Video card just got artifacts... what to do?

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

I was playing FEAR: Extraction Point nicely and all of a sudden the game freezes... Doesn't bother me because it happens a lot. Usually I just wait and it comes back all good. But this time, it got totally owned with artifacts. I saved it and quit. Turns out it was overclocked to AGP reference clocks (PCIe clocks are 600MHz RAM clock versus 700MHz in the AGP).

Before this, I had the card overclocked to 425/745MHz for about several months... It went away after the reformat but I put it to 400/700 and it's been there since (August was the last reformat).

I reset the clocks to default... Everything looks fine now. Should I be worrying or not?

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by wtcnbrwndo4u

I was playing FEAR: Extraction Point nicely and all of a sudden the game freezes... Doesn't bother me because it happens a lot. Usually I just wait and it comes back all good. But this time, it got totally owned with artifacts. I saved it and quit. Turns out it was overclocked to AGP reference clocks (PCIe clocks are 600MHz RAM clock versus 700MHz in the AGP).

Before this, I had the card overclocked to 425/745MHz for about several months... It went away after the reformat but I put it to 400/700 and it's been there since (August was the last reformat).

I reset the clocks to default... Everything looks fine now. Should I be worrying or not?

Not, in my opinion. The card just heated and crashed. 6800's are big room heaters. I would stay to stock clocks and run some 3DMark to see if it occurs again, just incase though I highly doubt it will crash again (if your heatsink is clean, I know 6800's Ultra sinks can get pretty dirty)
Besides, the stock clocks for 6800's Ultra AGP and PCI-e are the same, where exactly are you getting this information from?

[fps justin]

Originally Posted by wtcnbrwndo4u

I was playing FEAR: Extraction Point nicely and all of a sudden the game freezes... Doesn't bother me because it happens a lot. Usually I just wait and it comes back all good. But this time, it got totally owned with artifacts. I saved it and quit. Turns out it was overclocked to AGP reference clocks (PCIe clocks are 600MHz RAM clock versus 700MHz in the AGP).

Before this, I had the card overclocked to 425/745MHz for about several months... It went away after the reformat but I put it to 400/700 and it's been there since (August was the last reformat).

I reset the clocks to default... Everything looks fine now. Should I be worrying or not?

sounds like mabye you damaged it a little? If its fine without ocing, then it'll probrably be okay for a little while longer, if not forever. However, the problem might progress?

EDIT: Although what polo said makes alot of sense too. Could be just heat issues.

[simple_inhibition]

sounds like heat to me. run RTHDRIBL for a while and see if it does it again. if so, get some canned air and clean the hsf out and run RTHDRIBL again.

polo, he's talking about a vanilla 6800 fyi

[polobunny]

Reference clocks are still the same, though I see alot of companies sold them "downclocked" to 300mhz instead of 350mhz.
Why exactly I wouldn't know. *shrugs*

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

Originally Posted by polobunny

Reference clocks are still the same, though I see alot of companies sold them "downclocked" to 300mhz instead of 350mhz.
Why exactly I wouldn't know. *shrugs*

My point exactly. It's just downclocked or whatever and I don't know why.

Anyways, I never actually cleaned the HSF and from the last I saw of it, it was dusty. I think I have a can of dust off in the basement. I'll blow it out soon.

[sbohdan]

vanilla 6800 has a default speed of 300Mhz for the GPU with 12 pipes and 700 or 1000Mhz (depending on the memory) for both PCIE and AGP . it can still get hot especially because of the crappy cooler provided for the GPU and no cooling for the memory. heat was allways an issue with the 6800 series...