Question RE: Nvidia GeForce card over heating

[wanker]

I'm not sure if this is the place where I whould be asking this
question...if it isn't please point me to where I should.
My brother gave me his old system after upgrading to a newer better
system so I decided to take it and play games on it like World of
Warcraft and other various graphics-intensive games since the graphics
card in the computer that he gave me was a relatively new one, about a
year old, a GeForce FX 5500 card with 128 mb of ram on the card and
512 Mb in the system over all. So, I start playing my favorite games,
not noticing any problems other than the occasio0nal crash, but I
figured that it was normal.
Sumertime comes around and I live in central Arizona where we like to
boast about how hot it gets here and how it's mostly a dry heat, which
is a bunch of bullshit b/c when I'm outside in 115 degree heat i'm
anything BUT dry, but that's beside the point. Anyways, back to my
question, so after my game crashing for the 5 time in a row, i start
to think that something is wrong and lo and behold i open up my case
and check for anything that might cause a problem. Well, when I put my
hand near the graphics card I discovered the source of my gaming woes.
It was HOT! So, now I got a bit of a problem, I want to continue
playing my games but I can't since the dang thing will overheat and
cause more problems for my system in the long term.
So now, to heart of my question: I need to get some kind of cooling
device on it before i start gaming again, but I'm as unfamiliar in
this area as a geologist is in the field of astrophysics. I'm really
tight on money at the moment, and can wait till payday on the 20th,
but even then i'm planing on not spending more than $40, and even
that's a bit of a stretch. Besides what I've cureently got which is a
very large, very loud fan sitting beside me aimed at my open computer
case, what else might I do or buy to cool down the GPU on my card? How
difficult would said cooling device be to install? Would it replace my
current heat sink/fan that's on the gpu now? Would uninstalling my
current cooling system from the card be very difficult?

Thank you so much for any and all help that you may provide.

 

[kony]

I'm not sure if this is the place where I whould be asking this
question...if it isn't please point me to where I should.
My brother gave me his old system after upgrading to a newer better
system so I decided to take it and play games on it like World of
Warcraft and other various graphics-intensive games since the graphics
card in the computer that he gave me was a relatively new one, about a
year old, a GeForce FX 5500 card with 128 mb of ram on the card and
512 Mb in the system over all.

Umm, that's a bit more than a year old now, but it may be
beside the point that it still should work (but due to age,
verify that the fan on it (if it has one) is still working.

So, I start playing my favorite games,
not noticing any problems other than the occasio0nal crash, but I
figured that it was normal.

Normal based on what? It's not normal for a game to crash,
unless that specific game has a bug, or the system itself is
instable... so while it isn't really "normal" per se, it
could still be a common problem seen by many people from
time to time for various reasons.

Sumertime comes around and I live in central Arizona where we like to
boast about how hot it gets here and how it's mostly a dry heat, which
is a bunch of bullshit b/c when I'm outside in 115 degree heat i'm
anything BUT dry, but that's beside the point. Anyways, back to my
question, so after my game crashing for the 5 time in a row, i start
to think that something is wrong and lo and behold i open up my case
and check for anything that might cause a problem. Well, when I put my
hand near the graphics card I discovered the source of my gaming woes.
It was HOT!

Ok but what was the room ambient temp? If your room is
getting much above 85C, you will tend to need more chassis
cooling than the typical person (system).

So, now I got a bit of a problem, I want to continue
playing my games but I can't since the dang thing will overheat and
cause more problems for my system in the long term.

yes it could, though we can't yet be certain there is only
one cause of crashing, nor even that the hot video card
caused the crash... it could've been hot, but not TOO hot
and crashed for some other reason.

So now, to heart of my question: I need to get some kind of cooling
device on it before i start gaming again, but I'm as unfamiliar in
this area as a geologist is in the field of astrophysics.

How about the other parts in the system? If they are also
too hot, it could as easily be something else that was
instable. If they are correspondingly hot, you need more
case airflow. At 115F (if room has no A/C), you'll need
quite a bit more case airflow, enough that you'll probably
want to cut a big hole in the side panel and put in a medium
speed 120 x 38 mm fan situated roughly with it's centerline
around the video card height so some of the flow also gets
up towards the chipset and CPU.

I'm really
tight on money at the moment, and can wait till payday on the 20th,
but even then i'm planing on not spending more than $40, and even
that's a bit of a stretch.

