Hardware trouble! Looking for help!

[Jade]

Been a while since I posted anything here, but I figure this may end up helping some people if I can get some good responses. Just last week I think my video card took a huge dump on me. Was playing a game of Fallout 3 when suddenly everything gets this purple outline. Weird, I thought, so I restart the game and come back in and after a few minutes of fine gameplay the same thing starts happening. Then I get a blue screen of death and attempt a restart. The screen is completely black and I'm unable to get a signal to my monitor. I am, however, able to start in safe mode and work that way for a while testing some possibilities. Disabling/uninstalling my graphic's card drivers allows me to start the system normally. Well...Normal as in it's not in safe mode anymore. Every attempt to install previous drivers for the card result in the same thing...The monitor getting no signal on startup.

This seems to indicate a problem with the graphics card to me. Currently the card IS installed on my motherboard, and my monitor is hooked up to it. Without the drivers installed it functions enough to make my system workable. Maybe the GPU is fried and every time I install the drivers for the card they attempt to make use of it, resulting in nothing appearing on the screen.

I guess what I'm asking is this...Did my graphics card die? Or did someone out there run into the same situation in which it was not signalling a graphics card's death? Any insight into this problem would be greatly appreciated.

[Lost]

yeah in safemode it completely bypasses the your display drivers. Have you try installing older drivers? if its a relatively new or has a life time warranty you can just RNA it easy enough you just won't have a gpu for like 2-3 weeks.

[Stormcaller3801]

There's more or less one definite way to find out: try using your graphics card in a different computer, and/or use a different graphics card in yours. If your computer works fine with an alternate card, it's the card. If your graphics card works in a different computer, it's not the card. If another card in your computer doesn't work, it's not the card.

But at this point? Yeah, I'm thinking a Spah is sappin' your video card. Fortunately you can get a card that'll do a decent job for a decent price, particularly when rendering TF2. The GeForce 8600 GTS that I have is all but extinct it seems (link) but I'd imagine the 9000 series or its ATI equivalent will offer some solid options without going overboard on price.

[Lost]

[Stormcaller3801]

I favor Nvidia simply by virtue of compatibility. I built my comp myself, and both the motherboard and the video card are EVGA using nVidia stuff. I figured it would minimize conflicts.

[Jade]

Ah, thank you guys for the help. Unfortunately given that my former card is a 7950 GX2, the beast is so big that it can't fit in the only other friend's computer that's capable of running it. I did try installing older drivers, which caused the same problems as the updated ones. Fortunately newegg had a sale recently for some pretty decent video cards and I've got one on the way.

[Kyle]

Sounds like a definite case of overheating. It sounds like it's too late, but did you monitor the temperature of your video card at all around the time it failed? Typically, seemingly random visual bugs are a sign of overheating, and your card may have heated up to the point where it fried. If you're getting a new card to replace it, I'd definitely monitor the temperature on that one, too.

I have a 9800GT myself, and I never let it get much hotter than 65°C - although they can typically go at least another 5-10° higher without any problems.

[Jade]

9800 GT is the new card I have now too. Just got it yesterday and it works pretty well. It seems to idle around 40 C, at least that's what nvidia's nTune utility is telling me. But yeah, installed the new graphics card and everything works well. The only trouble I've found is with Source games when I try to turn on Anti-aliasing and HDR and such. It gets these strange graphical errors with green outlines and the like. Yet it runs Fallout 3 like a dream. Weird. :p

[Lost]

Well great to hear. I hope to have a spanken new Gforce 285 sometime this month I'm looking forward to TF2 at 300 frames lol

[Kyle]