Hurting a video card by overclocking?

[jt99]

Hey guys, I've got a PNY Ti4200, 64mb model.

My friend and I um, pushed the hell out of this card with quite a bit of cooling next to it to 290 core / 674 memory.

It ran pretty stable, crashed once, we rebooted and clocked back. Ran stable again.

Now, the card runs fines pretty much anything I do, but the only "graphic intense" game I really play is Desert Combat mod of Battlefield 1942.

The game loves to crash to desktop on me now, even at stock speeds. I can't determine what else it could be but the video card.. I have a Geforce2 MX 400 that I threw back in it in the meantime and it doesn't seem to crash with that.

Also, is there a way to actually detect that a card has been OC'd via software?

 

[shiyan]

well, it is possible if the cooling was not good enough.

what do you mean it ran stable though? do you mean it used to run those games stable or do you just mean sitting idle in windows?

edit: cool, just noticed that was my 250th post.

 

[jt99]

sorry, by stable I meant minor artifacts when running 3dmark01..

I've been able to play SimCity4 and other mundane tasks in Windows without a problem. The only crash is in Battlefield.. and swapping the card seems to correct that.

Also, this is with both windows 2000 and windows xp pro.

It's possible cooling wasn't enough, but can it "hurt" the card where it would run for an hour or two, then stop? The problem is incredibly random.

Also, the machine will randomly reboot sometimes when playing BF

 

[nealric]

It really dosent sound like your vid card oc is stable.
Does bf crash at stock?

 

[shiyan]

I was about to ask that in my response, but then I saw that he did say "The game loves to crash to desktop on me now, even at stock speeds."

 

[chasingapple]

Yes you can hurt a videocard by overclocking it too far without enough cooling. I trashed a Radeon 8500 that way. Never overclock unless you are willing to buy it again

On a side note sorry to hear about your card. Sounds like either the memory is having issues or you hurt the GPU in some way. Try your card in someone elses system and try battlefield on that system as well, if it crashes there too then you need to buy a new videocard, if it doesnt then your problem is elsewhere.

 

[jt99]

Figures Oh well, ti4200's are cheap enough to replace these days, good little card and it does what I need.

OC'd it before I did the necessary research on it and it's obvious I went too high on the memory...

It's a shame the problem is so random, it would be much easier to test on other machines if it weren't. Sometimes it won't do it for 2 hours straight, sometimes it will do it when I first start the game.. but as the other said, currently it is all stock.

 

[JigPu]

If the machine restarts in XP, you may want to check your System Log in Event Viewer. It should list the error of whatever BSOD happened (which XP dosen't even bother to show... reboots right through it). Look in the log for an event from the source of 'Save Dump'. Post back with what message it has if one is logged.

JigPu

 

[jt99]

Well, since I'm only using 2k for the game right now, I figured I'd be able to pinpoint the reboot in the system log. I was right, here it is:


Source: Save Dump

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001e (0xc0000005, 0xba23f725, 0x00000000, 0x0000001c). Microsoft Windows 2000 [v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: D:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini092803-01.dmp.

That minidump just looks to be a bunch of garbled text.. impossible to figure out.

I'm trying to find info from the knowledge base at MS.. tough to find on this one..

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

if you get ANY artifacts - your card is not stable. end of story.

 

[jt99]

Yeah.. bad choice of words on my part

In any case, I've narrowed the problem to the video card as I've got an old geforce2 I've been using and it's been just fine.

 

[Jognt]

hmm sux, i think the card simply dislikes sucky games, and crashes em to desktop so you arent damaged by those horrible horrible games

j/k..

try it in someone elses PC, chance is BIG u fried it...

 

[kevral]

Also, is there a way to actually detect that a card has been OC'd via software?

I'm wondering that, too.
We have these great consumer protection laws here in Norway...

 

[KILLorBE]

No there's no way to tell if a card has been OC'ed or not, same goes for all other hardware......unless hardware manufacturers are hiding something.

jt99 what are your system specs and temps? As I personally doubt you fried your V-card.

Changing your V-card to a lesser one doesn't show system instability (which I think is your problem).

"graphic intense" games not only rely on GPU power but also on CPU power, and as a GF2MX is quite a difference it may be something else.

Does your CPU HSF wear a fur coat?

 

[Mustanley]

I had to increase the AGP voltage in my bios from 1.5V to 1.6V or else BF1942 would crash over and over while other games worked fine.

 

[jt99]

No there's no way to tell if a card has been OC'ed or not, same goes for all other hardware......unless hardware manufacturers are hiding something.

jt99 what are your system specs and temps? As I personally doubt you fried your V-card.

Changing your V-card to a lesser one doesn't show system instability (which I think is your problem).

"graphic intense" games not only rely on GPU power but also on CPU power, and as a GF2MX is quite a difference it may be something else.

Does your CPU HSF wear a fur coat?

hehe... no fur coat here, it's pretty much a new machine (about a month old...)

The machine runs very cool, the processor hardly ever goes over 40* at stock speeds, and when oc'd to 3200 the processor stays around 43* when gaming. I'm using a SLK900 w/ a smartfan2.

I've got another ti4200 on its way, if the problem persists for any reason, I'll try upping the AGP Voltage a bit, but if I recall correctly (I tested/changed alot of things to try and get it stable) I gave the AGP slot more voltage, even at stock.

I'm not sure why it would have been unstable with everything at stock speeds? I tested the memory through memtest86 and it checked out OK.. even when oc'd it was stable using prime95...