My gf6800 is dropping me into the Matrix

[Jon_Miles_uk]

I need to replace my 6800gt! What do I get?

So, I built a PC about two years ago, and it was pretty stable (apart from a broken HDD) up till a month or two, when I started getting 'visual corruption'... green and pink pixels over the screen. I took the PC apart and put it together and it went away, so I thought it was fixed.

But no, the last week or so it came back and got worse and worse, to the point of the screen getting covered in green crap in a few minutes after the pc starts up. So I guess the card is overheating pretty bad. I tried underclocking it, and I dropped it to about half the original speed on both settings, but to no avail. The temperature doesn't seem too high to me, either by touch, or by looking in the settings (seems to range from about 47-53 degrees). I can see the fan is running (might be slightly noisy? nothing ridiculous though) and the heat sink seems pretty solidly in place. The card is an AGP nVidia Geforce 6800 from Leadtek.

Any ideas what might be wrong? Please feel free to suggest anything no matter how basic, as I'm no expert

Also if I've left any info out, let me know... thanks for your time!

 

[Jon_Miles_uk]

Thanks for your replies! Even if they have confirmed my worst fears

I guess where I stand now is: The card is totally shagged, can't be fixed, can't be returned, and even if it could, Leadtek would probably just take a **** on it and send it back to me. So... I need a new Graphics Card!

My previous card was a Leadtek 256mb 6800GT... as for the system, I've got an AGP MSI motherboard, 1gb ballistix ram, and some average athlon, maybe a 3700?

I'm *really* strapped for cash at the moment, so I'm looking for a cheap card that will give me similar performance to the 6800 GT, hopefully slightly better! I know I should upgrade to PCI-express, but most likely I'll save that for the next big upgrade, maybe over a year down the line.

How about that BFG GeForce 7600 GS OC 512MB they sell here? Or would that be a step back?

I appreciate your suggestions... I'm totally out of the loop when it comes the gfx cards nowadays