Probably a broken graphics card?

[FruitLoop]

Hi! Wasn't sure whether to post here, or in graphics and displays.. but I need help, so this seemed best suited.

I'm running:
- Windows Vista 32bit
- Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
- Point of View GeForce 8800GTX
- Intel Q6600

Everything is running at stock settings, no overclocking has been attempted.

After I built my system, about once a month I'd crash out of a game with Windows saying that my display driver has stopped responding, but has recovered (lies!!). A quick reboot, and I can carry on. Since it happened so infrequently, and a since a reboot fixed it, I didn't worry about it. Apparently it's a fairly common problem on Vista..

Now, here's the problem. I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead recently, and I've started crashing with sound looping when playing long sessions. Ctrl + Alt + Del allowed me to end the program, and then reboot. I started crashing a bit more often, and was told that recent NVIDIA drivers have problems with Left 4 Dead. So I downgraded to the last known stable drivers (178.24). This didn't help at all, and I soon started crashing more frequently. I also noticed that I started to get artifacting, so I quit immediately, and ran some temperature checks. My card was at about 62 degrees, which is fine for this GPU I think.. CPU temps at 46 degrees (again fine).

I tried a reboot, this didn't help. I was still crashing very soon after starting the game, and noticed a bit more gentle artifacting. I attempted a system restore to 1 week previously. It completed. I rebooted. Ever since.. severe display corruption!!

I've tried uninstalling the drivers completely, but this doesn't help.



The display corruption happens as soon as I turn the system on. My POST screen has a custom Gigabyte image, and this is corrupted. The only time the display is not corrupt, is when viewing the BIOS (text only), and the screen with IRQ listings.

Here's a few piccies of the corruption I'm getting (sorry for avoiding the 5 post restriction ):
2tl.net/c/c1.jpg
2tl.net/c/c2.jpg
2tl.net/c/c3.jpg

My first thought was that this must be a hardware issue with my GPU, since this happens even on the POST screen when first turned on (no display drivers loaded).
However, I don't know if other things could cause this? A busted CPU? Something wrong on the motherboard? PSU broken and now unable to power the card? Busted RAM?

Is this definitely a busted GFX card? Or is it possibly something else? I'll hopefully have an old PCI-E card to test soon, but it is slow, and does not require any additional power.. so that wouldn't totally rule out the PSU.

If you need any more info, please let me know.
Any help is greatly appreciated!!

[GoNz0]

deffo shagged VGA memory m8, time to RMA it

[FruitLoop]

Thanks for the reply. As long as it's definitely just the graphics card, then that's good I guess.
As for the RMA, my card is 1.5 years old. I'm in the process of checking the warranty period on it. Hopefully they'll take it back!

I'd certainly hope for more than 1.5 years out of £340!!

[GoNz0]

2-3 years on the 8800GTX, you wont get all the money back and theres a chance its no longer a RMA item, so upgrade or partial refund m8

i got just over £100 for mine that died at the same age

[FruitLoop]

Thanks very much for the info! I'll post back with the outcome after the store gets back to me (probably Monday).

[Koolpc]

Can this be the same solution to what is happening to a mates PC? He has onBoard graphics though. Every now and again, he starts his PC but the Monitor comes on briefly and then goes off!! It can be a week before it happens again!!

[FruitLoop]

I'd say that your friend is suffering from a different problem. His monitor is 'switching off', and there is failure to get a video output. I'd say this is different to badly corrupted output.

[Koolpc]

I'd say that your friend is suffering from a different problem. His monitor is 'switching off', and there is failure to get a video output. I'd say this is different to badly corrupted output.

Any ideas as to what it could be? TFT works fine when tested on my PC.