Check that X1900 XT for Dust Buildup
Posted: 7/2/2007
Using boot camp to boot into XP to play all my favourite windows games on my Mac Pro, everything was going swimmingly for months.
Using the X1900 XT, I used Catalyst to overclock modestly, and enjoyed beautiful visuals with great frame rates. Then one day, Prey
decided to keep quitting. No problem, it was only one game. Then, I started to notice that the more graphically demanding games either
would quit unexpectedly, or more scary, I would get corruption in the display. I figured, well maybe it's time to back off the overclocks.
Unfortunately, even at stock, I was getting some corruption in games like Need for Speed Carbon (yes, I know it's "coming soon to the
Mac!" but I've been playing it for weeks on my Mac already in XP).
On a whim, I opened up the box and inspected the card. All seemed well, fan was operating okay. Just to be certain, I removed the card. I looked at the front of the HSF assembly, where the air comes in. This is what I saw:
Yikes!
I went around to the back of the card, and gave a nice, sharp puff
into the PCI exhaust grill. This is what came out the other side:
When I picked it all out:
I also unscrewed the fan assembly, because the red rotors were grey,
too. Blew them out and reassembled. Popped the thing back in. Booted
up Win XP. Went into Catalyst and put everything on max, and then
overclocked to 700/650 (just to be sure, y'know?). Played NFS Carbon
for about 30 minutes. Nary a corrupt pixel now my friend!
Seems to me that the big fat grill on the Mac Pro needs to have some
kind of dust filter. I don't live in an overly-dusty house!
-Vader
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