Hello, first off, this is the complete specs of my present build: MOBO: MSI K9A Platinum Rev. 1 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 RAM: OCZ ATI CrossFire 2GB Dual Channel Video: PCI-E Sapphire Radeon X1900XT 512GDDR3 HDD: 500GB SATA 3gb/s Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS PSU: Xclio 700 Watt DX: DX9C Also, everything is stock parts and NOT overclocked. The other night, I got around to installing ES4: Oblivion. The launcher automatically prompted me to set my graphical settings to ultra high, which I went ahead with as my card should be overkill for this game combined with the 2 gig OCZ Crossfire RAM. Everything runs smoothly and it runs great, but then I go into the character creation part of the game, and this is where I start to notice a peculiar problem. The fan on my card's [stock] heatsink started spinning up faster and faster, even though nothing too much was happening graphically, in its attempt to cool itself off. It would just get louder and louder until I got a warning about the temp and just decided to kill the game before any hardware damage occured. Before I messed with Oblivion, I noticed an issue with the ATI software. As my motherboard has an ATI chipset, the motherboard software disk came with its own ATI display drivers. I used these at first, but noticed after a few bootups, my monitor would go into power save mode after the XP boot screen appears. However, if I booted into safemode, it wouldn't do this. I tried using Omega drivers as I was interested in trying these, and again the same effect. BTW, I used Driver Cleaner to clean up everything between each driver test. It wasn't until I installed the latest display drivers directly from ATI's website that it would no longer have the power save issue. Everybody else is able to use Omega Drivers without a hitch, so I'm not sure what's up. I've considered flashing the card's own bios, as I've flashed my other computer's mainboard bios before. Only difference is I don't know how to recover from a bad flash for a video card versus a mainboard. I'm thinking maybe there's something faulty with the default BIOS, but I don't know...I'm hoping the card itself isn't physically defective somehow. I've played older games like KOTOR on my other computer fine, so I figured nothing was wrong with it physically. Does anybody have any advice on how I should handle this? I'm considering purchasing a new heatsink, but I thought the stock was fine considering it's the size of a buick.

"As my motherboard has an ATI chipset, the motherboard software disk came with its own ATI display drivers. I used these at first,...." Why would you do that? That's asking for trouble, except in the case the chipset of the onboard video and the card are identical. The standard thing is to Un-install the onboard video drivers so that the video is in a default VGA state, install the card, then run the driver install from the CD that came with the card. It is NOT a good idea to install the drivers while booting the computer after installing the card when Windows asks for the location of the drivers - Cancel that, continue on to the desktop, and install then from the CD, or from the proper driver and app downloads you got from the web. "....after a few bootups, my monitor would go into power save mode after the XP boot screen appears. However, if I booted into safemode, it wouldn't do this. " That is a lot more likely to be an ACPI issue than a video driver issue - ACPI features such as the monitor going into standby mode probably won't work in Safe mode. Usually a problem like that is caused when the proper main chipset drivers have not been loaded. When you load Windows the first time or anytime after that when you re-load Windows from scratch you must load the drivers for the mboard, especially the main chipset drivers, after Setup has finished in order for Windows to have the proper drivers for and information about the mboard, including the proper information about it's ACPI support. As for the drivers to use from a web site or a CD, if you have a clone card, you use the drivers on the clone card's CD or get the drivers from the clone card maker's web site - the ATI web site itself insists that you do that. Sometimes these days the drivers are identical to ATI's, but sometimes they aren't because the clone card maker did not wire up the chipset the same way as ATI does and the card may not work correctly with the ATI drivers. Games tend to be leading edge software and it is likely they may not work correctly with every possible hardware combination. If ES4: Oblivion is the only thing that has this video processor overheating problem, it is a lot more likely the problem is with the game having flaws. You could look on the game makers web site for game patches or t-shooting suggestions for your main chipset or video chipset, or look on the ATI web site for t-shooting suggestions or to see if there is a special purpose driver that works for that particular game (which may not work properly since you have a clone card), but there may be nothing you can do about the problem for that game. Never flash your mboard bios or video card bios/firmware unless you find specific information such as in release notes that using a newer or different version will cure the problem you are having. As for Omega drivers, I have no idea what you are referring to.

