During the course of playing FarCry, I noticed several times that random 
polygon edges ended up in the wrong place sometimes. (By "noticed" I 
mean "now and then I couldn't see half of the room because one of the 
wall polygons was stretched across the entire width of it".)

I had assumed this was a software glitch - FarCry is rather old now 
after all. I had assumed something in the game's coding was interacting 
badly with my video card.

However, I've just been playing TF2, and the exact same thing happened. 
This has *never* happened before in TF2 with this video card. So now I'm 
thinking there is actually something wrong somehow.

I see three possibilities:

1. The GPU is overheating.

2. There's a bug in the version of the video driver I have installed.

3. Valve have made an update to TF2 which introduces some kind of 
rendering bug.

Apparently the nVidia control panel no longer tells you your GPU 
temperature; you have to download and install an additional tool. 
Anyway, having just stopped using the GPU, the temperature was reading 


To me, that sounds rather damned hot. Is it usual for a GPU to get this 
warm?

OTOH, the fact that it isn't cooling down especially fast seems to 
indicate that this isn't an issue. (The nVidia tool allows you to set a 


At this point, I'm not sure if my GPU is failing, or whether I just need 
to update my drivers...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Apparently the nVidia control panel no longer tells you your GPU 
> temperature; you have to download and install an additional tool. 
> Anyway, having just stopped using the GPU, the temperature was reading 

> 
> To me, that sounds rather damned hot. Is it usual for a GPU to get this 
> warm?

Very hot to touch, not so hot to run.  IIRC, most chips are fine up to 
65-70C, and several can go higher w/o a problem.

Myself, I try to keep them around 45C.  If they go higher than that, 
then I look at additional cooling.

...Chambers

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Shutdown. Let it cool for a few minutes. Open your tower, clean dust out. 
And I mean *clean* dust out. Open your power unit, (yes, open your power 
unit) and clean the dust out of that too. Open your fan covers, and clean 
the grime off the blades of the fan/s. Pull your graphics card out, and with 
a small screwdriver, (or similar), get as much grime off the fan blades as 
possible. (Hard to get in there if it's a sealed unit, but you've got to do 
it - be careful).

  I did exactly this the other day. You should have seen the crap in mine! 
Get a hoover in there to mop up. Be careful of the wires.  ;)

   If you don't do what I said, bye-bye graphics card. Hello new one. 
Seriously. I learnt this a long time ago.

    Edit: Oh, you're using a laptop aren't you? That must suck with dust in 
one of those. :o/

   ~Steve~

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St. <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote:
> Shutdown. Let it cool for a few minutes. Open your tower, clean dust out. 
> And I mean *clean* dust out.

  Get one of these too:
http://www.extendyourlashes.com/images/air-blower.jpg

  They are really handy when cleaning your computer of dust. You might also
want to use a vacuum cleaner at the same time if the amount of dust is large.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> St. <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote:
>> Shutdown. Let it cool for a few minutes. Open your tower, clean dust out. 
>> And I mean *clean* dust out.
> 
>   Get one of these too:
> http://www.extendyourlashes.com/images/air-blower.jpg

There's also "canned air", which is just what it sounds like. A bit more 
vigorous than a bulb for camera lens cleaning.

>   They are really handy when cleaning your computer of dust. You might also
> want to use a vacuum cleaner at the same time if the amount of dust is large.

I've seen vacuum cleaners advertised as static-free. I don't know if 
that makes any difference, but you might want to consider it if you're 
going to vacuum directly inside the case.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> There's also "canned air", which is just what it sounds like. A bit more 
> vigorous than a bulb for camera lens cleaning.

  But limited contents.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:17:21 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> There's also "canned air", which is just what it sounds like. A bit
>> more vigorous than a bulb for camera lens cleaning.
> 
>   But limited contents.

I used to see cans of compressed air that came with a hand pump so they 
could be refilled.  I never managed to get my hands on one to see if they 
worked well, and haven't seen them for a while (the store that sold them 
has since gone out of business).

But I imagine they still exist *somewhere*.

Jim

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> I see three possibilities:
>
> 1. The GPU is overheating.
>
> 2. There's a bug in the version of the video driver I have installed.
>
> 3. Valve have made an update to TF2 which introduces some kind of 
> rendering bug.

4. Hardware fault on the graphics card (eg bad RAM)

> Apparently the nVidia control panel no longer tells you your GPU 
> temperature; you have to download and install an additional tool. Anyway, 



Try showing the temperature in parallel with running the GPU (eg 3D game in 
a window), IIRC when I did those sorts of tests before, the GPU temperature 
dropped rapidly very quickly (eg 10-15 degrees in just a second after 
exiting a game).

> To me, that sounds rather damned hot. Is it usual for a GPU to get this 
> warm?

Actual chip core temperature of 55 degrees seems fine to me, if it got to 80 
or 90 I would start to get worried.

> At this point, I'm not sure if my GPU is failing, or whether I just need 
> to update my drivers...

One very easy and cheap way to check...

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>> I see three possibilities:
>>
>> 1. The GPU is overheating.
>>
>> 2. There's a bug in the version of the video driver I have installed.
>>
>> 3. Valve have made an update to TF2 which introduces some kind of 
>> rendering bug.
> 
> 4. Hardware fault on the graphics card (eg bad RAM)

Surely that's a rather rare failure mode on a graphics card? That seems 
to me more like the kind of thing where you get a brand new card and 
it's DOA. This card has been installed and running without issue for years.

>> Apparently the nVidia control panel no longer tells you your GPU 
>> temperature; you have to download and install an additional tool. 
>> Anyway, having just stopped using the GPU, the temperature was reading 

> 
> Try showing the temperature in parallel with running the GPU (eg 3D game 
> in a window), IIRC when I did those sorts of tests before, the GPU 
> temperature dropped rapidly very quickly (eg 10-15 degrees in just a 
> second after exiting a game).




>> To me, that sounds rather damned hot. Is it usual for a GPU to get 
>> this warm?
> 
> Actual chip core temperature of 55 degrees seems fine to me, if it got 
> to 80 or 90 I would start to get worried.

Oh, OK. Generally my CPU doesn't get anywhere near that hot - but then, 
I guess my CPU doesn't develop several hundred GFLOPS...

>> At this point, I'm not sure if my GPU is failing, or whether I just 
>> need to update my drivers...
> 
> One very easy and cheap way to check...

Well, I did it anyway, just for the hell of it. Next time I play, I'll 
see if it makes any difference.

(The wonderful thing about intermittent faults is that you can never 
truly know if they are fixed.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>>> Shutdown. Let it cool for a few minutes. Open your tower, clean dust 
>>> out. And I mean *clean* dust out.
>>
>>   Get one of these too:
>> http://www.extendyourlashes.com/images/air-blower.jpg
> 
> There's also "canned air", which is just what it sounds like. A bit more 
> vigorous than a bulb for camera lens cleaning.

I own this. I'll give it a try later. If it *outside* of my PC is 
anything to go by, it's probably about time... o_O

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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