Dead Video Card?

Alistair · Jul 25, 2003, 10:34 PM

Ok so my computer has been locking up in games randomly for the past 2 months now and I thought little of it besides possible driver issues. Just the other day while installing my new CD-RW drive I thought to check the fan on my video card when powering up to see if the drive was working... much to my surprise the fan on the card was dead... so I moved the system to my desktop and ordered a new fan. Well while ordering my new fan the default fan powered back on but I ordered anyways just to be safe. Anyways now I have a new copper heatsink installed but it gets incredibly warm (I know the new fan can handle the chip).

I still get the crashes. Most of the crashes involve my monitor going into its standby state in the middle of a game or my entire system lockiing up. Most notably these games are Morrowind and Star Wars Galaxies. I have tried various sound settings, but none appear to help my situation at all. In anyone's experience is this a sign that my video card has died?

Tests run: SiSoft Sandra Burn-in wizard for both cpu tests and the memory tests, after 10 runs which was longer than the games allow me to play, the system was still running without an issue and my temperatures appeared to be staying the same.

Drivers tested...
CATALYST 3.5
OMEGA 3.5
CATALYST 3.6
OMEGA 3.6

Necrosis · Jul 25, 2003, 10:39 PM

Hmm...since it still works I would will for the time being the card is fine.

What do your rails look like?

~~craig588~~ · Jul 25, 2003, 10:44 PM

I had my monitor going into standby randomly when I had curropt drivers installed for it. You should try to reinstall the drivers for your monitor.

Alistair · Jul 25, 2003, 10:45 PM

how can you tell the card is fine? Its only 3D things that keep crashing on me.... guess I'll run a few loops of 3DMark and see what happens there... possibly its sound related I suppose.

Necrosis · Jul 25, 2003, 11:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Alistair
how can you tell the card is fine? Its only 3D things that keep crashing on me.... guess I'll run a few loops of 3DMark and see what happens there... possibly its sound related I suppose.

Normally when a card goes it's very easy to tell. Look for weird anomalies during 3D, but most of the time when a card is ascending to the hardware heaven you can tell it 2D as well. I can't believe after all those driver installs each one would be corrupted. Tell me did you start having this problem when you purchased your motherboard?

Alistair · Jul 25, 2003, 11:46 PM

no it was happening before I replaced the motherboard

Alistair · Jul 26, 2003, 01:16 AM

well I turned down hardware acceleration a notch and it let me play for about an hour and 15 minutes without crashing...

Shadow Lady · Jul 26, 2003, 02:59 AM

hmmm... going to standby...

try setting AGP to a lower rate, also be sure u disabled FW

Mystic · Jul 26, 2003, 07:46 AM

I owned a ECS K7S5A, ECS is known to have power supply issues. So you need a really good PSU, I recommend a Emermax or Antec Truepower.

Alistair · Jul 29, 2003, 02:02 AM

ok my problem continues though I've gotten it to the point that I can play around an hour and a half before it sends my monitor into standby. All windows error reports say its the video card thats causing the problem. I noticed on bootup in the last screen that lists all my devices it says "bridged display" now I'm unsure what that is supposed to mean, could this possibly be what is causing the problems?

Alistair · Jul 29, 2003, 11:32 PM

well it seems I was right in my gues... it was the video card.... went to Best Buy and got a Radeon 9800 (nonpro) and played Galaxies for well over 3 hours without any issues.

Stormy · Jul 30, 2003, 01:01 PM

Well, good thing itwas sorted out... and good tnhing I have my trusty Y2K Brand Video Card