thanks for the reply, but there's some things you mentioned that confuse me "Why would you do that? That's asking for trouble, except in the case the chipset of the onboard video and the card are identical." My motherboard has no onboard video. What I meant was that since part of it was made by ATI [the south/northbridge] and the fact that its a crossfire motherboard, MSI assumes you will be using an ATI video card and so includes ATI display drivers. Unless those drivers were intended for onboard video, which my motherboard DOESN'T have, then I'm not sure what the problem was. That wouldn't make since to me anyways, as I don't see why MSI would give me onboard video drivers if their product isn't even built for it. The motherboard setup disk provided no detailed information regarding what the drivers were exactly, other than "ATI Display DRIVERS". And since the board isn't designed with onboard video, I assumed these were meant for an actual physical ATI card which I have, and used them. "It is NOT a good idea to install the drivers while booting the computer after installing the card when Windows asks for the location of the drivers - Cancel that, continue on to the desktop, and install then from the CD, or from the proper driver and app downloads you got from the web" I never tried installing drivers when the "Choose the location..." window for XP's hardware detection was open. I made it close down until it stopped popping up and then I installed my drivers. "Never flash your mboard bios or video card bios/firmware unless you find specific information such as in release notes that using a newer or different version will cure the problem you are having." I tend to agree with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mantra, but for all I know any motherboard or video card, clone or not, that I buy might ship with bios that weren't loaded properly loaded to begin with somehow by the manufacturer or were just buggy. "As for Omega drivers, I have no idea what you are referring to." They're third party video card drivers made for recent NVIDIA and ATI video cards. They aren't always as up to date as official ones as they take a catalyst driver, make some tweaks to it, and then release it on omegadrivers.net. Basically they're for anyone that's try to get a little more performance out of their card without doing anything drastic to it like overclocking. I know you'll probably say only to use official drivers, but there's no reason these shouldn't work either. I'll just make a post over at Driver Haven and see if anyone has any ideas. I got a driver package off of Sapphire's website, but it just looks like they took an ATI driver and put it on their site. I'll install it and see how things work out.

OK, so I shouldn't have assumed you had ATI chipset onboard video. Some mboards with ATI main chipsets also have ATI chipset onboard video, and it is likely MSI uses the same mboard CD for at least several different mboard models, some of which have that. The point remains you are supposed to load Sapphire supplied drivers for a Sapphire card. The MSI or Sapphire drivers for ATI video MAY be identical to those supplied or formerly supplied on the ATI site, but you don't know that for sure unless you compare the same driver version files byte by byte. "I never tried installing drivers when the "Choose the location..." window for XP's hardware detection was open. I made it close down until it stopped popping up and then I installed my drivers." Good, but install drivers supplied by Sapphire. "...for all I know any motherboard or video card, clone or not, that I buy might ship with bios that weren't loaded properly loaded to begin with somehow by the manufacturer or were just buggy." Extremely unlikely. If that were the case there would probably be an update listed not long after the bios or firmware version was listed and there would be a mention of the problem you are having in release notes or similar. Because the Sapphire drivers may not be identical to ATI supplied drivers, loading tweaked Omega drivers may or may not help, and they are not likely to if no mention is made of the video processor overheating problem you're having is mentioned in release notes or similar. In any case, if the problem only happens for this one game, you just may not be able to use that game if you cannot find any specific info about how to cure your problem. If you're not sure whether the main mboard ATI chipset drivers have been loaded, load them - that can't do any harm.

