BFG Tech GeForce 7950 GTOC - PC Shutting Off - Temperature Problem?

Sorry, this is kind of long, but I'm trying to be thorough:

First of all, I recently (within the last week) got a new 27" Acer S271HL
monitor that'll run 1920 x 1080. I love that. For the first couple or
three days, all I did was desktop stuff and Facebook games like Chefville,
Farmville 2, Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy, and Cityville 2. At
first everything was fine. But now there's a problem that has surfaced.
My PC will sometimes shut down with no warning, and here are the three
instances (and only three) in which it has happened so far:

The first time, I decided to see what Age of Empires III would be like in
widescreen glory. I got through the title screen and whatnot and started
a skirmish. Before I could even get my first town center built, my PC
powered off all at once.

The second and third times, it happened when going full-screen with
Farmville 2. Farmville 2, in case you don't know, has gone to "3D" and
the animation is smooth and silky. The first time the PC switched off in
Farmville 2, it happened about five seconds after I went full-screen. The
second time, it happen immediately. Like I didn't even see the
full-screen manifest before I was staring at a black screen that said "No
input signal" or something like that. I also want to point out that
Farmville 2 is not as CPU intensive as even something like Cafe World,
which is a sluggish, crappy game. Cafe World loads the CPU at around 50%,
give or take five, and Farmville seems happy with about a 30-32% load.

HWMonitor has my idling GPU as Core #0 28-29+ALo-C, Core #1 32-34+ALo-C. I tried
Farmville 2 again in full-screen before posting here and the temperature
there for Core #1 rose to about 40-42+ALo-C. But my idle temperature for the
GPU is showing 60+ALo-C. HWMonitor shows the GPU temperature went as high as
69+ALo-C. Switching to 1280 x 720 didn't cause the temperature to drop, but
the display looks fuzzy at that resolution so I hate that.

I don't think it's good for a computer or a file system to just shut off
all at once so I don't really like "testing" it because if something blows
out, I can't afford to replace it right now. I'm just wondering if this
60+ALo-C idle speed is a bit too hot. It sure seems hot to me. It dipped to
59+ALo-C, according to HWMonitor, but no lower than that.

I'm thinking about underclocking this graphics card since it's overclocked
from the factory -- not by much, but if it's running too hot, I don't mind
losing a few cycles since I don't even have any recent games. I don't
even have any games that were "recent" when I built this rig in November
of 2006. The only game I really play that's a real video game is Final
Fantasy XI Online and it's limited to 30 frames per second. So far the
computer hasn't shut down playing that game, but I haven't played it much
since getting this new monitor, and I haven't checked the temperatures
when playing FFXI, either.

I used to run 1600 x 1200 on my old 22" CRT that was killed by a bad power
supply. It died before Farmville 2 came out, so the only comparison I
have with that game is with the 15" LCD monitor (1024 x 768) I borrowed
from a friend until I could get this new one.

Sorry for being so long-winded. Here's the hardware I'm running:


..---------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32x | |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+- | |
| 2 GB DDR2 800 SDRAM | |
| Western Digital 320GB HD (NTFS) | EAT AT JOE'S |
| BFG Tech GeForce 7950 GTOC 512MB | |
| Acer S271HL - 1920 x 1080 | |
| PSU: Thermaltake SP-850AH3CCB 850w | |
| (Less than a year old) | |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
| OS: MS Windows XP Home Edition - SP2 (5.1.2600) |
'---------------------------------------------------------------------'

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Damaeus
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 03:31:47
-0600 the following:

I'm thinking about underclocking this graphics card since it's overclocked
from the factory -- not by much, but if it's running too hot, I don't mind
losing a few cycles since I don't even have any recent games.

From what I've been able to find out, factory nVidia 7950GT cards have a
GPU clock speed of 550. Afterburner shows it running at 565. If I lower
the GPU clock speed to 550, what should I set the memory clock to? It's
currently set at 715, according to Afterburner.

Thanks,
Damaeus

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Damaeus
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 03:31:47
-0600 the following:

But now there's a problem that has surfaced.
My PC will sometimes shut down with no warning, and here are the three
instances (and only three) in which it has happened so far:

Okay, add a fourth instance...it just shut down when I tried to play Final
Fantasy XI! Nooooo!!! It happened right at the instant when I was
expecting the screen to come up to have me accept the terms of playing the
game. This is the same instant (going full-screen) when Farmville 2 would
cause a shutdown, but only one of the times. The other time, I got about
ten seconds of play time in Farmville 2 and Age of Empires III before I
got a shut-down. There was not enough time for FFXI to drive the GPU
temperature up at all. I had HWMonitor running always-on-top to monitor
the temperatures while playing the game, but I didn't even get that far.
The GPU was reading 61+ALo-C when everything went black.

This is going to drive me insane!

