Graphics Card Woes!

[Strangorth]

Installed a new EVGA GTX 470 SC in my machine on monday, up until yesterday the card ran swimmingly making games such as Just Cause 2, Assassins Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction look lovely with maximum settings. Yesterday i turn on my rig after work for a gaming session only to be greeted with some strange problems. Ultimatley with the card in the system it just won't boot properly. Sometimes it will reach the windows 7 welcome screen and just freeze on that and other times it will just hang on the BIOS screen whilst the POST is happening.

The peculiar thing is i tried my card in my other rig ran a stress test, a couple of games and it works perfectly fine, so i guess that would rule out the GPU being knackered. You'd probably think a power problem but my main rig has an 850w PSU with 66A on the rails and the older one i tested it in has an inferior 700w PSU.

Any advice or help would be much appreciated on the matter as i'm currently running my new rig with my old 8800GTX which runs the system stable as you like but isn't a touch on the 470.

I know this is my first post and i'm asking for help but as i bought the hardware from OcUK i thought some more knowledgeable and friendly forumers might be able to help me!

Specs:
Case: Antec 902
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD7
CPU: Intel i7 930 OC'd to 4.2ghz
CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahelms Rev.B & Arctic MX3 thermal compound
RAM: 6gb Patriot Viper DDR3 1600 mhz
GPU: EVGA Nvidia GTX470 SC
PSU: CoolerMaster silent pro M - 850w
HDD: 2x 500gb Samsung spinpoint F3 in raid 0
DVD: Sony Optiarc drive

 

[millsy888]

Maybe a driver issue, try a reinstall and see if that helps.

 

[UKDTweak]

If the problem is happening even during POST, this would rule out drivers in windows, therefore either the card was not seated properly in the PCI slot, you have a dodgy PCI slot (but your 8800GTX is fine so not likley) or the PSU is giving up the ghost.

Can you try putting the 470 back in and make sure it is firmly seated, failing that, swap PSU's around and test....

 

[Strangorth]

OK so i took the 470 out, then put it back in and made sure it's firmly in along with the 6-pin power cables. Now i can boot into windows as normal but after 30 secs or so the monitor freezes, i say monitor as the image on the screen sticks but i can still use the PC as normal, i know this from launching things via keyboard shortcuts and audio cues plus the fact i can alt+f4>enter and the PC shuts down. Looks like i've made some progress but not sure where to go from here!

 

[demonfatality]

it does sound like it may be the psu how old is it...tho im guessing its pretty new..as above id try reseating the card...id also power down all no essentials you have like led fans and lighting just to see if it makes any diffrence

 

[Strangorth]

OK so i tried powering down all the fans on the case but i get a similar error except this time absolutley nothing is rendered on the monitor but the system still boots! Can tell via the windows 7 startup sound.

EDIT: Nevermind it would appear that the metal strip on the back used to fix it into the rig was preventing the card from being completley pushed into the PCI-E slot. After bending it back slightly with some pliers and re fitting the card everything runs just fine. Ran the EVGA OC scanner just incase and i get no artifacts or hardware problems whatsoever. It would appear that this is a schoolboy error on my part or the fact the 470 requires a bit of encouragement to be properly seated in an Antec 902, in any case i'm incredibly relieved that i wont have to RMA the PSU or the GPU! Thanks for all of your help anyway chaps, much appreciated

 

[mrix]

re:

Changed post.
Cheers
mrix