thanks for trying to help me: after toying around some more with my computer and Googling it appears that my motherboard drivers are bundled with the display drivers. This must be because of the AMD's acquisition of ATI. My K9a platinum motherboard has the AMD 580X chipset, which used to be branded as "Xpress 3200". This time around, I uninstalled all drivers for EVERYTHING relating to my video card and motherboard. I removed everything one at a time, and rebooted every time it prompted me to. Then I cleaned everything up using Driver Cleaner first, then cleaned my registry entries with CCleaner for good measure. After all that, I went to MSI's website and downloaded the most recent chipset drivers I could find for my motherboard. There appears to be no way to install just the chipset drivers without the display drivers being installed as well. I am afraid to uninstall these and try to install the ones off of Sapphire, because I'm confused as to whether this will uninstall the chipset drivers as well. I cannot find the chipset drivers listed in Add/Remove. When I had an nforce motherboard, every piece of software had its own entry, especially for the Nforce chipset.

"My K9a platinum motherboard has the AMD 580X chipset, which used to be branded as "Xpress 3200"." I took a look on the AMD/ATI site and I found it says here at the bottom of the page: "*AMD 580X CrossFire Chipset (formerly known as CrossFire Xpress 3200)" http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors... So ATI Crossfire Express 3200 and AMD 580X chipset drivers are for the same chipset. "I went to MSI's website and downloaded the most recent chipset drivers I could find for my motherboard." I took a look here http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?... and found the MSI main chipset drivers are quite recent so they should be fine. Or you could get the latest available drivers at the AMD/ATI web site here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html Depending on which category you choose, Integrated/Motherboard, they are listed as either AMD 580X drivers, or in some categories such as 32 bit or the second 64 bit - Integrated/Motherboard - Crossfire Xpress 3200. Any should work fine. However if the MSI driver package is an integrated one that installs everything in the proper order automatically, it may be less trouble than installing the AMD/ATI web site drivers/apps, which sometimes are not listed in the order they should actually be installed (see the installation directions on the same page on the AMD/ATI site where you download the drivers). "...it appears that my motherboard drivers are bundled with the display drivers. " "There appears to be no way to install just the chipset drivers without the display drivers being installed as well." That has NOT been the case for any ATI main chipset drivers I've installed, or any other main chipset drivers I've installed for that matter - the specific video drivers are separate, even if the mboard has an onboard ATI video chipset. Main chipset drivers include support for video and the PCI-E slot support of video, but I haven't seen any that include specific video drivers. If you find that installing the driver package DOES install drivers for the X1900XT chipset, which I very much doubt, Un-install the video drivers it installed in Add/Remove and install the Sapphire ones, or choose Custom install rather than Express install, de-select installing the specific video drivers, and install the Sapphire drivers. "I am afraid to uninstall these and try to install the ones off of Sapphire, because I'm confused as to whether this will uninstall the chipset drivers as well. I cannot find the chipset drivers listed in Add/Remove." Installing the Sapphire drivers or any specific ATI video chipset drivers will have no affect on the installation of the main chipset drivers. There is often no entry in Add/Remove for the main chipset drivers, especially if they were installed automatically by Windows, and unlike most other driver installs, I've never found instructions to remove previous chipset drivers when installing new or different ones - the changed main chipset drivers automatically replace the previous ones.

Looked around on Bethsoft, looks like Crossfire isn't supported yet. Oh well, my friend has it on Xbox anyways so I can play that in the meantime. I did go ahead and installed the software from Sapphire and also tried plugging my monitor into the other DVI port to see if maybe that was part of the problem some how. So far, no problems. I popped in Tron 2.0, patched to latest, and was playing fine. Couldn't even hear the card compared to when running Oblivion, so everything is running ok. But about the bundled drivers, trust me they were. When I installed the driver, from Sapphire, there was a tickable option for south bridge software. I just went ahead and let them install again. But you said you personally didn't have this happen? I'm confused. "There is often no entry in Add/Remove for the main chipset drivers, especially if they were installed automatically by Windows, and unlike most other driver installs, I've never found instructions to remove previous chipset drivers when installing new or different ones - the changed main chipset drivers automatically replace the previous ones." Ok, works for me, but I could've sworn my old nforce mainboard had an option to uninstall the nforce drivers. Maybe it was just for some of the extra utilities or something. Thanks for replying.