Question about vid card

Alright, I'm not so sure as I'm not as hardware adapt as I am software. Well everytime I play a graphics demanding game such as guild wars or Counter Strike Source I can play for about 30 minutes then my screen just goes black and I only hear the music. If I were to touch my video card for longer than 3 seconds I'd burn myself. I don't think it would take a genius to figure this out but its overheating right? Its just a generic 128 MB thing I'm not even sure what make it is. But should I invest in a better graphics card? I've got a pci-e slot and I can spend whatever on it. My question is why is it overheatiing? I'd think for sure 128 MB would be good enough for CSS and Guild Wars with my 1 GB of ram.

It's not as much as the capability of the hardware, but the cooling. What do you use to cool it? Fans? Water?

If it's fans, how many, how big?

Yes its defintly overheating. Are you overclocking? Also, what video card are you using?

not OCing

and I think its some generic thing.

Well lets see for sure if it is overheating. Take the side of the case off and get a large household fan and place it by the side of your rig. Put it on the highest setting directly facing the GPU as much as possible. If you can play the game for even 10 mins longer its deffo that the rig is overheating. I done this numerous times on friends and family PC's.

Also try downloading Everest Ultimate edition not professonal. This will tell you the temps of:

HDD x2
GPU
CPU
CASE AMBIENT

Its a great piece of software and its free, just register. The usual! :o

Try some different fan cooling methods. Get a 120mm fan and blow it directly onto the video card.

By the way, does your card have active or passive cooling?

Whats the difference?

Its got a fan like embed onto it. I just went out and bought a pack of six fans put one in there and it seems to be doing better. Didn't think one fan would make such a difference.

The fan embedded on it cools the GPU. But, if you have passive cooling (i.e. just a heatsink, no embedded fan), then you want to have a fan blowing on it to dissipate the heat from the heatsink.

It is still a good idea to have a fan blowing on the card, even if you have an embedded fan. It helps with air flow. But, the position of this extra fan depends on your case. Could you link us to your case or at least take some pictures of it and post it online?

also check the heat sink is not blocked up with dust, they soon block up if the comp is on the floor, i clean mine out every couple of weeks.

Dust is a hugh killer of components in PCs. BTW the fan idea I suggested was for the short term to see if indeed you had a problem with Temps. I did not mean leave it ther e all year round. If you get longer playing then before you know you have a problem, re-adjust you case for airflow and buy a NV5 or the like for the GPU.

Also try to keep the Case of the ground if you can it helps with the dust etc big time.