A good initial test would be to take off the side panel and
point a fan at it, like a little desk fan. If it helps
reduce crashing, that's a start (but you didn't say whether
it ever crashes when it's not hot in the room?).

It should not cost anywhere near $40 to improve cooling.
Be sure to check that the video card fan is spinning. You
might also have other options for a case front-mounted fan
or some dust buildup on the case intake or video card fan
that can be cleaned off. A side-panel fan as I'd mentioned
previously is about $5-15 plus shipping depending on where
it's bought. Then it's just a matter of time and tools, to
trace and cut out a hole for it. The hole can be finished
on the outside with a fan guard, or put some automotive
door-edge guard type molding around it. A fan grill is also
a very good idea on such a large fan.

Besides what I've cureently got which is a
very large, very loud fan sitting beside me aimed at my open computer
case,

Oh, and that didn't help much, or not at all? FX5500 is not
THAT hot running a card. Are these crashes always occurring
in the same game or multiple games?

While you might be right that the video card is overheating,
from what you have written (and not written), it seems
possible you might have prematurely concluded it's the video
card. While gaming you are typically putting a system under
significantly higher load than many other uses, beyond just
the video card.

what else might I do or buy to cool down the GPU on my card? How
difficult would said cooling device be to install? Would it replace my
current heat sink/fan that's on the gpu now? Would uninstalling my
current cooling system from the card be very difficult?

An FX5500 is not worth much, not very fast for gaming
relative to quite a few cards available today. I'd be
hesitant to spend any money on a better heatsink for it
before putting that money into a better video card.
However, the first change that seems prudent is to add more
chassis cooling, as even if the fan didn't help enough to
stop crashing (which we still can't yet be certain was
solely due to heat), it still seems likely the whole system
needs more airflow if the room temp has increased along with
the outside temp. Since we don't know what your case is
like, it's hard to make suggestions but some things that can
help are opening up fan air passages as some cases use
fairly restrictive stamped-out grills, but cutting those out
now could require a lot of work to strip down the system and
wipe or wash it out after cutting so there's no metal
particles floating around in the case. Thus the suggestion
of the fan in the side panel, as the panel is removed and
the metal particles kept away from the rest of the parts.

Plus, there's only so much front air intake a case will have
before you end up having to cut a gaping hole out of the
front bezel, while a side-panel hole has practically zero
intake impedance already.

 

[wanker]

Umm, that's a bit more than a year old now, but it may be
beside the point that it still should work (but due to age,
verify that the fan on it (if it has one) is still working.

Right and about 6 months before he gave the system to me, he was
experiencing some of the same problems and used the same solution as
i'm currently using (see below).So It could be that he over clocking
the machine without providing adequate cooling and thus caused it to
just burn out or something.

Normal based on what? It's not normal for a game to crash,
unless that specific game has a bug, or the system itself is
instable... so while it isn't really "normal" per se, it
could still be a common problem seen by many people from
time to time for various reasons.

You know, I started to wonder about what I meant when I wrote that,
and I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really sure what it was
that I was trying to say other than that some games have been reported
by other people as being buggy or somesuch and thus I guess i came to
the conclusion that what I was experiencing might have been due to
that.

Ok but what was the room ambient temp? If your room is
getting much above 85C, you will tend to need more chassis
cooling than the typical person (system).

I'm not sure what the ambient room temp is. I can tell you that I
live in a house that is cooled by a swamp cooler rather than a
household A/C unit. I've got one chassis fan on my comp mounted above
my pci and agp slots and about 3cm to 1/4" below my power supply. 3"
above the agp card.

yes it could, though we can't yet be certain there is only
one cause of crashing, nor even that the hot video card
caused the crash... it could've been hot, but not TOO hot
and crashed for some other reason.

I've thought about that, and the only other thing that i can think of
that might be wrong with the system would be that there's just some
kind of problem with the mainboard itself, and I have yet to discover
any problems with it. I've discarged myself by touching the case while
running and touched what i believe to be the north-bridge chip and it
feels very cool to the touch. I've looked at the temperature readings
in the bios and they read as nominal so it's not something with the
CPU. Haven't checked out the system memory yet to see if it's hot or
anything.
You should understand that I"m sitting right next to my open system,
not in the way of air flow from my big fan. Dust is a bit of a problem
where i'm currently living but I take care of it with a can of canned
air while the system is off every now and then.

