As an amateur Apple enthusiast, I decided to attempt a video card upgrade about a year ago with the release of the ATI Radeon 5870. I was successful and delighted to find just how simple of an installation this was. I understood the "risks" of using an unsupported product in my machine and have had no issues until yesterday when my monitor blacked out on me. When this happened, I was gaming using a mildly graphics intensive game, listening to itunes, and chatting using Ventrilo.
As background to this, I want to note that I regularly use canned air to dust out the internals of my machine but have never removed the card to run air through it directly (would/could dust build up greatly inside and be causing this?). Again, I know enough about computers to get myself into trouble thinking I know more than I actually do.
When my monitor didn't "wake back up" after going into stand-by mode, I attempted putting my computer in sleep mode to see if that would re-establish the connection. Once in sleep mode, I had no success, though my itunes music played on. I was forced to manually power down my machine and restart. Once rebooted, my monitor sprang back to life. Again, I want to note that there could be a very simple solution to this and that it may not even be my graphics card to blame; this is just my assumption thus far.
I popped the side panel off my machine and did notice that my video card was fairly warm, much warmer than right now as I type this. Since yesterday, this problem has occurred several times, all while gaming. Strangely, I was able to play for a stint of 2hrs without an issue and another 2hrs late last night. This morning, within 15mins, it happened again.
So far, I have installed a manual fan control (Smcfancontrol) and boosted all fan speeds to about 1500rpm's to assist in the cooling (IF that is indeed the issue), but it doesn't seem to be helping.
About my Mac: OSX 10.6.8
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
8GB 800 MHz DDR2
ATI Radeon 5870 HD using MDP to HDMI on a Samsung LED monitor
Questions I have:
-Is there a way for me to monitor the temperature of my graphics card because I can't seem to find a program to assist me?
-Is there a program that I can use to manually control the fan speed on my graphics card (cannot seem to find a mac-friendly version of the ATI CCC)?
-I understand that the graphics card isn't supported on my machine, BUT if I installed Windows 7 (blah...), would I be able to find drivers (which I currently cannot locate using OSX) and use the CCC to assist me in my struggle?
If you took the time to read this post, thank you very much. I hope that I can find a permanent solution to this before something permanently goes wrong. It would be a shame.
As background to this, I want to note that I regularly use canned air to dust out the internals of my machine but have never removed the card to run air through it directly (would/could dust build up greatly inside and be causing this?). Again, I know enough about computers to get myself into trouble thinking I know more than I actually do.
When my monitor didn't "wake back up" after going into stand-by mode, I attempted putting my computer in sleep mode to see if that would re-establish the connection. Once in sleep mode, I had no success, though my itunes music played on. I was forced to manually power down my machine and restart. Once rebooted, my monitor sprang back to life. Again, I want to note that there could be a very simple solution to this and that it may not even be my graphics card to blame; this is just my assumption thus far.
I popped the side panel off my machine and did notice that my video card was fairly warm, much warmer than right now as I type this. Since yesterday, this problem has occurred several times, all while gaming. Strangely, I was able to play for a stint of 2hrs without an issue and another 2hrs late last night. This morning, within 15mins, it happened again.
So far, I have installed a manual fan control (Smcfancontrol) and boosted all fan speeds to about 1500rpm's to assist in the cooling (IF that is indeed the issue), but it doesn't seem to be helping.
About my Mac: OSX 10.6.8
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
8GB 800 MHz DDR2
ATI Radeon 5870 HD using MDP to HDMI on a Samsung LED monitor
Questions I have:
-Is there a way for me to monitor the temperature of my graphics card because I can't seem to find a program to assist me?
-Is there a program that I can use to manually control the fan speed on my graphics card (cannot seem to find a mac-friendly version of the ATI CCC)?
-I understand that the graphics card isn't supported on my machine, BUT if I installed Windows 7 (blah...), would I be able to find drivers (which I currently cannot locate using OSX) and use the CCC to assist me in my struggle?
If you took the time to read this post, thank you very much. I hope that I can find a permanent solution to this before something permanently goes wrong. It would be a shame.
