Hi, after this message I will include my original post of this topic under gaming as a problem with diablo II.  Basically, whenever I game my video card (Radeon 9600 128mb,) slows way down to like 6-7 frames per second.  Now I took of my keyboard and the fan on the video card seems broken.  The video on Aliens vs Predator 2: Primal Hunt seemed fine for a while till the card started to heat up (the heatsink that is, and the framerate dropped for about 3 fps.  Fan did not activate.  I'm guessing I have a fan problem and not a dead card.  Am I correct in thinking the BIOS would shut off the graphics or entire computer before heat damage to components was incurred?  Where can I get a new fan for this card or do I need to replace the entire card?  If so can I strip the fan of one of the cheap-o cards for the 8600 and stick it on my prescious, I mean radeon.  Thanks, here is the original post detailing the sequence of events:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi,
I have been having problems with my Inspiron 8600 lately, especially with a rather old game, Diablo II, but I'll get into the whole sequence of events in a second:
Dell Inspiron 8600
Intel Pentium M 1.6 ghz
512mb Ram (2)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (128mb)
WXGA
40gb Hard Drive

Okay, the whole problem with my computer started when I loaded up Diablo II, and the entire game, menues to actual game play ran at about 5-7 frames per second I would say. Well, I wrote it off as an effect of my 1.5 year old windows install and the games numerous crashes (again due to old windows I believe). The next day I fired up old Diablo II again and it did the same thing. Then I tried Aliens vs. Predator 2 (Half-Life based graphics I believe) and it ran allright. The next day I tried Diablo II again, but this time Aliens versus predator ran at the same terrible frame rate menues to game play. The whole computer seemed slow. graphically. All this took place during a heat wave where I would say the temperature reached about 100 degrees F from time to time, hovering about 90 or so. So I just transfered my files off, formatted the harddrive, re-installed winxp, stuck in Direct X, video, audio drivers, firefox, trillian and the works, then put in Diablo II. Everything seemed allright, loaded up the game, logged onto my battlenet account, and started scrolling through the list of games. I saw the pointer sudenly start to move in jerks. I suspected the game was all whacked out again, but I joined a game anyway, and sure enough the frame rate was terrible. I exited, uninstalled Diablo II, deleted all the files, rebooted, and installed AvP2. Now being a first person shooter using models instead of the sprites of Diablo II, I expected it to be a lag bomb, but it Ran like a top, as I would expect such an overqualified computer to do.

Well, I really don't have clue why just Diablo II, or how this problem could, "spread" from game to game. AvP and D2, on the fresh install of windows, were run at normal termperatures. It occured to me that maybe something got fried in the heatwave or something wasn't cooling, but if the Diablo II menues made it lag, I really don't think a broken video card fan would do that. The computer has had no shutdowns that would be symptomatic of overheating components...

Any idea what is going on with my whack job of a computer? (BTW all drivers are downloaded from Dell yesterday) I haven't done a BIOS Update or a Video BIOS Update, but it seemed sort of pointless as diablo II had been running without a laggy frame for months. Also the computer has run Half-Life 2 based games, so no doubt about capability.

On second look avp may not be running quite as well as i thought but it's deffinately around 24 fps or so most of the time? Fried video card? Dead fan?