How about the other parts in the system? If they are also
too hot, it could as easily be something else that was
instable. If they are correspondingly hot, you need more
case airflow. At 115F (if room has no A/C), you'll need
quite a bit more case airflow, enough that you'll probably
want to cut a big hole in the side panel and put in a medium
speed 120 x 38 mm fan situated roughly with it's centerline
around the video card height so some of the flow also gets
up towards the chipset and CPU.

I've got a large honeywell (looks to be like 24" in diameter) fan
pointed at my open computer case and running on high.

A good initial test would be to take off the side panel and
point a fan at it, like a little desk fan. If it helps
reduce crashing, that's a start (but you didn't say whether
it ever crashes when it's not hot in the room?).

It has crashed when it's not hot in the room, but the game that
crashed was Second Life and from what i've heard it crashes for a lot
of people

It should not cost anywhere near $40 to improve cooling.
Be sure to check that the video card fan is spinning. You
might also have other options for a case front-mounted fan
or some dust buildup on the case intake or video card fan
that can be cleaned off. A side-panel fan as I'd mentioned
previously is about $5-15 plus shipping depending on where
it's bought. Then it's just a matter of time and tools, to
trace and cut out a hole for it. The hole can be finished
on the outside with a fan guard, or put some automotive
door-edge guard type molding around it. A fan grill is also
a very good idea on such a large fan.

Oh, and that didn't help much, or not at all? FX5500 is not
THAT hot running a card. Are these crashes always occurring
in the same game or multiple games?

Multiple games. Second life as I mentioned before

While you might be right that the video card is overheating,
from what you have written (and not written), it seems
possible you might have prematurely concluded it's the video
card. While gaming you are typically putting a system under
significantly higher load than many other uses, beyond just
the video card.


An FX5500 is not worth much, not very fast for gaming
relative to quite a few cards available today. I'd be
hesitant to spend any money on a better heatsink for it
before putting that money into a better video card.
However, the first change that seems prudent is to add more
chassis cooling, as even if the fan didn't help enough to
stop crashing (which we still can't yet be certain was
solely due to heat), it still seems likely the whole system
needs more airflow if the room temp has increased along with
the outside temp. Since we don't know what your case is
like, it's hard to make suggestions but some things that can
help are opening up fan air passages as some cases use
fairly restrictive stamped-out grills, but cutting those out
now could require a lot of work to strip down the system and
wipe or wash it out after cutting so there's no metal
particles floating around in the case. Thus the suggestion
of the fan in the side panel, as the panel is removed and
the metal particles kept away from the rest of the parts.

Plus, there's only so much front air intake a case will have
before you end up having to cut a gaping hole out of the
front bezel, while a side-panel hole has practically zero
intake impedance already.

Thank you for all of your help, you've certainly given me a lot to
think about and try

 

[Paul]

I'm not sure if this is the place where I whould be asking this
question...if it isn't please point me to where I should.
My brother gave me his old system after upgrading to a newer better
system so I decided to take it and play games on it like World of
Warcraft and other various graphics-intensive games since the graphics
card in the computer that he gave me was a relatively new one, about a
year old, a GeForce FX 5500 card with 128 mb of ram on the card and
512 Mb in the system over all. So, I start playing my favorite games,
not noticing any problems other than the occasio0nal crash, but I
figured that it was normal.
Sumertime comes around and I live in central Arizona where we like to
boast about how hot it gets here and how it's mostly a dry heat, which
is a bunch of bullshit b/c when I'm outside in 115 degree heat i'm
anything BUT dry, but that's beside the point. Anyways, back to my
question, so after my game crashing for the 5 time in a row, i start
to think that something is wrong and lo and behold i open up my case
and check for anything that might cause a problem. Well, when I put my
hand near the graphics card I discovered the source of my gaming woes.
It was HOT! So, now I got a bit of a problem, I want to continue
playing my games but I can't since the dang thing will overheat and
cause more problems for my system in the long term.
So now, to heart of my question: I need to get some kind of cooling
device on it before i start gaming again, but I'm as unfamiliar in
this area as a geologist is in the field of astrophysics. I'm really
tight on money at the moment, and can wait till payday on the 20th,
but even then i'm planing on not spending more than $40, and even
that's a bit of a stretch. Besides what I've cureently got which is a
very large, very loud fan sitting beside me aimed at my open computer
case, what else might I do or buy to cool down the GPU on my card? How
difficult would said cooling device be to install? Would it replace my
current heat sink/fan that's on the gpu now? Would uninstalling my
current cooling system from the card be very difficult?

