ATI X1900XT Overclocked too much now I can't bring back to normal

[Funkfish]

Hows it going, I've been having this problem for a while and I don't know what to do at this point.

I have an ATI - ATI Radeon X1900XT card. A while back I was playing with the over clocking features in the Catalyst drivers....silly me I know.

Anyways my computer is RIDICULOUSLY unstable at this point. I have tons of artifacts on my screen and my computer just straight up turns off at random points and when I try and play the 3D game forget it. comp crashes instantly.

At the time I wasn't getting many visual artifacts I was just getting crashes, figured it was an OS thing, so I reinstalled XP still had the problem, then I started to realize it was prolly my vid card.

I reinstalled the catalyst drivers but on those you can only boost not cut and they were at the lowest value and I was still getting the crashes and now artifacts.


I then installed the ATi tool v.26 on my computer and I have the clock speed sliders, but when I manually bring them down and hit set clock it just resets with the default value, I also tried turning on "change clock speed immediately" when I did that the sliders refuse to move at all.

The interesting part is that when I hit find max core it says "your mem is overclocked" when I hit find max mem it says "your core is over clocked' but either of these operations load the cube for about 2 seconds and my computer locks up and crashes.

Right now my card IDLES at 84 Celsius, but when I turn on the 3D in the tool it fires right up to 95 celsius and flatlines there and my computer then locks up.

At this point I am totally clueless how to fix this, if anyone has any advice I would REALLY appreciate it. all I wanna do it get my card back to normal and get it at the default clock speed.

Here's some of the readouts from ATI Tool:

Voltage Regulator Temp: 72c
CPU draw: 8.2A
Fan Speed: 50%
GPU Temp: 84c
Temperature of Temp Chip: 68c

this is when my computer is totally idle, the only thing running is the ATI tool on a blank background with 1280x1024 resolution.

also the values on the slides say:

Core: 3370.40
Mem: 3676.80

If ANYONE has ANYTHING to say about this at all please please please help me out I am totally stumped as to what to do at this point. I don't even mind underclocking my card a bit.

Thanks a TON!

Fish

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Ok, can you Google for memtest and run that for an hour or so? This could be video card related, but I think it there's also a chance it could be memory.

I'm not sure why ATITool behaves like that, are you using the latest version? Make sure overdrive is disabled before you try and use ATITool.

There is something wrong with that temp - 84C idle is ridiculous, and the fan should be at more than 50% by then. Are there any 3D apps running. Have you changed your fan control settings?

Welcome to the forums by the way, thanks for posting plenty of info about your card.

Edit: forget the first half of my post - I read you post again and saw the extra info about it shooting up to 95C... it definitely sounds like something is wrong.

1) Have you touched the thermal paste/ ever removed the heatsink?
2) did you have any problems at all before you played with the CCC settings?
3) Have you used any software to change fan speed settings
4) is the fan on the card spinning properly?

If you could answer those questions it would be a great help.

 

[Funkfish]

Ok I'm about to run memtest, I'm not sure how to disable ATI overdrive, I don't see a "disable" or on/off option in the software at all. just sliders which are as low as they can go.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Ok I'm about to run memtest, I'm not sure how to disable ATI overdrive, I don't see a "disable" or on/off option in the software at all. just sliders which are as low as they can go.

Don't bother with memtest any more - I read your post again and edited my original reply, read that instead.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

I'm pretty sure that there is a padlock shaped icon that enables/disables Overdrive. It's located in the upper right quadrandt of CCC.

 

[Funkfish]

Yeah memtest came back fine.


1) Have you touched the thermal paste/ ever removed the heatsink? - Definitely Not
2) did you have any problems at all before you played with the CCC settings? - I did not
3) Have you used any software to change fan speed settings - just me playing around with ATItool today but I put it back.
4) is the fan on the card spinning properly? - Sounds like it is, I can hear it spin up when the card gets hot.

One question is, why can't I do something simple like make the ATItool sliders turn the clock speed down?

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Sorry, didn't read enough to see that you were using ATITool. Do you think you saved a high overclock under the title of "Default"? You might have. And because you haven't adjusted the voltages higher, you have the instability. I suggest, you create a new profile with Core @ 500 & Memory @ 500. Save it. Try to load it. Then try the "default" and see if it jumps back up again. If it does, you need to save new default settings so it doesn't flip out when it first loads.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Yeah memtest came back fine.


1) Have you touched the thermal paste/ ever removed the heatsink? - Definitely Not
2) did you have any problems at all before you played with the CCC settings? - I did not
3) Have you used any software to change fan speed settings - just me playing around with ATItool today but I put it back.
4) is the fan on the card spinning properly? - Sounds like it is, I can hear it spin up when the card gets hot.

One question is, why can't I do something simple like make the ATItool sliders turn the clock speed down?

This definitely sounds quite serious. I can't think of anything else that might help - I don't use ATITool much anymore, and I have an older card anyway, but I don't know of any reason why it wouldn't work on an X1900. Is overdrive definitely disabled at the moment? Only other thing you could try would be to install one of the beta versions to see if any bugs have been fixed.