I guess next, it'll start shutting down when I'm reading web pages. :'(

I'm going to run a full virus scan, assuming that won't cause my system to
shut down, too.

Damaeus

Damaeus wrote:
In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Damaeus
no-mail+AEA-damaeus.earthlink.invalid posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 03:31:47
-0600 the following:

But now there's a problem that has surfaced.
My PC will sometimes shut down with no warning, and here are the three
instances (and only three) in which it has happened so far:

Okay, add a fourth instance...it just shut down when I tried to play Final
Fantasy XI! Nooooo!!! It happened right at the instant when I was
expecting the screen to come up to have me accept the terms of playing the
game. This is the same instant (going full-screen) when Farmville 2 would
cause a shutdown, but only one of the times. The other time, I got about
ten seconds of play time in Farmville 2 and Age of Empires III before I
got a shut-down. There was not enough time for FFXI to drive the GPU
temperature up at all. I had HWMonitor running always-on-top to monitor
the temperatures while playing the game, but I didn't even get that far.
The GPU was reading 61+ALo-C when everything went black.

This is going to drive me insane!

I guess next, it'll start shutting down when I'm reading web pages. :'(

I'm going to run a full virus scan, assuming that won't cause my system to
shut down, too.

Damaeus

Do you have a copy of Prime95, or CPUBurn, or a similar loading
program ? Try running the PC at 100+ACU- CPU load first.

The thing is, I think you have a +ACo-CPU+ACo- temperature issue.
Use your hardware monitoring programs, to watch the CPU temperature
and see if it is going too high.

Modern PCs are protected by THERMTRIP. It triggers
when the PC gets too hot, and shuts off the power.
I think your CPU gets too hot, and THERMTRIP is
turning off the PC.

Check the clip that holds the CPU cooler to the CPU socket.
One of the tabs on the CPU socket may have snapped off,
and your cooler is hanging on by just one tab. That's
the easiest explanation for your problem. You
probably have an Arctic Cooling after-market
cooler, that has snapped off a tab.

It's not the fault of the video card.

Paul

Damaeus wrote:
Sorry, this is kind of long, but I'm trying to be thorough:

First of all, I recently (within the last week) got a new 27" Acer
S271HL monitor that'll run 1920 x 1080. I love that. For the first
couple or three days, all I did was desktop stuff and Facebook games
like Chefville, Farmville 2, Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy, and
Cityville 2. At first everything was fine. But now there's a
problem that has surfaced. My PC will sometimes shut down with no
warning, and here are the three instances (and only three) in which
it has happened so far:

The first time, I decided to see what Age of Empires III would be
like in widescreen glory. I got through the title screen and whatnot
and started a skirmish. Before I could even get my first town center
built, my PC powered off all at once.

The second and third times, it happened when going full-screen with
Farmville 2. Farmville 2, in case you don't know, has gone to "3D"
and the animation is smooth and silky. The first time the PC
switched off in Farmville 2, it happened about five seconds after I
went full-screen. The second time, it happen immediately. Like I
didn't even see the full-screen manifest before I was staring at a
black screen that said "No input signal" or something like that. I
also want to point out that Farmville 2 is not as CPU intensive as
even something like Cafe World, which is a sluggish, crappy game.
Cafe World loads the CPU at around 50%, give or take five, and
Farmville seems happy with about a 30-32% load.

HWMonitor has my idling GPU as Core #0 28-29ºC, Core #1 32-34ºC. I
tried Farmville 2 again in full-screen before posting here and the
temperature there for Core #1 rose to about 40-42ºC. But my idle
temperature for the GPU is showing 60ºC. HWMonitor shows the GPU
temperature went as high as 69ºC. Switching to 1280 x 720 didn't
cause the temperature to drop, but the display looks fuzzy at that
resolution so I hate that.

I don't think it's good for a computer or a file system to just shut
off all at once so I don't really like "testing" it because if
something blows out, I can't afford to replace it right now. I'm
just wondering if this 60ºC idle speed is a bit too hot. It sure
seems hot to me. It dipped to 59ºC, according to HWMonitor, but no
lower than that.

I'm thinking about underclocking this graphics card since it's
overclocked from the factory -- not by much, but if it's running too
hot, I don't mind losing a few cycles since I don't even have any
recent games. I don't even have any games that were "recent" when I
built this rig in November of 2006. The only game I really play
that's a real video game is Final Fantasy XI Online and it's limited
to 30 frames per second. So far the computer hasn't shut down
playing that game, but I haven't played it much since getting this
new monitor, and I haven't checked the temperatures when playing
FFXI, either.

I used to run 1600 x 1200 on my old 22" CRT that was killed by a bad
power supply. It died before Farmville 2 came out, so the only
comparison I have with that game is with the 15" LCD monitor (1024 x
768) I borrowed from a friend until I could get this new one.

