Leadtek 6800 GT toast?

[spwango]

I bought a Leadtek 6800GT a few months back and have been too busy to do too much with it. Finally, I started playing Splinter Cell PT with it this weekend, and noticed some graphics corruption. At first, I thought it was Splinter Cell--I patched it up and it was fine. Well, it happened again this afternoon...so I installed the latest Nvidia drivers and it was again fine. The corruption was not random artifacting, rather it looked like the light beams and such were getting corrupted with solid colors and patterns. I finally loaded up Ut2004, and it was a mess too. Since this problem has gone away a couple of times, my immediate suspicion was overheating. Thus, I popped off the dust filter on that massive heatsink and replaced the card. Since doing that, I have not been able to boot completely into windows. I get corruption of the 2D and core dumps whenever I try to install the NVIDIA drivers. Looks fine under VGA.

Should I bother doing an XP reinstall or is the board toast? Anyone deal with Leadtek on RMAs before?

 

[spwango]

If anyone is curious, I *think* (and hope) that this is a temp issue after all. It appears that I didn't fully seat the video board when I re-installed it. The clip on the AGP slot is difficult to get to because of the massive heat sink. Once I re-seated and re-installed drivers, it seems to be happy.

 

[Reapsy00]

I think I might be in the same situation, I bought a leadtek 6800gt not long ago and have recently noticed a very small amount of graphics corruption while playing gta san andreas. So what are you saying that it is all fine once you took the dust filter off?

 

[spwango]

Nope, all is still not well. I do have cooling issues with my case, so I'm not ready to rule out temps. For me, this is a ton of corruption, not just a little bit. I think it would be wise if I re-installed the OS, but I am very close to sending it in...anyone else have any thoughts?

 

[M0RPH]

You're not overclocking it, are you?

 

[spwango]

Originally posted by: M0RPH
You're not overclocking it, are you?

Nope. Never have, either. That said, I have had some cooling problems with the case...it's one of those Aspire XDreamer IIs that Newegg sells. It doesn't have a front or a rear case fan--being a mid tower, it is quite cramped between the HDs and the video board, and the video board fan faces the bottom of the case, so it could easily be an airflow issue. According to CPUID's Pc Wizard 2005, it idles at around 60C. When I saw the problems again, I exited the app (splinter cell PT) and checked again and found it to be around 64C--So, it was probably running several degrees higher than that under load.

Still, I suspect either something is terribly wrong with the card (in which case I will try to RMA to Leadtek--ugh) or there is something whacky in the OS. I will probably blow it away and reinstall everything before I RMA it...

 

[Reapsy00]

Mine idles around 56 C in a case with 3 80mm fans although i haven't cleaned it out in ages. Not much lower than yours. I'd be interested to know how the RMA goes.

 

[jevans64]

Originally posted by: Reapsy00
I think I might be in the same situation, I bought a leadtek 6800gt not long ago and have recently noticed a very small amount of graphics corruption while playing gta san andreas. So what are you saying that it is all fine once you took the dust filter off?

I have what looks like little pixel blocks during some scenes when playing GTA SA and NFSU2 on my LeadTek 6800GT. I don't see them in other games like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2, so this might be a driver issue. I haven't felt like upgrading from 77.50 as the artifacts are not very bothersome for me.

 

[spwango]

Question to you all...I decided to try to verify if this is an airflow issue in my case. With the case on, I turned on the Nvidia driver dialog with temperature output displayed and run 3DMark 2005. Within the first execution of 3DMark, this dialog was showing the temp of my GPU at over 70C...it spiked quickly. I then took the case panel off and directed a house fan in the area of the video board and repeated the experiment. The temps never crossed 60C. Is this a pretty good indication of an airflow issue? Is there a better tool that will graph the temp spikes over time in the background than what comes with the driver? Thanks.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

This is interesting because i was about to purchase that same card.

Please keep us updated on this curruption issue.

