SC2 burns up graphic cards - LOL

Daily Tech has an article that seems to blame Blizzard's "uncapped frame rate" in of all places its start up menu for burning up GPU's.

http://www.dailytech.com/Hot+Starcr...lizzard+Issues+Temporary+Fix/article19224.htm

Can anyone think of any way this is a software problem? Marginal cooling and factory overclocks cause this, not uncapped frame rates.

Why start a topic here?
Hopefully to get support FOR uncapped frame rates.
Currently I run a chill water system that keeps my CPU / GPU frosty. I really do not want to cap my frame rates because some idiot burns up his laptop by stuffing it into a pile of papers on a messy desk.

 

I believe this part of the article is the most pertinent one:

A video card does not die from running at 100% capacity for a few hours, not even for a few days, not as long as the fan and heatsink are working properly and the case has plenty of airflow. Uncapped frame rates might contribute, but to put the entire blame on Blizzard for the death of a video card makes no sense to me.

Also, very few, if any, FPS games cap their frame rates, and you don't hear anything about them killing video cards. In fact, I'm willing to chalk this up to bad timing, combined with a bunch of "gamers" who simply hadn't been running any demanding games on their PC at all in the past few years, and then they bought StarCraft 2 and all of a sudden the video card has to work hard for the first time ever, exposing and in the end dying from design flaws that just weren't apparent when playing less demanding games.

 

Well if the card is failing/frying under load it means it doesn't have proper cooling.

You should be able to max your GPU out without it overheating.

Blizzard should optimize it more but the fault is on the video card manufacture for a bad cooling system.

I push my GTX 275 to sometimes 90% load and don't have an issue. It gets up to around 80-85ish c but it's under a very heavy load.

 

Exactly! If I've ever seen a good argument for not skimping on components, this is it. A video card that dies from running maxed out for a few hours is a horribly designed video card that should not have been purchased in the first place.

I will be honest here, RTS is not my thing at all, but I'm married to someone who loves them so we bought the game for him. I haven't actually played it yet. He has, and he is playing it on the big desktop gaming PC (obviously) on a GTX 260 with all settings maxed out and he has seen no issues at all. He spent most of the day yesterday and today playing the game, without any stutter or lag... the first two symptoms of an over-heating video card.

I would love to see a list of brand and model of the video cards that have died since installing SC2...

 

Wouldn't shock me if it's a bunch of cheap bad manufactures of nvidia cards.

I bet it's a bunch of BFG cards and some knockoff brands.

I didn't think SC2 would use that much gpu up.

FurMark will really test your video card. If you card fails using that you have a problem.

 

I'll go one better, how about years? My pair of 9800GTs are pushing 3 years now running 24/7 @ %100, my GTX260 is in its second year and the GTX470 is my new baby and it runs 'HOT', as they all do. My fan control is always on auto and hasn't passed the %70 mark on any of them though the GTX470 comes close @ %67 fan @ 91C with an ambient room temp at 70F.

I don't game but the above speaks for itself I believe. There was an issue a few months back where an nVidia driver update locked the fan @ %20 thereby frying quite a few cards. Maybe these folks are too close to the OC edge trying to squeeze out every last possible cycle along with possible programming errors could do it. Just my $0.02.

Pics are here.

 

I would increase that fan speed to like 75- 80 % lol

 

I remember that issue! It was very unpleasant... but I agree with you, if there is a fault here it's not with the cards, it's got to be with the users. A bug in a game just wouldn't have this effect.

 

The auto speed was not set by me but by the card makers. I have plenty of air so I'll see what %80 sounds like as 91C bugs me too.

 

I am afraid you have only two options Augie, High fan speed or high temps.
My GTX470s and my 480 run hot under heavy load but the fans are loud when set above 80% and for that reason i am only able to fold during the day because the fan noise disturbs my wife if i leave the PC running overnight (we live in an apartment)

 

I missed the edit time limit.

This is a handy idea.

http://www.overclock.net/air-cooling/540332-how-i-dropped-my-gtx-260-a.html

 

Wow... nice temp differences. It's hard to tell from the pictures... can you run two cards SLI modified like that, or are they then too thick?

 

Shane answers in post #8 as afirmative for SLI. That looks like a nice mod but I'd be losing a PCI-E slot, the alternative though is to get a waterblock for the 470 but @ $165 a pop plus all the rest of the watercooling paraphenalia, no thanks.

 

BRoodwar doesn't do that, back to BW.

 

Neither does SC2. Uncapped frame rates don't kill video cards, unless the card was so crappy to begin with that any hard work would have fried it.

The sooner this urban legend dies for good, the better.

 

This happened to me, I purchased a brand new system not long after the release of sc2....to play sc2 strangely enough. I played through the single player campaign and lots more. All perfect on max graphics settings (i5 750, gtx460). Then a day ago, open up sc2 as normal, loading screen comes up, then when it gets to bnet logon screen, the graphics have gone all crazy. That is it. All it does now is get to the logon screen before it gets all messy and starts locking up. Sometimes I can logon before it locks up completely. I only use my computer for internet, watching some movies, music and playing sc2, no other games at all (except maybe solitaire ). Movies which played perfectly before now have all green dots and various artifacts appearing in them. Windows still seems to run ok. I loaded up another old 3d game I have on my computer which used to work fine but now it locks up too so obviously some part of my video card is fried. All components (except hdd) brand new, professionally installed, less than 2 months old, more than adequate cooling/power, certainly no dust issue... I've sent a email to blizzard for support but from the response it's pretty clear they're not going to be any help. Was wondering if anyone else has lost a video card like this and any advice as to what to do?

 

Since I started overclocking video cards a while back, I replace the stock cooling on them. It is sad how badly the stock cooling is installed. Makes you wonder what they are thinking. I have seen thermal paste 1/8'th of an inch thick, but only on half of the GPU!

I have the stock cooler on my current 260, but I pulled it and replaced the thermal paste. It was no the worst I have seen, but was not impressive. Plus, I ramped up the fan to 100%. The card has a variable fan setting at stock, and I found the changing fan speeds to be more annoying than the fan at full blast.

Blaming Blizzard for these card failures is like blaming rain when you have a hole in your roof and you get wet. :-D

Several of the last video cards I have got throttle the fan down way to low, in my opinion. That could be a factor as well.