Thank you so much for any and all help that you may provide.

With air cooling, you cannot (easily) cool below ambient.
If the computer case is 40-45C inside, then no matter how
big the fan on a video card or a CPU, they cannot get any
cooler than 40-45C.

And to implement exotic cooling, is going to cost more than
your stated budget target.

Your video card is FX5500, and the genealogy is similar to
FX5200, only with higher clock.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/

The old Takaman power estimator, lists 25 watts for a FX5200. Even
adding an extra 20%, would only make the power level about 30 watts
on the video card.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040411032947/http://www.takaman.jp/psu_calc.html?english

A cooler like this might fit (an NV Silencer is another solution,
but they don't seem to be in stock):

VF900-CU $36.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118001

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=192&code=013

The RAM sinks can be a bit of a pain to install. That is,
if you use them. There should be some air from the fan, hitting
the memory chips, in which case a RAM sink might be pointless.
To install a RAM sink, it helps to clean the tops of the chips
with alcohol, then let thoroughly dry. Someone who has installed
them, claims gently heating the adhesive, before pressing it
in place, helps a bit.

But the thing is, if the surrounding air is hot, even a
big cooler like that cannot make the GPU cooler than the
surrounding air.

I have a couple AGP FX5200's that are fanless (just a heatsink).
To make them stable, when gaming, I keep an 80mm fan right
next to them, and they behave themselves. I usually stop
gaming, when the room hits 35C, because by then, I'm "out of
spec".

Paul

 

[kony]

Right and about 6 months before he gave the system to me, he was
experiencing some of the same problems and used the same solution as
i'm currently using (see below).So It could be that he over clocking
the machine without providing adequate cooling and thus caused it to
just burn out or something.

Maybe, but that wouldn't make it particularly susceptible to
temp rise (moreso than any other) which seemed to be what
you thought was happening. Also a video card tends to fail
outright or have artifacts when damaged, plus bugginess in
games is common enough that looking at exact situations when
crashing occurs is worth investigating. For example,
whether it passes memtest86+ for a few hours, and Prime95's
Torture Test / Large In-Place FFTs setting for at least an
hour.

You know, I started to wonder about what I meant when I wrote that,
and I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really sure what it was
that I was trying to say other than that some games have been reported
by other people as being buggy or somesuch and thus I guess i came to
the conclusion that what I was experiencing might have been due to
that.

A more telling symptom would be if the two tests I just
mentioned above were passed, and if all games that put any
significant stress on the video card caused the crashing.
However, with that FX5nnn series of video cards I believe
there is another symptom often seem from overheating, that
the card suddenly throttles back to 2D mode clockspeed which
causes an obvious framerate reduction. It's not so evident
in some games or certain benchmarks but in others (for
example Farcry benchmark was one I saw it on, IIRC) when you
have a framerate indicator on-screen, you can see the sudden
framerate reduction then it increases again after a few
seconds (maybe 5-10 seconds, though a hotter environment
would make it take longer to cool down). At least, I'd
observed it on FX5900 and I think FX5700, but I didn't ever
use FX5500 much, only had ahold of one for a friend's system
for a short period.

I'm not sure what the ambient room temp is. I can tell you that I
live in a house that is cooled by a swamp cooler rather than a
household A/C unit. I've got one chassis fan on my comp mounted above
my pci and agp slots and about 3cm to 1/4" below my power supply. 3"
above the agp card.

"IF" it is the video card it would be good to have a fan at
least halfway below it. If the case panel doesn't allow a
mounting there, you might see if you can fabricate a bracket
from a couple pieces of metal to hang the fan on the card
mounting screws (case rear brackets). Also, leave the slot
under the video card empty if you weren't, and leave that
empty slot's mounting bracket cover off the case for more
passive flow-by air. That is, if it is even the video card
overheating.

I've thought about that, and the only other thing that i can think of
that might be wrong with the system would be that there's just some
kind of problem with the mainboard itself, and I have yet to discover
any problems with it.

It might help to try the card in another system. Also
impect the motherboard for vented capacitors and research
whether there might be some bios settings or bios bugs that
could cause this, at a forum like http://forums.pcper.com ,
but first it would be good to run the two aforementioned
tests to rule out these two variables.

