NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Home (Inspiron, XPS, Studio) › Help! Have I damaged my card?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Help! Have I damaged my card?

post #1 of 12
8/27/07 at 5:17am
Thread Starter 
Hey, I have a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a rev0 7900gs Go, and I recently flashed it with the 7900GTX bios (790GTXUN.ROM) and followed the info given on post 1 here: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread180011.html.

The clocks for this BIOS were set at 500/600 by default, but I went ahead and clocked them up to 530/630, then eventually up to 575/700. I am running ATi Tool 0.27b2 and ran the artifact test, it ran for about 10 minutes and then some artifacts started to show at about 93c. As soon as they started coming up, I canceled the artifact test then rebooted, and re flashed back to the original 7900GS BIOS. I have been playing WoW for the last 30mins and it has been running fine but I am worried that I may have damaged my card, would anyone please be able to tell me what you think or what could have caused the artifacting? Thank You.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 12
8/27/07 at 8:45am
So it runs fine after a reboot, and you want others to guess if the card is damaged or not?

It's not damaged. Hell, it's 50/50 isn't it?

Seriously, if it runs better, why bother?
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 12
8/27/07 at 8:59am
You haven't damaged anything. The artifacts are just the card not being able to refresh it's memory properly due to the speed. The only thing that will damage a card is temperature. If it has not run at a very high temperature for a long time, you're fine. I think the card will even throttle down it's speed when it gets past a certain temperature threshold.

Don't worry, have fun.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 12
8/27/07 at 9:01am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by HomerJ View Post
You haven't damaged anything. The artifacts are just the card not being able to refresh it's memory properly due to the speed. The only thing that will damage a card is temperature. If it has not run at a very high temperature for a long time, you're fine. I think the card will even throttle down it's speed when it gets past a certain temperature threshold. Don't worry, have fun.
Thanks so much for the quick responses, the reason I asked about this too was because I've had bad experiences with overclocking before and from what I've read on these forums, you can do it quite safely. Thanks again for the replies.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 12
8/27/07 at 9:01pm
Don't trust ati tool artifacts. It's in the game that matters. I have my rev 0 card clocked at 653 / 850. It will artifact in ati tool but not in games
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 12
8/27/07 at 10:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by melshaw View Post
Don't trust ati tool artifacts. It's in the game that matters. I have my rev 0 card clocked at 653 / 850. It will artifact in ati tool but not in games
That's interesting.. Might I ask what temps your card reaches?
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 12
8/27/07 at 10:22pm
I'll have to check that. I'm really not concerned cause it runs cooler than my 6800 Ultra ever did. I'll post my temps after an hour of BF2. Just give me a little time
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 12
8/27/07 at 11:50pm
Ok. So after an hour plus of some intense BF2 action my cpu maxed at 65C and my graphics maxed at 91C. Not bad I remember my 6800 Ultra maxing out at 101C. This is with an 8 degree offset for the graphics. I didn't mess with the fan controls only monitoring.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 12
8/28/07 at 12:14am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by melshaw View Post
Ok. So after an hour plus of some intense BF2 action my cpu maxed at 65C and my graphics maxed at 91C. Not bad I remember my 6800 Ultra maxing out at 101C. This is with an 8 degree offset for the graphics. I didn't mess with the fan controls only monitoring.
Thank you for that, yeah that is about the same as what my card gets to so I'm happy to know that I don't have any damage. Thanks again.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 12
8/28/07 at 12:25am
Just so you know, your card has built in fail safes to keep from accidently damaging the card. By overclocking the card your temps will go up. But, the card has throttle temps and if your temps exceed them the card will automatically reduce clock speeds to reduce temps and keep from damaging the card. I believe you would be fine flashing to the new bios and increasing the clocks a bit. Just monitor your temps in game and if they increase enough to cause the card to throttle down you need to reduce your clocks.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 12
8/28/07 at 12:41am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sypher9 View Post
Just so you know, your card has built in fail safes to keep from accidently damaging the card. By overclocking the card your temps will go up. But, the card has throttle temps and if your temps exceed them the card will automatically reduce clock speeds to reduce temps and keep from damaging the card. I believe you would be fine flashing to the new bios and increasing the clocks a bit. Just monitor your temps in game and if they increase enough to cause the card to throttle down you need to reduce your clocks.
Yeah I knew about those throttle temps but I thought that reflashing the bios to the 7900GTX one would change the throttle temp to the 7900GTX one, rather than the temp the GS needs. I just ran ATI Tool again for 20mins with my clocks down a bit, it peaked at 93c again but with no artifacting.. So it looks like it wasn't heat related.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 12
8/28/07 at 2:16am
Try not to go over 90 is my tip.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Home (Inspiron, XPS, Studio) › Help! Have I damaged my card?