My video card apparently just shut down for the 2nd time in 3 days. On both occasions, the picture just disappeared - the HDTV came up with message "Signal Lost". I could stil hear dialog and music going on - all sounded normal. Had to shut system down hard with the Power button

On both occasions, the load on the video card shold not have been that severe at the time the shutdown happened: 1st time in Whiterun, preparing to use the Armor crafting table, 2nd time in Riverrun, in the traders shop, preparing to sell some stuff. Now that I think about it, on both occasions I was in or going into an inventory screen.

The 1st time, I tried again next morning, and it worked, worked fine for about 5 hours that day, as much time the next day. 2nd time it shut down less than an hour in to the game, after a few hours off, it seems to be OK (it is booting up as I type).

Card is an ASUS HD5770, about a year old. I do run "ASUS Smart Doctor" in background - did NOT hear any temperature alarm. Fan sounded normal (as far as I remember anyway) - which is NOISY - I have fan speed controls set for 35/45/50/55 C for Slow/Medium/Fast/Fastest speeds. I'm using older drivers ver 11.6. Skyrim patched to ver 1.4..whatever

Sitting in windows desktop, GPU temp reads 34C according to S.D.. I have to minimize it while playing Skyrim, else I see a flickering section where S.D. is - so if I quit out of Skyrim and try to check temp, it takes several seconds. But doing that, I typically see temps less than 50C (and cooling fast)


Should Smart Doctor be sounding an audible alarm if card goes overtemp?

What temp should card be able to run at?? I would expect 75C or better, which is where I set the alarm at

Does it mean card is shutting down before reaching 75C

I believe that the S.D. temp reading is correct, as it matches that in the Catalyst Control Center

Any suggestion appreciated

A video card doesn't necessarily have to have high temperatures to go bad. I have had several die on me over the years without a spike in temps.
Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with Smart Doctor so can't comment on if alarms are audible or not.

Download and run the furmark stress test. Run it at half your resolution or greater until full load temps level out and let it run for 20 mins or so at that.

Note: This could cause instability, crashing, graphics artifacts, weight gain, and extra hair growth (well, maybe not the last two).
If your VC is failing, furmark should be able to cause a reproducible failure. Unless it just kills your card outright, that is...

Your card should be able to run fine at 75 degrees C. I agree with others here that the card itseld may be failing. I would run a stress test and also monitor the temp with something more than an alarm.

I can say that my card without a fan profiler just stays at 25% fan speed and the temps will just keep rising....I also have an AMD card and this is my first one. No Nvidia card I have ever had works like this....it is very strange but stock the card will basically kill itself. Talking temps past the safe temps and well past what I am comfortable with and the fan just sits at 25%.....poor BIOS design imo.

update: using Catalyst Control Center, I'm able to see temp immediately after exiting Skyrim : ;shows 62C, and falling fast. Set fan to "AUTO" control instead of fixed set points - fan actually runs much slower (quieter). Hasn't shut down again yet

Download MSI afterburner and run it - go to the bottom of the program window and select - Settings then under the Monitoring tab in the center highlight GPU Temperature then toward the bottom CHeck the Show in On-Screen Display and press OK

leave it running and launch the game this will place a FPS and GPU temp reading into the game screen so you can monitor the temps while actually in game.

that sounds like a faulty card..

I've had numerous radeons since they were first being made..

The 6950/6970's I've played with have all kept the card below 70*C and have done this by bumping up the fan speed beyond 25%, actually aside from a few select poorly designed models that would jump to about 60-80% fan speed unnecessarily.... which were loud.... generally i don't see them exceed 45-50%

use afterburner to monitor gpu temps
my cards run at 90C with no problems

Are you sure you don't have the "enable manual fan control" checkbox ticked in AMD Overdrive (in the CCC)? That's the only reason I can think of for the fan speed staying static--outside of a faulty card--although I'm pretty sure the default for that is 50%, not 25%.

I've been using ATI/AMD cards for 6+ years now. Never had one that did that.

Update #2: tried out MSI afterburner - showed less than 75C temp, with 99% GPU usage when card stopped. Bought a new card HD6870 - and it stops working too: difference is it actually will drop to VGA mode after about 5 seconds, and give a message that the ati driver program (forget exact file name) has stopped working. A reboot starts it up again, but I can't go more than 15 minutes without video going away. Note that the 6870 card is running at less than 50C, while using 99% of GPU, while averaging less than 30FPS.

Can't compare FPS old vs new card, because Skyrim "ate" my old .INI files - which had been extensively modified to get decent performance.

Interesting note : when I first played Skyrim with the 5770 card, Skyrim set it to "HIGH", when I started up with 6870 (much faster card), Skyrim set it to MEDIUM - of course that was with patch 1.4

edit : played Dragon Age 2 for 2 1/2 hours without a crash, similar GPU usage and temperatures as in Skyrim. Gonna play another 3 or 4 hours of DA2, then switch back to Skyrim

just played Skyrim for about 10 minutes, then it ate sh!t and died again file name is ati2dvag. I was going into Belethors shop when it crashed - had black screen

Back to DA2 now

Yes absent of Afterburner at least since driver version 11.1 Overdrive auto wouldn't do a thing I could turn the fan speed up manually but that is a pain.

But not over a long time.
90°C is very hot, and the hotter it gets the shorter it lifespan will be.
My EVGA GTX560 SC, "SC" means Superclocked by the Manufacturer, will not go over 70°C with full workload. I′m sure that will change a bit in the Summer, when my Flat will heat up to ~30°C.

My computer is very hot too, but for me it's the CPU not the GPU.
My CPU cores are normally (at idle) between 50-60 Celcius. When playing they get even hotter.
I don't care that much though, since the computer doesn't shut down. It's also pretty old (like 3 years), so in about a year I'll buy a new computer anyway, so it's not really worth worrying about.

You should get better cooling or a better case. Skimping on cooling is a bad idea. My GTX460 runs at about 74c full load, 25c idle, also make sure you don't have a dusty card. Clean out your fans every few months if you don't have dust grills on your case.

considering 3 different video cards.... we should be able to deduce from this that your video card isn't the problem most likely.. it's something else... be it motherboard/cpu/software related issue.

Or potentially your power supply is not powerful enough and is failing to do the job properly.

Yeah, sounds like a faulty or insufficient power supply to me.

Update # 3 : played DA2 for 5 hours straight, with GPU usage at 99%, temp 45 to 50C the entire time. Quit DA2, fired up Skyrim, video crash in less than 10 minutes. file name= ati2dvag

re: power supply: have excellent Antec 450W power supply - typical measured power consumption was 250 Watts - INCLUDING monitor (now using HDTV). Note that I can't measure power consumption now, but I had previously measured it while playing DA1 and DA2.

Next step : delete my customized .INI files, let Skyrim put in default INI s and see what happens. Also, hook up the power meter and monitor it - but if GPU is at 99% in both games, I would expect power usage to be same with either game

Concluding report:
after cleaning registry, deleting and re-downloading Skyrim, trying old (pre patch saves), nothing worked
So the ATI6870 back to Frys, and got NVidia 560TI - and it is so much better 60 fps on Ultra,with video card not even maxed most of time

well to be fair a 560TI is a bit better than a 6870 but glad you solved you issue...I am also pretty dissatisfied with my AMD card and will not be buying another one in the future.

560ti is only a little bit faster than 6870 (according to Tom's Hardware anyway), to be fair, both cards ran Dragon Age 2 just fine, played over 4 hours without a problem - it's jsut Bethesda games (Fallout 3 had problem with the 6870 also)