 

[Reapsy00]

I can't imagine you have caused the graphics corruption by running the card a little too hot. The core slowdown threshold in the driver is set to 120 C as standard so I would assume that GPU's can take this sort of heat before they get damaged. Well I would have thought 90 C or above perhaps would be risking damage. I would still RMA the card and look into getting a new case with better cooling.

 

[spwango]

Originally posted by: Reapsy00
I can't imagine you have caused the graphics corruption by running the card a little too hot. The core slowdown threshold in the driver is set to 120 C as standard so I would assume that GPU's can take this sort of heat before they get damaged. Well I would have thought 90 C or above perhaps would be risking damage. I would still RMA the card and look into getting a new case with better cooling.

I need to do some more testing. I didn't let 3d mark run for more than two or three minutes before the temps spiked into the 70s and I shut it down...I can easily see that an hour or so of playing splinter cell (generally the scenario I've seen corruption with) could cause the ambient temp of the case to rise in addition to temp of the video board. Especially considering I didn't measure the temp spikes before I had taken the dust filter off the heat sink--that could easily yield a scenario where the temps are pushing 90C. You are probably right that I should look into an RMA (Again, has anyone had any RMA experience with Leadtek?), but I intend to play around with cooling a bit more too...

For the record, the case is a POS. I won't mind getting rid of it at all. It looks great, was a fantastic value for the money, but I have had static problems with it, the innards are cramped, and it is very loud.

 

[Spacecomber]

I was wondering if you still see the graphics corruption when you try a game with the side off of your case and blowing a house fan onto the card. Seems this would help decide if it is just a matter of better cooling or something more.

 

[spwango]

Spacecomber,

I have seen no corruption when I've got the cover off and a house fan blowing into the case. I need to test it more exaustivley, but after a few repeated runs of 3d mark, the temps seemed to top out around 60C...that tends to lead me to believe it's not an issue with the contact of the heatsink and the GPU....

 

[Reapsy00]

I just had the same thing loads of corruption when playing dow winter assualt with all the settings cranked up. turns out the gpu was running at about 70 c. it runs fine with the side off and a fan pointed at it though. I guess it needs a lot of airflow to cool the gpu heatsink they should have put a faster fan on it or used Al and Cu for the heatsink.

 

[daveybrat]

First, it sounds like a bad video card, nothing you can do about it. Don't bother wasting time reformatting. I had an FX5900 card that was getting the same symptoms as you. I went out and bought a better power supply, reformatted, same symptoms kept reoccuring. After i rma'd it, worked just fine.


The only other thing maybe is what brand/wattage is your power supply??

Good luck

 

[Reapsy00]

Here is the reply I got from leadtek



Dear Customer,

We suggest that you should to add one more 80mm fan to exhaust to get the balance of airflow,or replace a 120mm fan to instead previous exhaust 80mm fan.

Thanks!
Best regards,
Marketing Department, Leadtek Research Inc.

E-Mail: service <mailto:service@leadtek.com.tw> @leadtek.com.tw
<http://www.leadtek.com.tw/> < ftp://ftp.winfast.com.tw/>

TEL: +886 (0)2 8226 5800
FAX: +886 (0)2 8226 5801
18F, 166, Chien Yi Road, Chung Ho City,
Taipei County, Taiwan (235), R. O. C.

Certified under ISO-9001. We make Dreams a Reality !!! J

-----Original Message-----
From: Jez Tindle [mailto:jez_tindle@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 1:33 AM
To: service@leadtek.com.tw
Subject: 6800GT overheating

Hello,

I bought a leadtek 6800gt (AGP) recently and have been having problems with it while playing graphics intensive games. After a while of playing (1 or more hours) I will start to get lots of graphics corruption on the screen.
When I quit back into windows I check the temperature and it is 70 C.

So I take the side panel off my case and point a large house fan at the inside of the computer and try again to play and it is fine no corruption.
When I check the temp it is around 50 C.

My case has 2 80 mm intake fans and 1 80mm exhaust fan so I was thinking that I might have a faulty card. At any rate I can't keep using it with side off as it is really noisey.

Please can you advise me on what to do.