Originally posted by kantseeme
and its back. might have to get new gfx card. oh well.

You could try to increase the speed of the fan, Rivatuner for Nvidia cards, not sure for ATI cards since Im a Nvidia fanboy.

Another option would be clocking the card down a bit. And you did install the latests drivers, right?

But yeah, these are all just temporary fixes. Since you overheated the card for so long it is most likely damaged and besides, you should upgrade your GFX cards every 2-3 years anyways.

You have a Radeon HD 5970, and the reference cards of those were fairly prone to overheating.  The stock clock speed is 725 MHz, but AMD unofficially encouraged people to overvolt and overclock them to 850 MHz.  This was a bad idea, as the reference card couldn't really handle it.

Sapphire, Asus, and XFX made aftermarket 5970s with better cooling that could handle the higher clock speeds.  Or at least I think the XFX one could, though I'm not entirely sure.  The Sapphire and Asus ones definitely could, though Asus called theirs a Radeon HD 5870 X2 rather than a 5970.

Exactly which 5970 do you have?  You can determine this by a visual inspection.  If it has a fan on one end (the end near the front of the case) and the rest of the card is covered up, it's a reference card.  The XFX card had a fan in the middle, while the Sapphire and Asus cards had two fans and a visible heatsink.

Also, which video drivers do you have?

And which case and power supply do you have?  You'll probably have to open up the case and read the label to find out what power supply you have.

Another thing worth trying is to take off both side covers of the computer case and see if it makes any difference.

Yeah, some cases do ventilate better with those on but many does not and it could be the temperature in the entire case that is the problem as well.

It is an easy thing to try at least.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Exactly which 5970 do you have?  You can determine this by a visual inspection.  If it has a fan on one end (the end near the front of the case) and the rest of the card is covered up, it's a reference card.  The XFX card had a fan in the middle, while the Sapphire and Asus cards had two fans and a visible heatsink.

Also, which video drivers do you have?

And which case and power supply do you have?  You'll probably have to open up the case and read the label to find out what power supply you have.

The card its self its black and red with what looks like 2 squares cut out on the top. on the bottom, the fan is closer to the front of the case.

The case i have is a Fatal1ty Champ1on series.

http://www.bit-tech.net/custompc/reviews/100852/zalman-fc-ze1-fatal1ty-champion-computer-enclosure.html

Power supply is Tagen BZ series 900w

would not know were to look to see what vid drivers i have sorry.

Open Catalyst Control Center and go to Information -> Product Summary -> Software and it will tell you the driver version.

I don't know if the power supply is any good or not.  It's old, and I couldn't find a good review of it.

The case doesn't have that much airflow, and certainly nowhere near what you'd want for a reference 5970, which is what it sounds like you have.  So you should worry about the video card overheating, especially if it's overclocked.

What is the video card clocked at?  You can find this in Catalyst Control Center under Performance -> Clock Controls -> AMD Overdrive.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Open Catalyst Control Center and go to Information -> Product Summary -> Software and it will tell you the driver version.

I don't know if the power supply is any good or not.  It's old, and I couldn't find a good review of it.

The case doesn't have that much airflow, and certainly nowhere near what you'd want for a reference 5970, which is what it sounds like you have.  So you should worry about the video card overheating, especially if it's overclocked.

What is the video card clocked at?  You can find this in Catalyst Control Center under Performance -> Clock Controls -> AMD Overdrive.

wheres the ccc located. i told you im noobtastic at this lol

If you don't have Catalyst Control Center, then I'd question whether your video drivers are installed properly.  If not, then that could be the entire problem.  It is possible to get the drivers alone without CCC, but I'm not sure why you would--especially in a gaming computer.

When is the last time you updated your video drivers?

The latest drivers were released in late June of this year.  If you haven't updated your drivers since then, then you don't have the latest drivers.

Device manager has no clue about video driver updates.  Check DxDiag and it will tell you the date on your video drivers.

8.850.0.0

4/19/11

so looks like im out of date.