After someone hinted to me that my GeForce FX5600 VIVO card w/ 256MB of Video RAM can be a source of trouble, I began observing its temperature using a nifty monitoring package which uses probes that you stick on to whatever you want to monitor its temp. In my case, the gadget has 3 probes, one for the CPU, one for any hard disk (I chose the boot disk since it would be the most critical out of the 4 I have in my system), and one for the video card. The device itself mounts on one of the 5.25" drive bays and has a digital display with selector (so you can choose what to monitor), which most of the time is set to monitor the CPU (which in my system is a Pentium4 3.0GHz Prescott, and during normal operation averages betwen 47C and 52C; the Hard Disk stays around 43C).

After noticing some problems with Half-Life 2, one time I set the device to monitor the video card's temperature, then played one game of HL2. After about 5 minutes, I noticed the temperature reading go up from 47C (normal/idle temperature when I'm not gaming), to around 53C, and around that time, HL2 may do one of these (but it doesn't happen every time):

1. Garbage appears on the screen, but gameplay is still normal
2. Some of the graphics disappear and HL2 slows down to a real crawl (though this gets fixed if I switch to the Windows Deskop and back to HL2 using the Start Menu shortcut key)
3. Stop Error/BOSD, with the NVIDIA display driver (nv4_disp.dll) being blamed by Windows as the culprit.

Keep in mind that nothing is overclocked in my system.

What is the real fault here? Is the GeForceFX 5600 faulty, or is it HL2? (HL2 is the only game that experiences this problem or at least makes the Video card's GPU get that hot - I only have one other 3d game that's as graphics intensive, Doom3, which doesn't experience this problem)

I happen to have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed.


My system specs:

Pentium4 3.0 GHz Prescott
ASUS P4P800-X Mobo w/ Intel 865PE chipset and 2 SATA ports
1GB DDR400 RAM (512MB DIMM x 2)
Inno3D GeForce FX5600 VIVO w/ 256MB Video RAM
Seagate 30GB 5400RPM ATA-100 Hard Disk (boot disk/primary master)
Seagate Barracuda 120GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (primary slave)
Seagate Barracuda 160GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (secondary master)
Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA Hard Disk (connected to SATA port #1)
Sony DRU-710A DVD Burner (secondary slave)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card
CNet 220c LAN Card
Creative Labs Modem Blaster PCI
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
note: case has 3 fans to help with the cooling

Originally posted by Alec§taar:


I'll note it next time it happens.



Like I said nothing is overclocked. I don't even use Coolbits anymore now that the refresh rate can be set without them.



I have a 400W Power Supply, though a local technician claimed 335W is enough for 6 drives.



If I could find such cooling devices and they're easy to implement I'd get them.

Like I also said, it only happens with Half-Life 2, and no other game.

You said that while playing HL2 your videocard is hotter than when playing Doom3?

Perhaps you should try underclocking your card and see if that helps.

Originally posted by Alec§taar:


Well, I can't seem to note any pattern of what level it would crash.

As for settings, I don't use any advanced tweaks (Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing are disabled for instance), and I use relatively low detail settings and run at 800x600x32bit for good framerate (it seems my rig is still not powerful enough to run HL2 at high detail settings; in fact before I upgraded to a Pentium4 3GHz from a P4 2GHz, the game was almost unplayable even at the lowest settings and resolution).

Yeah, that 5600 is kinda puny compared to today's graphics cards.

Graphics Processor: Nvidia GeForce FX 5600
Graphics Processor Codename: NV31
Graphics Core Clock Speed: 325MHz
Pixel Pipelines: 4
Texture Units Per Pixel Pipeline 1
Vertex Units: 1
Pixel Shader Version: 2.0
Vertex Shader Version: 2.0
Installed Video Memory: 256MB
Memory Technology: DDR SDRAM
Memory Clock Speed: 250MHz
Memory Bus Width: 128-bit
Primary RAMDAC Clock Speed: 400MHz

Eeekk, and I was hating myself for playing Doom 3 halfway through with my 9700 before getting my X800!

Well, it looks like you have a somewhat decent CPU compared to what you had before (It's no Athlon but at least you have more mhz). Your probably upgrading bit by bit, X850 may be out of your price range (or any sane person) so you'd probably want to go with a lower end X800 when you do upgrade.


Games for quite awhile now have been more GPU limited than CPU limited which is why you'll see little benefit in gaming going from 2ghz to 3ghz in higher resolutions, but when you go from say 5200 to x800 you'll see major increases in speed.

A number of Nvidia specific forums are reporting that the 75.xx series of drivers are overheating their cards. Granted that most of these are talking about the 6600 and 6800 level cards, there is no reason to thing that the same is not happening to some FX cards. Try some of the "lower" or earlier drivers to see if the temperatures remain constant.

Well, my drivers are the 66.93 WHCL versions.

Also, Doom3 doesn't seem to heat up my vidcard like Half-Life 2 does, nor does it crash or have any occurrances of graphics glitches.

Interestingly, I replicated scenario 2 in HL2 (some objects vanish while the game itself bogs down to hellishly slow framerates, until I switch to the Windows Desktop and back to HL2 again) when my vidcard was still at 45C. I'm really beginning to suspect HL2 is the culprit.