I've discarged myself by touching the case while
running and touched what i believe to be the north-bridge chip and it
feels very cool to the touch.

You didn't give us a comprehensive description of the system
unless I missed it - that is always a useful thing to post
in the opening of a thread. "Sometimes" a cool northbridge
means a worse thermal transfer from the chip due to power
heatsink insterface, if it is possible the interface is poor
and you have some heatsink grease, it might be useful to
take the 'sink off and apply some after cleaning off the
original thermal interface material. If it's a gooey pad, a
petroleum solvent might help get it off.

I've got a large honeywell (looks to be like 24" in diameter) fan
pointed at my open computer case and running on high.

Normally that would be enough, but you mentioend outside
temp around 115C... if it's anywhere near that inside,
especially if your card has a passive heatsink, it may be
difficult keeping "some" parts cool. Also "hot" is a
relative perception, if you can leave your fingers on the
heatsink or memory chips it may not be very hot for a video
card, though IIRC FX5500 only used DDR2 so the memory
shouldn't be very hot. Another test might be to use the
nVidia driver + coolbits registry hack to underclock the
card (temporarily) which will reduce heat and make it more
stable at any given temp, to see if it stil crashes in the
games. However, with it running slower it also puts less
demand on other parts like CPU so they too might produce a
little less heat, and if it were then running at 30FPS
instead of 40FPS (for example), it could then
correspondingly cause a crash every 4/3rds as often which
seems an improvement but is still the same work:crash ratio.


System motherboard or PSU might be worn out, but if you had
another video card you might try in that system it would
also help limit the variables some.

 

[wanker]

Maybe, but that wouldn't make it particularly susceptible to
temp rise (moreso than any other) which seemed to be what
you thought was happening. Also a video card tends to fail
outright or have artifacts when damaged, plus bugginess in
games is common enough that looking at exact situations when
crashing occurs is worth investigating. For example,
whether it passes memtest86+ for a few hours, and Prime95's
Torture Test / Large In-Place FFTs setting for at least an
hour.

A more telling symptom would be if the two tests I just
mentioned above were passed, and if all games that put any
significant stress on the video card caused the crashing.
However, with that FX5nnn series of video cards I believe
there is another symptom often seem from overheating, that
the card suddenly throttles back to 2D mode clockspeed which
causes an obvious framerate reduction. It's not so evident
in some games or certain benchmarks but in others (for
example Farcry benchmark was one I saw it on, IIRC) when you
have a framerate indicator on-screen, you can see the sudden
framerate reduction then it increases again after a few
seconds (maybe 5-10 seconds, though a hotter environment
would make it take longer to cool down). At least, I'd
observed it on FX5900 and I think FX5700, but I didn't ever
use FX5500 much, only had ahold of one for a friend's system
for a short period.




"IF" it is the video card it would be good to have a fan at
least halfway below it. If the case panel doesn't allow a
mounting there, you might see if you can fabricate a bracket
from a couple pieces of metal to hang the fan on the card
mounting screws (case rear brackets). Also, leave the slot
under the video card empty if you weren't, and leave that
empty slot's mounting bracket cover off the case for more
passive flow-by air. That is, if it is even the video card
overheating.




It might help to try the card in another system. Also
impect the motherboard for vented capacitors and research
whether there might be some bios settings or bios bugs that
could cause this, at a forum likehttp://forums.pcper.com,
but first it would be good to run the two aforementioned
tests to rule out these two variables.


You didn't give us a comprehensive description of the system
unless I missed it - that is always a useful thing to post
in the opening of a thread. "Sometimes" a cool northbridge
means a worse thermal transfer from the chip due to power
heatsink insterface, if it is possible the interface is poor
and you have some heatsink grease, it might be useful to
take the 'sink off and apply some after cleaning off the
original thermal interface material. If it's a gooey pad, a
petroleum solvent might help get it off.


Normally that would be enough, but you mentioend outside
temp around 115C... if it's anywhere near that inside,
especially if your card has a passive heatsink, it may be
difficult keeping "some" parts cool. Also "hot" is a
relative perception, if you can leave your fingers on the
heatsink or memory chips it may not be very hot for a video
card, though IIRC FX5500 only used DDR2 so the memory
shouldn't be very hot. Another test might be to use the
nVidia driver + coolbits registry hack to underclock the
card (temporarily) which will reduce heat and make it more
stable at any given temp, to see if it stil crashes in the
games. However, with it running slower it also puts less
demand on other parts like CPU so they too might produce a
little less heat, and if it were then running at 30FPS
instead of 40FPS (for example), it could then
correspondingly cause a crash every 4/3rds as often which
seems an improvement but is still the same work:crash ratio.

