - overheating with Half-Life 2?

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

After someone hinted to me that my GeForce FX5600 VIVO card w/ 256MB of Video RAM can be a source of trouble, I began observing its temperature using a nifty monitoring package which uses probes that you stick on to whatever you want to monitor its temp. In my case, the gadget has 3 probes, one for the CPU, one for any hard disk (I chose the boot disk since it would be the most critical out of the 4 I have in my system), and one for the video card. The device itself mounts on one of the 5.25" drive bays and has a digital display with selector (so you can choose what to monitor), which most of the time is set to monitor the CPU (which in my system is a Pentium4 3.0GHz Prescott, and during normal operation averages betwen 47C and 52C; the Hard Disk stays around 43C).

 

After noticing some problems with Half-Life 2, one time I set the device to monitor the video card's temperature, then played one game of HL2. After about 5 minutes, I noticed the temperature reading go up from 47C (normal/idle temperature when I'm not gaming), to around 53C, and around that time, HL2 may do one of these (but it doesn't happen every time):

 

1. Garbage appears on the screen, but gameplay is still normal

2. Some of the graphics disappear and HL2 slows down to a real crawl (though this gets fixed if I switch to the Windows Deskop and back to HL2 using the Start Menu shortcut key)

3. Stop Error/BOSD, with the NVIDIA display driver (nv4_disp.dll) being blamed by Windows as the culprit.

 

Keep in mind that nothing is overclocked in my system.

 

What is the real fault here? Is the GeForceFX 5600 faulty, or is it HL2? (HL2 is the only game that experiences this problem or at least makes the Video card's GPU get that hot - I only have one other 3d game that's as graphics intensive, Doom3, which doesn't experience this problem)

 

I happen to have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed.

 

 

My system specs:

 

Pentium4 3.0 GHz Prescott

ASUS P4P800-X Mobo w/ Intel 865PE chipset and 2 SATA ports

1GB DDR400 RAM (512MB DIMM x 2)

Inno3D GeForce FX5600 VIVO w/ 256MB Video RAM

Seagate 30GB 5400RPM ATA-100 Hard Disk (boot disk/primary master)

Seagate Barracuda 120GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (primary slave)

Seagate Barracuda 160GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (secondary master)

Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA Hard Disk (connected to SATA port #1)

Sony DRU-710A DVD Burner (secondary slave)

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card

CNet 220c LAN Card

Creative Labs Modem Blaster PCI

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

note: case has 3 fans to help with the cooling

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

Originally posted by Alec§taar:

Quote:

Stop Error/BOSD

 

Can you give us the SPECIFIC ERROR MESSAGE?

 

 

* It might just help... to me? It's your driver... believe-it-or-not!

 

I'll note it next time it happens.

 

Quote:

QUESTION - Are you overclocking your vidcard via the old "Coolbits" registry tweak? How about your RAM &/or CPU??

 

(Could I be wrong? Maybe... but, if you are convinced it's heat, there ARE "exotic" cooling systems for video cards, or you can make your own!)

 

Like I said nothing is overclocked. I don't even use Coolbits anymore now that the refresh rate can be set without them.

 

Quote:

Another possible? I see all those 5 HDD DiskDrives you run + a DvD-Burner there... that's ALOT of power-consumption. Is your PowerSupply up to that??

 

APK

 

I have a 400W Power Supply, though a local technician claimed 335W is enough for 6 drives.

 

Quote:

P.S.=> I put a copper CPU heatsink onto a GeForce 4 Ti4600 unit w/ a pretty good fan (2300rpm iirc) & THAT kept it VERY cool... & I have seen folks @ spots where folks go WAY off the deep end modding systems that had hydro-cooling on their vidcards & CPUs that were not only great cooler, but very quiet as well... maybe it's something you want to look into! apk

 

If I could find such cooling devices and they're easy to implement I'd get them.

 

Like I also said, it only happens with Half-Life 2, and no other game.

[DosFreak 2]

You said that while playing HL2 your videocard is hotter than when playing Doom3?

 

Perhaps you should try underclocking your card and see if that helps.