Which Catalyst version are you using? One thing I would like you to try would be to go to the fan control settings in ATITool and set it to always run at 100% and then try loading a 3D app and see if it still crashes. And check that the clock safety range isn't enabled.

 

[Funkfish]

Sorry, didn't read enough to see that you were using ATITool. Do you think you saved a high overclock under the title of "Default"? You might have. And because you haven't adjusted the voltages higher, you have the instability. I suggest, you create a new profile with Core @ 500 & Memory @ 500. Save it. Try to load it. Then try the "default" and see if it jumps back up again. If it does, you need to save new default settings so it doesn't flip out when it first loads.

Definitely sure I didn't save anything under default, I didn't touch the voltage either cause I have no idea what I'm doing with that, is there something I should change on the voltages?

This definitely sounds quite serious. I can't think of anything else that might help - I don't use ATITool much anymore, and I have an older card anyway, but I don't know of any reason why it wouldn't work on an X1900. Is overdrive definitely disabled at the moment? Only other thing you could try would be to install one of the beta versions to see if any bugs have been fixed.

Which Catalyst version are you using? One thing I would like you to try would be to go to the fan control settings in ATITool and set it to always run at 100% and then try loading a 3D app and see if it still crashes. And check that the clock safety range isn't enabled.

So I completely uninstalled the catalyst drivers and reinstalled the most recent version that is out. I'm gonna try and fully disable overdrive and I'll even try running with the fan on 100% but I noticed that even when I had my fan at full blast the GPU temp didn't go down much if at all.

I'll post some results in a second

 

[Funkfish]

Ok so I already had the most recent version of ATItool (including the BETAs) Checked with the ATI overdrive and it is totally disabled.

I still can't move the clock sliders in ATItool though and I'm still having ALL of the same problems.

I'm gonna try the 100% fan thing now

EDIT:

Put the fan on 100% hit "check for artifacts" in ATItool it loaded the 3D cube and locked up immediately. I'm gonna try the game this time but I think it's gonna do the same thing.

Does anyone know of any other clockspeed adjusting tools for Windows?

EDIT EDIT:

Tried with games, did the same thing as well.

So all I can think of at this point is a different tool to turn the clock speed down or maybe adjusting the voltage settings but I have no idea what to do with that.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Why don't you use the process of elimination and uninstall ATITool? I don't use it myself. I choose ATI Tray Tools. But that's just me.

If you remove ATITool (it should offer to remove (registry) settings-do that), reinstall CCC (I don't think there is anything wrong with using "Overdrive". I just isn't for EXTREME OCs) or Cat video driver and ATI Tray Tools and it still has problems-you might be looking at a corrupt BIOS and could require a flash to correct.

Uninstall ATIToll should fix, though...

 

[Funkfish]

Well the thing is, I had this problem LOOOOOOOOOOONG before I ever installed ATItool, I put ATItool on my computer......today. So I doubt it's that.

Last night I reinstalled XP along with the catalyst driver and from that point I still had the same problems.

At this point I just feel like my card is locked higher than it should be and I need to get it down. Other than that I dunno

 

[jaxxxon]

I had issues with my X1900XT when I first had it, the fan didn't spin up enough, and I'd get random BSOD's etc. Bought a better power supply with a 6 pin connector instead of 2 molex and it works fine now.

But in your case it sounds like its not cooling correctly, if its idling at 84c!! Should be idling at around 45-55 with normal fan and maxing out at about 70 (can get to 90 if you dont use fan control). I use ATI tool for fan control with no problems at all so I doubt it's that, especially as you had the problem before it.

This seems like a simple rma if the temperatures are as crazy as that. In CCC what does it say your card is locked at? Shouldn't lock at all, when i've overclocked its always gone back down later if i wanted to. but good luck anyway

 

[Funkfish]

CCC is locked at the lowest setting possible.

The funny thing is I told the ATI tech support guy my card was idling at 85 degrees, he says "oh well as long as its not at 90" haha this was a "senior tech" too lol

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

^^WOW! Just wow...:shadedshu

Could you explain your process for uninstalling your ATI drivers? You stated in your first post that a while back you were futzing with OC in CCC. Was it stable before that? I'd assume so as OCing generally hinders stability.

Sounds like those driver settings have stuck and new installations don't override them. Most suggest using Driver Cleaner Pro in Safe Mode to clean out the old drivers. Slapping new Cats on top of old ones is asking for problems...

 

[Funkfish]

yea man everything worked fine before I messed with the OCing.

As for driver cleaner pro I don't think thats gonna help because I did the ultimate driver cleaner....I formatted my harddrive and still had the problem.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Looks like flash or RMA time....Boo!

 

[sneekypeet]

Here is what I would do at this point . If you have the knowhow, remove the cooler and replace the TIM. While the cooler is off the card I would give it a very in depth cleaning. Tha cooler itself can be dissasembled and cleaned with Canned Air , Air compressor, Or even wiped with alcohol and Qtips.

Every ATI card I have ever owned personally, when they got warm , it was due to the fur coat that had accumulated in the cooler. Its worth a shot, if it doesnt work out for ya and ATI is no help.....run the card heavily stressed till it pukes then let ATI deal with it!