Gaming computer and effects of age

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VampD

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Hey everyone my gaming computer is more then +3 years now and although it always ran pretty smoothly its starting to show its age now I think and started having a few issues. Although I can't remember what my old score was when I just got my 9800 GTX+ replacement for my 8800 gtx ( my older 8800 GTX got a 14,500+ score on 3dmark06 ) I recently ran 3dmark06 and was surprised to discover i got a 12,300. Is there anything that could have caused such a drastic drop in score? I always keep my video drivers relatively up to date, so I don't know what it could be unless I have to maybe dust it out ( don't think dust would have that much of an effect on system performance ). So I got to thinking maybe it was my actual q6600 and the mx-1 thermal paste was starting to wear thin maybe? ( OCed from 2.4 ghz to 3.0 ghz, no change in voltage ) How often do you have to reseat your HSF and apply new thermal paste? I started thinking my system was having this issue due to age and not just due to heat of summer ( higher temps overall ), but let me know what you guys think.

PS: I started to suspect there was issues up when Starcraft 2 would freeze up and I would be forced to do a hard reboot and it would just freeze in the BIOS startup which would require another startup and upon coming back to desktop it would give me the whole video card failed to respond error. I'm guessing it failed to boot up cause the card was too hot and having issues.
 
You could have suffered damage to the card, the ATI/Nvidia fan settings where not efficient, and SC2 apparently pushs the card rather heavily, since the release, BOTH companies have released driver updates to help fix this. If possible make sure you have the absolute latest drivers for your system.


BTW, relatively, isn't good in this case, as a LOT of people have lost cards due to the fan settings not being sufficient in the case of SC2, so make sure you have ALL of the latest drivers.
 
You could have suffered damage to the card, the ATI/Nvidia fan settings where not efficient, and SC2 apparently pushs the card rather heavily, since the release, BOTH companies have released driver updates to help fix this. If possible make sure you have the absolute latest drivers for your system.


BTW, relatively, isn't good in this case, as a LOT of people have lost cards due to the fan settings not being sufficient in the case of SC2, so make sure you have ALL of the latest drivers.

I don't think i suffered damage but is there anyway I can test if i did? Unfortunately I found out about it too late before implementing that user implemented 60 fps cap on the game screen menus. I heard the cards that died were the highest end ones that can really push things past 60 fps, mine couldn't get more then 60 fps in the games main menu.
 
It wasn't really the rendering of the menu screens, it was just the fan profile settings were not sufficient.

The only way to tell if you have damage is to have benchmark records of your card before running the game, and running benchmarks again and compare the two results. Or, a dead sure fire way, watch for artifacts, that is all you can really do.

But, you also have to take into account, your driver versions, some drivers give more performance, some, will offer less performance, but, with the whole GPU burning up fiasco since SC2, it has become highly important to make sure you have the absolute latest drivers.
 
well I was thinking what if its the processor? Does MX-1 wear out and need replacement for the HSF after a certan time period?
 
That, I have no clue on, it shouldn't need to ever be replaced, but some thermal pastes require it after so long it seems.

Hmmm well can anyone else throw in there 2 cents on wether or not thermal paste needs replacement after 3 years?

Also is there any 3dmark06 scores I can compare to see if a 12,500 score is low for a 9800 GTX+
 
I replace my thermal past every year. I don't know if that's right or wrong but it keeps my temps down. And as far as the GPU fans I always use Rivatuner to pump up the fan profile. Its free and you can set profiles for when you want the speed to increase by temp. Although the newest version I'm using has been though to get my fan profiles right it still helps to at least have my fans running at optimum speed. I'm still running my 2X 8800 GTX going on three years now. I did have to replace one of the BFG cards but it was free. Sad to see them leave the market.
 
According to this, it is a bit low. Charts, benchmarks 2010 Gaming Graphics Charts (High Quality), 3DMark06 v1.1.0

But I would not say that your card is at a fault.

Hmmm thanks for the link but it doesn't give the processor specs used in the benchmark and isn't that enough to change the score significantly? I guess if it broke the score down by CPU and video card I could better assess whats causing my slow score

I replace my thermal past every year. I don't know if that's right or wrong but it keeps my temps down. And as far as the GPU fans I always use Rivatuner to pump up the fan profile. Its free and you can set profiles for when you want the speed to increase by temp. Although the newest version I'm using has been though to get my fan profiles right it still helps to at least have my fans running at optimum speed. I'm still running my 2X 8800 GTX going on three years now. I did have to replace one of the BFG cards but it was free. Sad to see them leave the market.

Yeah I have Rivatuner and used it to pump up my fan speed to 100% with my old hot 8800 GTX, but with the 9800 GTX+ it usually kept cool so I didn't think this was necessary. Isn't it a lot of hassle removing the HSF, removing the thermal paste with alcohol, reapplying the paste correctly, and mounting the HSF back on every year? Last time I remounted ( about 2 years ago ) it practically took off my fingers removing the screws and such for the tuniq tower 120
 
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