Is my 6800 borked?? ARGH!

[MoLt3h]

well probably remember my post about my new 6800 a while ago, and installing the 77.77 drivers made it run CS:S and WoW okish...still had slight problems with stretched textures but liveable...

However since then I have reformated my PC...and I can't get the graphics to work proplerly! WoW works fineish...slows down and still a bit of stretching but no different...However Sim City 4 constantly black screens and needs me to alt+tab to desktop and back in again every 2 mins to be able to play on. Most annoyingly is that Oblivion refuses to work properly. I enter the game and any time within 1min to 7mins the graphics **** up...see pic below...

Picture soon : I'm just loading oblivion to get one...print screen apparently didnt work then...

Edit: No apparently taking screenshots just doesn't want to happen, even with hyper snap...Ok i'll try to describe...basically its like you grab the corners of a textures and pull it across, so they all become nice and smooshed together very poorly knitted patchwork style (God knows what this is called, I always called it tearing but it isnt that).

Edit: DONE! finnaly...





Oblivion settings are all minimal. No HDR lighting, no Bloom effects, no long distance, 1024x768 resolution....pathetic in otherwords.

Now I have tried everything under the sun it seems...

I have installed 3 different versions of drivers - 77.77 , 84.21 (they were latest on PC Gamer dvd) and 66.81 (6800 sticky said these were the best)...get the same problem with all of them, although a nice performance boost with the 84.21 while it works. (EDIT: I've run driver cleaner in safe mode after each uninstall aswell)

I have installed latest sound drivers, mobo drivers and have the latest bios.

Idle temp is 66C...although I have it down to 61C atm with a desktop fan pointing at it, however I don't believe it is temp since if i alt+tab out and check temp during the graphic **** up shown in the picture it is never higher than 69C at max.

Specs are as follows:

Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.1 ghz
1.0 gig of RAM (2x512mb) (Made by Crucial)
ASUS N6800 512MB DDR
Latest Direct X
Windows XP SP2
Creative Live! 5.1 Digital sound card
350W PSU (ATX)

Help please! Before I lob the whole system down the stairs in a fit of computer hatred fueled rage (I cant afford that)

Is the graphics card completley borked and should I look at getting it repaired/replaced or just going for an ATI one? Bearing in mind I am a broke student who will have to scab off his Dad..

 

[Xez]

What make/spec is your PSU?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Think its one of the Function keys to get a shot of Oblivion, and they get saved in the folder somewhere i think to.

 

[MoLt3h]

AH thought ASXwas PSU make lol...ok its a Sansun 350W ATX Switching Power Supply Model No. SN-350

I have activated oblivion screenshots, just can't find where they are saved now...and hyper snap would only take them when it was working not when it was messed up...wierd, I shall perceiver no less..

Edit: Pic is up finnaly! See 1st post...

Is this likely to be a power supply problem then?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I think those PSU's aint a good brand, but that looks like a seriously fubared core on the card if everythings doing that, but id try a better branded PSU to be sure as it may not be up to the job of supplying enough juice to it, as Oblivion is a really demanding game and will put a big strain on the card, and your PSU might not be able to take it.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

i ran a 300w free-with-a-cheapo-case psu with a 6800gt and a 3200+ xp system. games froze with bsods etc etc as the psu was clearly inferior, but until the freezeups and bsods occured (they were random) all games looked like they should with no artifacts of any kind. this makes me think that your graphics card is nailed, especially with that much messed up graphics. unluky!

 

[danceMB]

Its always worth checking out about buying a new PSU before thinking about buying a new graphics card and everything, as I remember replacing my PSU solved all of my errors and freezing issues, even though mine was to resolve a 7800. They say you should at least go for 450W+ with a decent brand just to make sure.

 

[Beeralbion]

I have had exactly the same problem with my 6800GT. It only happened after I overclocked it a little too much and it didn't like it. Someone told me that the Ramsinks were getting too hot and were falling over because of the overclock.

Is there plenty of airflow over the whole card?

 

[MoLt3h]

It isn't overclocked at all...but the heatsink does seem rather shoddy, perhaps replacing that may be an idea.

At the moment I have a desktop fan right aimed at the card and it is still having that problem.