Upgrades?

[TreD]

hey all

first time poster and not so long fewer of the forums but my friend (jase874) uses you a fair bit so i thought i'd give it a whirl also

just to start then my current rig is (should be in my sig)

and i think i am having graphics card trouble randomly whilst not gaming i get lag on the desktop wether it be web browsing or msn'ing and then sometimes windows itself doesnt respond graphically i mean i can right click the desktop itself but can click windows button or any open programs or the bottom bar tbh.

and was thinking about if it was the card just straight out replacing it with something better maybe ati if my mobo can support it although havent found any info about that yet.

Recently in games like CoD: Mw2 (multiplayer) / Bioshock 2 (single player) it will run the graphics almost on full for a while but very slowly it starts jittering eventually and then even if you turn the graphics down it still does it i believe my graphics card runs at about 80 - 85 degrees which i believe is a tad on the warm side and idles around 60 - 70 :< and again whenever it comes into contact with any smoke in mw2 i graphics lag like hell

thanks for any help you can give me

TreD

some pics with system info if it helps

http://i45.tinypic.com/23k9380.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/b3n4uv.png

http://i50.tinypic.com/124h8vc.png

[TreD]

i just restarted my comp as it was lagging again during web browsing and msn'ing when it restarted it got to the win 7 logo to load and then i was greeted with a broken windows startup tune and then the monitor went black but after i hit restart again it started up fine but still lags and freeze's when loading msn and firefox :s

again any help is greatly appreciated

TreD

[pam123]

Take the side of the case and clean it out with compressed air, paying special attention to the video card fan, and check to make sure all the connections are tight.
Now with the side off the case, do whatever you usually do that causes the lag/freeze (If you can monitor the video card's temp readings do so.).

What happens with the card's fan ?

edit : I remembered a tomshardware review that said the card would have a heat problem so I went back and checked :

On top of this, the 9800 GX2 is the only card that doesn't send air outside the case, which means it'll rapidly increase the temperature inside the case, thus accelerating the card's fan (as well as the processor's).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...w,1792-15.html

[TreD]

i will give the cleaning a whirl tomorrow afternoon its 12am here atm but last time i checked when i upgraded my ram (2weeks ago) everything looked clean enough but i will give it a spray.

as for overheating ect i have had the card a while now and its only recently started causing me problems mainly after i installed win 7 64bit and added my extra 4gb of kingston ddr2 800 ram but i must say i had some problems with the card before i upgraded those aswell just gradually getting worse it seems

just curious if the cleaning has no effect would my mobo be compatible with lets say a 5850 ati rad card (will probs go with asus as make after reading the graphics card guide on this forum if it helps also my card is a XFX card also which i heard is pretty shitty anyways shame i didnt know of you guys /gals before i bought it :< )

i also downloaded the nvidia preformance control program and it allowed me to control my gpu's fan which i set to about 80 - 100% speed but it still only makes a differance untill which i believe is the card overheating eventually anyways


thanks for replying aswell

TreD

[TreD]

so i took the side off the case took out the gpu gave it a clean with compressed air although wasnt that dusty at all in the first place tbh, gave my heatsink a good old clean aswell that had alotta dust clogged up on it.

havent got any programs i can use to get some temp readings of gpu / cpu but going to take a look for it now, if i dont find anything quickly feel free to suggest something for me to get

but new problem developing is that now everytime i boot up the computer when it loads up win 7 64bit and gets onto the desktop are (with the windows buttom and programs ect) i cant do anything other than right click the wallpapered area.... the way i am getting around this problem atm is having to ctrl alt del to open task manager and asoon as task manager loads everything starts working :S so i am stumped at the problem really :<

any idea's?

TreD

[glc]

Asus PC Probe can monitor motherboard and CPU temperatures and Rivatuner can monitor the GPU.

Try doing a system restore to fix the desktop issue.

[pam123]

Yes you can use a radeon 5850 if you decide to buy a new card.

edit : Heat shortens the life span of computer parts. A video card that makes it's fan work harder then necessary is going to be a problem.

[TreD]

okay instead of system restoring i reinstalled win 7 (32 bit) instead of the 64bit i was running to see if that was the problem but the clicking problem is still there at start up and every now and then whilst comp is running :/

i installed pc probe and rivatuner

Cpu is running at 41 degrees untill i loaded up bioshock 2 and whilst it was installing the update the cpu hit 67 - 68 degrees and pc probe gave me a warning telling me it was to hot

during this time the gpu was running at aroun 70 - 72 degrees so i am now maybe thinking its a cpu problems although when i took comp apart to clean yestaurday i cleaned out my cpu's heat sink i have a big zalaman heatsink for it thats worked fine untill now and the thremal paste was still intact

fans are all running at around 2300 - 2500 rpm

motherboard is running at 38degrees i think also

any reasons for the overheating that i could maybe try fixing?

[flanzig1]

Anytime you pull a CPU heatsink, you should clean off the old thermal paste and apply new .

[TreD]

okay i didnt realise that but thanks for the info i do have some thermal paste lying around so i can do that in the morning thinking of dropping my comp into the local computer store whose had it before to see if they can find any underlying problems that i might not be seeing but they will look at it for free atleast

but thanks for your help so far i am sure i will be back no doubt but any extra info you can give me is welcomed.

Thanks TreD