Has my GPU died?!

[ph3onix]

Hi guys,

I've had my comp for almost 2 years now, unmodified, and not overclocked. All of a sudden yesterday I began getting some serious graphics glitches whilst in game (its an GeForce 8600GTS). I reinstalled the latest nVidia drivers, but this had no effect. Every time I loaded the game, the graphics appeared to fail. Strangely, when I ran FurMark in stability mode the GPU reached 75 degC, but did not glitch until I exitted and returned to the desktop.

However, now the computer fails to boot in normal mode. It gets to the Vista loading bars (whilst showing large red and green blotches on screen), but before it reaches the login page, Vista automatically reboots itself.

I managed to take a few photos before it completely failed:

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/6908/photo0040jw7.jpg

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7114/photo0038wx8.jpg

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/882/photo0039pg5.jpg

Any help is much appreciated, as I need my PC back up and running ASAP as I need to finish my dissertation within the coming weeks.

 

[Monkeynut]

RMA time

 

[thepeganator]

r
m
a

 

[ph3onix]

What is RMA? You mean return to manufacturer? I only had a 1 year warranty...

 

[Rroff]

Looks like its fallen foul of the design flaw that was hyped up awhile ago - one of my 8500GT is starting to do that (used in a media PC now).

 

[ph3onix]

Ahh nightmare, so its definately a graphics card failure? What should I do, just go ahead and buy a new graphics card, or contact Dell technical support? I need my PC up and running asap.

 

[thepeganator]

Contact Dell first.

 

[ph3onix]

Ok thanks guys, I'll give Dell a holler tomorrow, see what they say. :'( nightmare. Could be a good excuse for a decent upgrade though.

 

[ph3onix]

Ok, I called Dell. Because my warranty has expired, they charge £25 non refundable for technical advice. So I hung up.

Is this definately only a graphics card problem? I can boot up in Safe Mode, and all files are still intact, everything appears fine except the graphics.