System motherboard or PSU might be worn out, but if you had
another video card you might try in that system it would
also help limit the variables some.

Ok, I dl'd Memtest86+ as well as Prime95 and plan on running them
sometime tonight. I'm sorry that I didn't provide as much info in my
initial post. I have an ECS K7VTA3 V.8.0 motherboard, running an AMD
Athlon XP at 1.79Ghz. the video card that is in question is a
BFGR5500OC as per what a sticker on the card says. I have that in my
agp slot which is on top, The first PCI slot is empty, and following
the suggestion of someone, I have taken off the panel for that pci
slot to allow more airflow. The case fan is an 80mm fan, couldn't tell
you anything else about it other than I got it at fry's electronics
and it's a "Global Fan" "Sleeve Bearing". The heat sink/fan on the
nvidia card is what i've been refering to as being hot or warm to the
touch. The fan on that appears to be running. The second PCI slot is
occupied by a generic 4 port USB 2.0 card with 4 external USB ports
and 1 Internal USB port. Below that Is an Adaptec SCSI-utra2 card
which has an HP CD-Writer Plus 9200 series cdwriter connected to it.
below that is nothing.
The fan that I have running next to me is 12" floor fan not a 24" as
stated in my previous post. Both side pannels on my case have been
removed to allow for maximum airflow. I have been playing the games I
mentioned in my previous posts since my initial post with the fan
running on it and have experienced little to no noticeable
complications other than the animation freezing or stopping for about
30 seconds then returning to normal. I've talked to my brother and he
said that this same thing happend to him and was in part one of the
reasons why he upgraded his system. Unfortunately his system utilizes
a PCI-E graphics card otherwise i'd plug my video card into his system
to test it out to see if the what i've been experiencing still occurs
on his machine. I do have the graphics card that he used prior to
upgrading to the one in the system i now have, but I've been unable to
locate it as of yet. As soon as I do I"ll try plugging it into this
system and running the tests see if I notice anything.

 

[kony]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:55:09 -0700, wanker

I have been playing the games I
mentioned in my previous posts since my initial post with the fan
running on it and have experienced little to no noticeable
complications other than the animation freezing or stopping for about
30 seconds then returning to normal.

Is that place at which it freezes the same always or random?
If the same I would try other games or some benchmarks like
3DMark (probably an older version like 2001 or 2003 is more
suited to that card).

I've talked to my brother and he
said that this same thing happend to him and was in part one of the
reasons why he upgraded his system. Unfortunately his system utilizes
a PCI-E graphics card otherwise i'd plug my video card into his system
to test it out to see if the what i've been experiencing still occurs
on his machine. I do have the graphics card that he used prior to
upgrading to the one in the system i now have, but I've been unable to
locate it as of yet. As soon as I do I"ll try plugging it into this
system and running the tests see if I notice anything.

Since it seems both the memory and CPU are stable, you might
check the PSU voltages but it does seem to be the video
card. Before throwing the card out I'd probably take the
heatsink off, clean off the thermal interface material and
try putting a fresh coat of grease on, but first you might
check on whether the card is still under warranty as some
cards have quite a bit longer warranty than others.

 

[wanker]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:55:09 -0700, wanker




Is that place at which it freezes the same always or random?
If the same I would try other games or some benchmarks like
3DMark (probably an older version like 2001 or 2003 is more
suited to that card).

No, it isn't at the same place and since i've made the changes
sugested previously, IE. opening up the cover below the video card to
allow for better airflow, running the computer without haven any of
the side panels on, running the fan at full blast aimed at my open
computer. I haven't experienced any freezing,or any abnormalities that
I originally mentioned in my first post and subsequent posts. I will
however still run 3dMark just to see if there might be something wrong
with my graphics card, and probably run prime95 all night tonight
while i sleep. The first time that I ran torture test with the FFT
option checked my system locked up so I had to disable my onboard USB
chip and stick with just using my USB card that I already had
installed in the system. Then I ran it again for about an hour and it
passed all of the self-tests that it had done up unto that point.
Thanks to everyone who as responded to my initial inquiry. all of your
suggestions have been very helpful. Thanks a bunch!