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

Originally posted by Alec§taar:

Quote:

Then, it may be some "kink" in HL2... have you gone to their support site (especially w/ this stopcode & MAYBE a dump file to send them), or their forums?

 

(It's now beginning to sound more like a HL2 problem really... does it only happen in SOME levels? The reason I ask this is, I customize the HECK out of an OpenGL port of Doom for DOS called JDoom (part of the DoomsDay Engine by Jaakko Keranen) & have had to write him a few times... most of the time? The errors were fixed by removal of customized files (3rd party, won't mention the name because those guys worked hard too to make their product that is 99.999% solid anyhow), because it was only breaking on the last level of Doom I called "DIS". I pulled the 3rd party stuff on the advice of Mr. Keranen the game's designer & poof/voila: Problem gone!))

 

Do you customize OR tweak the game in ANY way?

 

Does this happen @ ALL resolutions, and with AntiAliasing/AntiIsotropic off/middle/full on settings??

 

(Especially the latter: It may be SOME image in the game rendering or setting you use that is NOT meshing there... sounds nutty? It may be a problem in that alone.)

 

QUESTION - Can you get this game to crash in a SPECIFIC map/level in a certain area? That is how I got my gaming problem solved... then wrote the developer about it & he hit it RIGHT on the head on how to fix it!

 

(He may have even wrote the guys on the 3rd party pack I mention above about it to help them, I don't know... maybe I should instead of he! )

 

 

* Anyhow... try that experiment on resolutions switches, diff. AntiAliasing &/or AntiIsotropics settings & see if it helps!

 

APK

 

P.S.=> The reason I mention that, is because of what I saw in a game & what caused it... that info. helped the coder of it to help ME zero-in on the offending problem! apk

 

Well, I can't seem to note any pattern of what level it would crash.

 

As for settings, I don't use any advanced tweaks (Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing are disabled for instance), and I use relatively low detail settings and run at 800x600x32bit for good framerate (it seems my rig is still not powerful enough to run HL2 at high detail settings; in fact before I upgraded to a Pentium4 3GHz from a P4 2GHz, the game was almost unplayable even at the lowest settings and resolution).

[DosFreak 2]

Yeah, that 5600 is kinda puny compared to today's graphics cards.

 

Graphics Processor: Nvidia GeForce FX 5600

Graphics Processor Codename: NV31

Graphics Core Clock Speed: 325MHz

Pixel Pipelines: 4

Texture Units Per Pixel Pipeline 1

Vertex Units: 1

Pixel Shader Version: 2.0

Vertex Shader Version: 2.0

Installed Video Memory: 256MB

Memory Technology: DDR SDRAM

Memory Clock Speed: 250MHz

Memory Bus Width: 128-bit

Primary RAMDAC Clock Speed: 400MHz

 

Eeekk, and I was hating myself for playing Doom 3 halfway through with my 9700 before getting my X800!

 

Well, it looks like you have a somewhat decent CPU compared to what you had before (It's no Athlon but at least you have more mhz). Your probably upgrading bit by bit, X850 may be out of your price range (or any sane person) so you'd probably want to go with a lower end X800 when you do upgrade.

 

 

Games for quite awhile now have been more GPU limited than CPU limited which is why you'll see little benefit in gaming going from 2ghz to 3ghz in higher resolutions, but when you go from say 5200 to x800 you'll see major increases in speed.

[Sampson 0]

A number of Nvidia specific forums are reporting that the 75.xx series of drivers are overheating their cards. Granted that most of these are talking about the 6600 and 6800 level cards, there is no reason to thing that the same is not happening to some FX cards. Try some of the "lower" or earlier drivers to see if the temperatures remain constant.

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

Well, my drivers are the 66.93 WHCL versions.

 

Also, Doom3 doesn't seem to heat up my vidcard like Half-Life 2 does, nor does it crash or have any occurrances of graphics glitches.

 

Interestingly, I replicated scenario 2 in HL2 (some objects vanish while the game itself bogs down to hellishly slow framerates, until I switch to the Windows Desktop and back to HL2 again) when my vidcard was still at 45C. I'm really beginning to suspect HL2 is the culprit.