ASUS 6800 GT 256 overheating

Guys, I have had this card working for months now and all of a sudden it is starting to overheat. I was playng BF42 recently and when I exited I saw that the Smart Doctor was was showing graphics card RAM temp of over 90 degrees celsius. I freaked. I have changed a few things to do with software recently but I did a system restore to b4 the problems and cleaned and reinstalled drivers and smart doctor but no joy. Ran PC Mark 2003, doom and BF42 and all seem to raise the temp much faster than before. I have an A8V mobo, amd 64 3500 and 1000. Normal temp is same at 40 for the RAM. What is going on? What can I do? And what damage could it be doing?

 

Off memory didnt asus make a 6800gt using there own cooler design,where the heatsink didnt extend over onto ram?Could be wrong,I didnt even know the memory had its own heat sensor,so have a look at your card and see if the ram has any cooling.

 

you might also try reseating the cooler w/ artic silver and/or a new cooler altogether ... I might suggest artic cooling

it is possible that maybe something blew out in the chipset and is causing it to overheat .. or your heat sensor is plain wrong(as I would think it it would be crashing all over the place if it was that high and most likely just crash and burn rendering the card useless) ... this may not be highly resommended but you might try touching the HSF or the opposite side of the HSF and if it is so hot that you feel it might burn your hand than it may be that temp ... I know my ram sinks get to ~130f/50c? and if I touch them it;s too hot and I get a very minor burn and I know if I kept holding on it would probably give me a small blister .. so I would try that with *caution*

 

Make sure all fans are still functioning, including the one on the card. Also make sure the heatsink and fan on card arent plugged with dust, cat hair, etc....http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

 

Turns out the problem had nothing to do with the GC. I also had an old PCI TV Tuner card installed (for ages) but uninstalled the programs and drivers etc. which seems to have been causing it the TV card to overheat and this has caused the GC to overheat. Simple. I whipped it out and all is well. Had me sweating for a while, thanks for the help.