Shadowfa
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XFX 6800GT 256MB AGP Corruption Problems - 2005/01/19 12:15
I'm hoping the group here can help me out with a small problem. I was lucky enough to get a XFX 6800GT for my system this last X-mas, but the upgrade from my Gainward FX5950 Ultra has been less than painless.
The first XFX card ran great for about a week (with a mild overclock of 395/1070MHz) but then started having major problems with corruption... Starting from the POST screen. Prior to the problems, it worked flawlessly in HL2, Doom 3, 3DMark2001SE, etc... But went way south while running a 3D screen saver with the defragger running in the background.
SereneScreen - Marine Aquarium Time 2.0 Screen Saver
I ruled out the typical heat/overclocking/PSU problems by dropping back to stock speeds & then reproducing the problem in a few different systems... XFX confirmed my suspicion that it was a dud and I got a second card.
OK, so the second card overclocks even better (420/1150MHz), but I notched it down to 390/1060MHz to keep things on the "safe" side. The first night the card is in, I come back in after catching my favorite TV show and the screen is all garbled & the system is locked up... Again the only thing running was the screen saver & defragger. Luckily, it reboots fine this time & I decided to disable the 3D screen saver and return to the default speeds. Since then, I haven't had a problem.
There are 3 SCSI drives in this system, so I can see where it is possible that the 12v rail might be overloading if everything is pulling a maximum draw off of it, but I have to wonder if this card draws that much more power than the FX5950 Ultra did... And that one was a Golden Sample that was pushed just below the point of seeing artifacts. Nothing else has changed other than the video card & the FX5950 Ultra ran perfectly for roughly a year in this system, despite being overclocked.
I know the easy answer is to not overclock the card, but I'm not satisfied with that. What I'm wondering is whether flashing the BIOS could help, and more importantly, which one? The card still has the original Rev.02 BIOS (5.40.02.15.01) and I'm running the ForceWare 67.03 drivers.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
Shadowfax
Additional Info...
- Hard drives & GPU connector use separate lines off of the PSU
- PSU is 400W SuperMicro with 25A on 12v rail & 30A on 3.3v rail
- I have yet to see anything bad happen during gameplay/stress tests
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Galaxy 9800GT PCIe 512MB - Rev 01
