Left 4 Dead broke my graphics card

Hey,

I bought my graphics card - a BFG 8800gts oc2 from scan.co.uk on 16/07/2007 so quite a while ago now, anyway the new left4dead update made it crash and now I can't run any games without it crashing. The weird thing is, lots of other people (and I mean lots - 11 page thread on steam forums since 21st april)
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...d.php?t=846415
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...&postcount=167
are having the same issue. Some like me have, after the initial crash, experienced problems in other applications and one reformatted his PC only to have the problem persist. Others have been luckier, with the problem confined to just left4dead it seems.

What is my recourse at this stage? I didn't break the card by doing anything excessive to it at all - in fact in order to ensure stability I have installed additional case fans around my GPU. This is also borne out by the fact others are experience the same issue with the same series of card (8800) thanks to the same circumstances - left4dead's new patch. So I don't see why I should be liable and have to buy a new card which if the card had failed in a random situation i.e. wear and tear I would do.

BFG seems to have a lifetime warranty of sorts, do you guys know more about this? Would I need to return the card to them? Or could I return the card to you? I haven't tested it in another PC which would probably be the prudent thing to do, but I'm returning to university tomorrow so time isn't on my side really (and then have exams / revision / coursework for 8 weeks :().

In all my time with PCs though, I've never heard of a patch breaking a graphics card, but due to the fact I am by no means isolated then maybe it has. I am speculating that perhaps me and the other few who have had their cards break may have had 'weaker' cards, and when whatever this bug was inflicted itself upon them they simply broke, whereas others just recovered.

What should I do, scan? The graphics card I had before this broke as well due to no fault of my own, the x1950 pro with the melting VRM problem :( I don't seem to have much luck.

is the card just goosed now then? just i can't see how the patch would do that?

what drivers are you using? i only ask this as i had this sort of issue when i first got l4d (as soon as the game started in mp it would lag and crash, a hunt on the l4d forums gave me an answer. and that was that the latest (at the time) 180.xxx drivers were a complete pile of crap as they had a glitch in them and to use 178.24 drivers instead.

since i changed back to the 178.24 driver i haven't had a problem, and my card is a bfg 8800gts/320, but saying that i have't installed the update yet.

Yea, check out the forum link, as time goes by there are just more and more people saying the same thing.. it started in l4d with a crash but then their other games are crashing now. One or two can't even boot into windows. Was just 3 earlier. Then up to 5. Now about 7 people with games other than left4dead not working either.

I can't see how the patch would do it either, I'm just going on observation. At first I thought 'ooh dear' then when it repeated I thought it was MY graphics card going, bit peeved off - then I went onto the steam forums and was shocked to find there are about 40 people in total who have left 4 dead crashing since the new patch and 6 or 7 now who are reporting it's effecting other games too. All with 8800 series cards. All (I think) running windows vista.

UPDATE: I rolled back to 178.24, absolutely the same, in left4dead and other 3d intensive games. Although I can play Warcraft III Frozen Throne without too much hassle.

It starts off as green 'speckles' and then gradually gets worse, then the sound gets caught in a loop and the computer becomes generally unresponspive. However if I ctrl alt delete and get to desktop I can save it, if not it will just get worse until it blue screens.

Green speckles? sounds like your card has overheated while playing left for dead and is toast. Have you checked your temps? this can be done with HWmonitor. http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Even with the additional ventilation and absolutely no prior issues I can't rule it out. I'm going to fire up left 4 dead now and see what temps I get.

Ok, as soon as I got green speckles I alt tabbed and hit print screen.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8864/gpu.th.png

Please see on the RHS of the screen.

GPU: 62
GPU Diode: 69
GPU Ambient: 56
+12V: 12.06V

These are approximately the same as when things are idle, so the graphics card doesn't even have time to warm up.

Also got a "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." in event viewer.

I should throw in this pic which has been doing the rounds, its what things look like when it first goes wrong pretty much (although mine is now the green speckles).

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...&postcount=204

If its giving artifacts like that the card is defo buggered. Quite possible the new maps have pushed your card to the limits and its overheated as 62c at idle seems quite high to me add another 20-30c for gaming and your into high 80-90s. Id try it in another PC if i had one handy just to confirm.

if you've not done already, please log this with the returns department using the following link ;

http://web6.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Suppor...px?QueryType=R

Best Regards,

Haven't done so yet Lee, I'm reaaaaally broke atm lol and can't afford the £20 fee in case it's not broken hardware which may be the case, so I'm trying to exhaust every option to try and fix it. Although BFG have also said if I can't fix it with their steps (cleaning the drivers and installing a vista hotfix) that I should return it for repair or replacement so I don't know whether it would be worth going through them instead (as I understand it, if I return the card to you that's the steps you have to take anyway isn't it? So maybe I could save you some bother...?).

ATM tho with exams round the corner it's just trying to find the time to get everything done. It's no longer booting into Windows - just the same as the other people are experiencing - but I can still boot into Ubuntu fine. I noticed when watching HD tv in ubuntu I was getting a few green speckles but nothing significant so don't know what to make of that. It might be that it's just software. My next step when I get the time is to install XP on a spare partition I have and see if it works in XP. If it does, it's software / vista - if not it's probably hardware.

bfg picked up my card, may be worth asking them.

test in a mates pc if possible to confirm it.

Get yourself a ATI card, you never have problems in L4D ever again, used to get it all the time with my old nVidia card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IronWarrior

Get yourself a ATI card, you never have problems in L4D ever again, used to get it all the time with my old nVidia card.

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Thanks. I've heard lots of good things about the 4870. Problem is the price hasn't really fallen very recently so I might wait until July. Currently borrowing a friend's 7900, but as soon as I get this RMAd by BFG (hopefully won't take long but we'll see) I should get a replacement that I can use until then.

Problem is, I had an ATI card before - the x1950 pro - and that had a design flaw that meant the cards broke themselves after a while. Not all cards by any means, but some. Anyway, I went to sapphire who said they weren't honouring the RMA because they blamed it on people not having powerful enough PSUs - it was a bit ridiculous because the problem was widely documented and they even changed the design of their card in later revisions (google "x1950 pro VRM overheating"). I tried to fix it myself by fitting a ramsink but no joy, basically got a dead card.

So I guess I am not so lucky with graphics cards. Just want a nice one that plays my game nice and doesn't explode spontaneously :P or failing that a really nice comprehensive warranty.

I guess all cards are the same and they all have problems themselfs, but I used to have a 7600 GS AGP, it could play most games very well, but in L4D every so often I kept getting black screens, green flashs, colour corruption and tons of other crap, every other game was fine.

I broke one day and brought a HIS 4670 IceQ Turbol, it's medium range card but for the price it was well worth it, I have now two of them in CFX and am really happy with it, am using CCC 9.4 and no problems so far.

Scan has it, but it's been forever ETA. :P