G73JH Overclocked 5870 (800/1100) not going over 87c before crashing the directx drvr

[Rydell]

I used the vBIOS OD unlock flash that's shown on one of the stickies up top for the CCC overdrive feature(I am running one of the advised BIOS versions too). Even though my 5870 idles at 61c (Using GPU-Z) and never goes above 86/88, I'll usually get a DirectX .dll related error and whatever game or app I'm in crashes. I'll then always receive serious desktop artifacts and tearing requiring me to restart the laptop.

My impression of overclocking was that MOST of the time, if the card gets too hot, you've reached your limit and THEN you'll start seeing artifacts and tearing. I've seen plenty of people here reach 800/1100 with their cards without issue, and is recommended as a starting point. I might back it down if I thought the card was being over stressed, but if it's doing this tearing and running at perfectly fine temps, that tells me there's some sort of correctable problem not related to the limitations of the hardware.

Oh, and I have the latest "VGA" drivers listed on the stickies up top too. I've tried reinstalling those, no dice.

Anyone with a, "Oh yeah, you just need to do this" deserves a frikkin cookie :-) Feel free to ask questions, I'm an IT guy so ask anything. If it requires too much troubleshooting, I've been eyeballing a really nice affordable Clevo, and it'll be just in time for BF3 !!

[grungeboy2]

sounds like you're getting a error related to the OC. just because a chip doesn't run hot, doesn't mean that its all gravy.

as you oc a chip can lose some of it's accuracy performing calculations, sometimes this results in things like what you're experiencing.

question: does it only happen on a particular part of a test? does it do it during normal gaming? is it really that important to get a few extra fps that you're risking frying a nice high end chip?

[TheOriginalTO]

My card is the same way man, IDK what to tell you but it does indeed suck.

[xeromist]

It is possible that the heat sink is not making good contact across the whole card. The gpu chip may make good contact but if the ram chips are badly cooled you can get artifacting even at relatively low temperatures according to probes. No guarantee this is the problem but if it is you would have to repaste and possibly replace thermal tape to fix the issue. Or you could just have a component that doesn't OC well and is holding back the rest of the card.

[Chastity@ASUS]

And 61C is a bit high for an idle temp.