Sorry for being so long-winded. Here's the hardware I'm running:


.---------------------------------------------------------------------.
Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32x | |
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ | |
2 GB DDR2 800 SDRAM | |
Western Digital 320GB HD (NTFS) | EAT AT JOE'S |
BFG Tech GeForce 7950 GTOC 512MB | |
Acer S271HL - 1920 x 1080 | |
PSU: Thermaltake SP-850AH3CCB 850w | |
(Less than a year old) | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------|
OS: MS Windows XP Home Edition - SP2 (5.1.2600) |
'---------------------------------------------------------------------'

Try upgrading to SP 3 and also uninstall and reinstall the vid card drivers.
Perhaps even use Driver Cleaner to get all the old remnants of the vid
drivers out before reinstalling the new ones.
Ck cpu temp as Paul suggested.
Check vid card and cpu fan and cooling fins.
Is the computer actually shutting down, or just a lack of video signal?
Buffalo
PS: Does your monitor require any drivers?

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Paul
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:54:16 -0500 the following:

Damaeus wrote:
In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Damaeus
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 03:31:47
-0600 the following:

But now there's a problem that has surfaced.
My PC will sometimes shut down with no warning, and here are the three
instances (and only three) in which it has happened so far:

Okay, add a fourth instance...it just shut down when I tried to play Final
Fantasy XI! Nooooo!!! It happened right at the instant when I was
expecting the screen to come up to have me accept the terms of playing the
game. This is the same instant (going full-screen) when Farmville 2 would
cause a shutdown, but only one of the times. The other time, I got about
ten seconds of play time in Farmville 2 and Age of Empires III before I
got a shut-down. There was not enough time for FFXI to drive the GPU
temperature up at all. I had HWMonitor running always-on-top to monitor
the temperatures while playing the game, but I didn't even get that far.
The GPU was reading 61+ALo-C when everything went black.

This is going to drive me insane!

I guess next, it'll start shutting down when I'm reading web pages. :'(

I'm going to run a full virus scan, assuming that won't cause my system to
shut down, too.

I did a virus scan of the system files and program files. No viruses were
found. (Avast! 7.0.1474 with latest database updates.)

Do you have a copy of Prime95, or CPUBurn, or a similar loading
program ? Try running the PC at 100% CPU load first.

I'll try that.

The thing is, I think you have a *CPU* temperature issue.
Use your hardware monitoring programs, to watch the CPU temperature
and see if it is going too high.

Yes, I did that already and accidentally referred to the CPU as a GPU in
the original post.

Idle temperatures for the CPU, according to HWMonitor, are these idle
speeds. Core #1 gets as high as 40+ALo-C running Farmville 2:

Core #0 - 26+ALo-C - 31+ALo-C (Idle)
Core #1 - 30+ALo-C - 35+ALo-C (Idle)

Hard drive air flow is steady at 30+ALo-C.

GPU idle 58+ALo-C - 60+ALo-C
GPU Fan shows 20% Max/Min and that seems to never change since I
started monitoring it in the last couple of days.

Modern PCs are protected by THERMTRIP. It triggers
when the PC gets too hot, and shuts off the power.
I think your CPU gets too hot, and THERMTRIP is
turning off the PC.

Woops, in my original post, I accidentally said "GPU" instead of "CPU". I
monitored the CPU temperatures before posting originally. The correct
ranges are shown above.

Check the clip that holds the CPU cooler to the CPU socket.
One of the tabs on the CPU socket may have snapped off,
and your cooler is hanging on by just one tab. That's
the easiest explanation for your problem. You
probably have an Arctic Cooling after-market
cooler, that has snapped off a tab.

The heatsink and fan are the ones that came with the AMD processor in a
retail package. The assembly is fine and looks tight to me.

It's not the fault of the video card.

60+ALo-C does seem to be a bit hot for a GPU idle speed when just displaying a
desktop, though. I've seen others on the web posting idle temperatures of
50+ALo-C. I'm not sure if an overheating GPU will cause a computer to turn
itself off.

I'm going to do as Buffalo suggested and upgrade to WinXP SP-3. I thought
I had done that already. Surprise, surprise!

If nothing else, I may do a clean install of WinXP. I've been running
this install since 2006, but it's been really stable until now. I'm able
to keep it up and running for over a month at a time and even then, I
often just reboot to stabilize an animation paging problem in PlayOnline
(the entry program for Final Fantasy XI); after Windows has been up and
running for a couple of days, the pages of animation for PlayOnline are
all out of order and very jittery, but it's been doing that since the day
I built this thing. It plays the Final Fantasy game itself just fine, but
some other games, like the old Deus Ex game, also exhibit animation frames
out of order. Maybe I've had a faulty video card all along? Yet even so,
the PC has never turned itself off until after hooking up this new
monitor. And this is the first week I've ever run it at 1920 x 1080. The
maximum resolution I'd been running with my old CRT was 1600 x 1200 at an
85Hz refresh rate. The higher resolution is only another 153,600 pixels,
and this is only at a 60Hz refresh rate.

