gfx card dying?

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

Associate
Joined
27 May 2004
Posts
693
Location
UK
My system has been running without any major problems since I built it. I was able to play HL2 EP2 very smoothly with everything maxed out (recommended in-game settings) & even Crysis ran very smoothly with medium settings, which was fine for me. But lately there have been problems. What usually happens if I'm playing these games now is that after a while the screen starts to 'break up' & show graphical anomolies. I would say that it looks like it's snowing multicoloured snow in the game! Just lately things have started to get worse with games simply freezing up with the sound looping. A hard reset is the only way out. Last night I tried HL2 EP2 again with some of the graphical settings turned down. Seemed a little more stable ..... until I switched on the flash light, at which point the game locked up again. Why is this happening now when everything ran sweet previously? Could the gfx card be on the way out or could something else be causing this? I'm not a huge gamer but I do like a good FPS (HL2 & Crysis are the only PC games I've bought in the last few years) so it's dissapointing I'm having these problems now when everything has been fine. I don't really want to buy a new gfx card to find I've still got problems. Any suggestions? Cheers, people.
 
Last edited:
Sounds like it could be the graphics card. I'd have a go at doing a fresh driver install (driversweep the current and install again).
Failling that, if you have the patience, time and resources, you could rule out a memory/oc issue by running a stress test. Then run furmark which will stress one core and your graphics card, if you have a spare or can borrow you could try another card as well.
 
Similar to my card which failed lately, The company placed it down to faulty GPU memory but you are going to start looking at replacing it, tends to be if its a driver issue it will BSOD if it causes everything to freeze up usually the card is faulty, btw, is it still under warranty?
 
Sweeney said:
Sounds like it could be the graphics card. I'd have a go at doing a fresh driver install (driversweep the current and install again).
Click to expand...
I did try removing the old driver & installing the latest one. Same thing in games but normal Windows operation seems fine at the moment.

inonefly said:
whats the gpu temp like under load?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately my card doesn't seem to support GPU temp monitoring. I've tried loads of different apps for this, after posting about it on here in the past, but unfortunately none of them would show the GPU temps. I concluded that my card just doesn't support this. Here's a link to the post I made last August after experience the odd game crash;
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17905254&highlight=username_Dogboy73

EDIT: Just reminded myself, after reading my previous posts on that thread, that this problem started not long after I'd bought my 20" widescreen monitor. Could the higher resolutions I'm running games at now be pushing the gfx card over the edge a bit?


grenned said:
Similar to my card which failed lately, The company placed it down to faulty GPU memory but you are going to start looking at replacing it, tends to be if its a driver issue it will BSOD if it causes everything to freeze up usually the card is faulty, btw, is it still under warranty?
Click to expand...
Not sure about the warranty. I bought the card from OCUK in October 2007. Not sure how long the warranty lasts.

I don't have much luck with gfx cards, which is why I never like spending to much on them. Not after my old £250 Radeon 9800 Pro melted after 6 months (the fan had packed up & the housing literally melted before the GPU fired! I couldn't RMA it because I bought it new from a seller on e-bay & I didn't have an original sales receipt so Hercules basically told me where to go :mad: Good to see the price of a 4850 has dropped a fair over the last few months (been keeping an eye on them since they were selling for around £150). Might be time to buy one of those.
 
Last edited:
Check your OCuK invoices and drop the guys there a webnote if it was under 3 years you could be ok :)

Good luck
 
OCUK emailed saying it was out of it's (lousy) 1 year warranty. And there's the main reason I'd never spend more than £150 on a gfx card. Actually I try to keep below £100 these days. You could have it a year, it could go belly up & then your stuck! The X1950 Pro was a bargain at the £65.99 I paid for it. There doesn't seem to be a budget equivelent around these days.
 
Im ATi all the way im afraid, maybe some people on here more experienced then me can advise ;)

If you could say up and go for the 4850 itll do better in the future
 
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1523/print/index.html

Looking at this benchamrk test, which shows an overclocked 9800 up against a standard 9800 & a 4850, there's not a lot in it. In some tests the 4850 came out on top in others the 9800's. But in all cases there wasn't much in it. In general people seem to say go for the Radeon 4850 over the NVIDIA 9800. But with the price difference is the 9800GT the current budget card of choice? The Zotac card with the 5 year warranty at £86 is looking a very tempting replacement for my ailing X1950. The X1950 is my second ATi/Radeon card, both have gone wrong. Not had a problem with the 2 or 3 NVIDIA cards I have had so that tends to edge me towards the 9800 also.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom