Video Card Issues

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I have recently been experiencing lag spikes in all of my directx applications. The lag happens every 1-2 minutes for 30 seconds, and drops to about 5-10FPS. The problem has been ongoing since before I upgraded my computer from Vista to 7. I have no problems with OpenGl applications or anything else. Today I removed my dedicated video card and used my Onboard video, which surprisingly solved the lag problem. I still need a good video card for most of my games. Do any of you guys know of any way that I can salvage my video card? (It's an ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB, 1 Year old)
Edit: My GoldSrc (HL1 Engine) games won't work on the Onboard card.

Strange, I went from vista to 7 on my gateway I7 system without a hitch (that computer totally sucked with vista).

I also have the exact same card, except it's 1 GB. Are you sure the 'upgrade' went okay? Are you experiencing any other problems?

It was my experience that in order to SUCCESSFULLY change from vista to 7 I needed to do a clean install....

PS

When I tried to simply upgrade, I had tons and tons of weird problems.

There are possibly some BIOS settings you need to adjust, but I am far from being an expert there. In my own machine, I had to set my BIOS to "PCI" as the initial display and then "assign IRQ to VGA", and then there are some aperature and "shadow" issues/settings that can have effects with different operating systems.

What I meant to say is the problem was happening BEFORE the upgrade, and I did do a clean install. This is the only problem.
-thanks

Did you update the drivers?

I see. I should have read more carefully. The fact that the problem has persisted after the upgrade is not good. Sounds like a hardware problem, or as suggested before, something in the BIOS...

Can you test the card in another box?

Might be worth installing the 10.6 drivers. Some newer ones seem to have problems

Just some thoughts:
Did you overclock your 4850?
What is your PSU?
How good is the ventilation of your case?
When the slow down happens, does the harddisk LED often light up too?

Try reinstalling directx, dunno if it's going to fix it but worth a try

Yeah, if this is an aftermarket card a mismatched PSU could be the issue.

The problem started showing up on the onboard card too, it took an hour in Left 4 Dead to start having the same problem. I was able to fix the problem by disabling cpu thermal throttling. Does anyone know why this would only affect DirectX, and not affect anything for most of a year?

I now have an excess heat problem, due to disabling thermal throttling (100+ Degrees Celsius in game), as well as a lack of necessary funds for a better CPU cooler. The computer is home built, so there's no turning to the manufacturer for help here.

My ventilation is an 80mm case fan that came with my case, but I'm currently running an open case. None of my hardware is currently overclocked.

Are there any temporary solutions to the heat(Not involving liquid nitrogen)? I need ~a week to get money for a new CPU Cooler.

100 degrees?! Is the fan broken/not enough power or set at a fixed rate?

It is spinning, and it should be getting enough power. It may be broken/damaged, and that would likely be the source of my problem.

The stock CPU cooler should be able to keep your CPU from throttling when using the on board video. In this case, the first thing I'll check is whether the heat sink is installed properly.

Yeah, the heat sink needs to be clean and all contact areas need to be coated with thermal paste and making good contact as well.

You could add one or two of these (divide the price by 7.3 and you get the price in US $)
http://www.webhallen.com/hardvara/87205 ... _pci-plats

Place one near the GPU and the other near the CPU. They expel air quite fast and make sure that the system is cool. You could also add a few heatinks to GPU, Harddrives, memory, or cooling fans (I dunno which does the better job). Also, did you use a silver or equivalent high heat-conductive cooling paste on the CPU before strapping the CPU-fan onto it? If not, a thing to remember to your next build..

A good box is also nice to have, i replace a bigtower model with sucky ventilation to a midi tower with lots of ventilation (and cool blue light):

http://www.webhallen.com/hardvara/94833 ... 702b-svart

The fan on the side is as big as a normal table-fan you use in the summer(!) THAT's good cooling It makes a bit of noise, but i can live with having a somewhat noisy system that WORKS instead of a nearly silent box that CRASHES