Thanks for all this. I'll get to work on the other suggestions later
tonight.

Damaeus

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, "Buffalo"
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:02:20 -0700 the
following:

Damaeus wrote:

First of all, I recently (within the last week) got a new 27" Acer
S271HL monitor that'll run 1920 x 1080. I love that. For the first
couple or three days, all I did was desktop stuff and Facebook games
like Chefville, Farmville 2, Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy, and
Cityville 2. At first everything was fine. But now there's a
problem that has surfaced. My PC will sometimes shut down with no
warning, and here are the three instances (and only three) in which
it has happened so far:
[...]

Try upgrading to SP 3 and also uninstall and reinstall the vid card drivers.

I'll do that tonight after 1am Central so it won't impact the "Fair Access
Policy" of the satellite internet service we (try) to use.

Perhaps even use Driver Cleaner to get all the old remnants of the vid
drivers out before reinstalling the new ones.
Ck cpu temp as Paul suggested.

Yeah, CPU temperatures run 29+ALo-C to 40+ALo-C. GPU temperature idles at 60+ALo-C
and has been as high as 69+ALo-C in Farmville 2. I was going to check the GPU
temperature in Final Fantasy XI, but when I last tried to run that game,
the computer turned itself off again.

Check vid card and cpu fan and cooling fins.

Yes, those had little dust in them, but I blew them out anyway before
posting. It didn't make a difference in temperature.

Is the computer actually shutting down, or just a lack of video signal?

The computer completely goes off in one instant+IBQ-no shutdown process even
tries to happen. It's just OFF totally.

PS: Does your monitor require any drivers?

I don't know that they're required, but I do have them installed. It was
one of the first things I did after hooking up the new monitor. I
downloaded them from the Acer website, so they're the most recent version.

Damaeus

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Paul
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:54:16 -0500 the following:

It's not the fault of the video card.

What amazes me is that I just got a response from Acer technical support
on this and they say I need to send this monitor in for repair! That's
unbelievable:

I understand that your unit gets shut down when you play games.

I can imagine how inconvenient this would be. I will do my best to help
you.

I have verified your product serial number and found that the unit is
covered under standard limited warranty.

I would request you to send your unit for repair with one-way shipping
charges. Prior to setting up the service, we need to have your system
registered in our database.

Please help us with this information to complete the registration
process and to place an order for repair.

Damaeus wrote:
In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Paul
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:54:16 -0500 the following:

It's not the fault of the video card.

What amazes me is that I just got a response from Acer technical support
on this and they say I need to send this monitor in for repair! That's
unbelievable:

If the computer internal cooling fans stayed spinning, then
the computer is not shutting off on an overheat.

60C is no big deal for a video card. Running at 95C is
getting close to the limit. The chip can take a bit more
than that, but you wouldn't want the video card running that
hot for years on end.

The video card is *not* wired into THERMTRIP. It is easy
for a video card to overheat, and melt any plastic bits
mounted near the GPU. All it takes is a fan failure,
and you won't even get a whimper out of it. It'll just
overheat, until you see lines on the screen (too late),
or smell plastic burning (too late). When NVidia released
a driver where they didn't set the fan speed properly
in the driver, some cards were damaged by that. Because
there wasn't an effective thermal control method for the
thing.

If the screen just goes black, but there are no other symptoms,
yes, that can be the monitor. Some monitors have a 120V power
supply inside, and the capacitors in the power section go bad
and leak. There are a fair number of defective models out
there. That could be why they're recommending a repair.

Just to be clear, a computer shutting off and the fans stopping...
is a different set of symptoms from the monitor going black
in mid session (and the computer fans are still running).

Paul

In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Paul
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:55:03 -0500 the following:

If the screen just goes black, but there are no other symptoms,
yes, that can be the monitor. Some monitors have a 120V power
supply inside, and the capacitors in the power section go bad
and leak. There are a fair number of defective models out
there. That could be why they're recommending a repair.

Just to be clear, a computer shutting off and the fans stopping...
is a different set of symptoms from the monitor going black
in mid session (and the computer fans are still running).

Well, the monitor only goes black because the computer shuts off, which
also shuts down the video signal. The monitor still works, however,
because it displays "no video signal", then goes into standby mode (the
blue power illumination turns to amber).

Maybe technical support thinks I'm one of those people who thinks the
monitor is the computer. I know someone who "turns off the computer" by
pushing the power switch on the monitor, which, of course, still leaves
the actual computer running.

I'm saying the tower shuts down and the monitor remains on long enough to
tell me there's no video signal, then the monitor goes into standby mode.

Damaeus