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Fri May 23, 2008 4:36 pm

I am trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my computer...

I built it less than a year ago, and since then it has a tendency to lock up while gaming. The screen used to just go black and lock everything up with certain games (mainly Supreme Commander). I thought it was driver issues so I wiped the video driver off and reinstalled the most recent one. I actually got to play games for a bit until it took a turn for the worse. I took out the card and cleaned the dust out of the heatsink. Now it does some crazy graphical glitch with ANY game I play. I even tried some NES roms and it screwed it up. It only seems to screw up while gaming, it hasn't failed while I am just surfing the net or doing word processing. Although, the last time I rebooted all the text in the startup screen was garbled. I rebooted and then it was fine again. Here is a picture of what its been doing lately..

Is this thing broken now? The card isn't even a year old!

Here are my system specs

Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3.2ghz
4GB OCZ Gold Dual Channel PC26400 RAM
Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT 512mb video card

WTF is goingn on? If it was broken, why did it only freeze up with certain games? This crap is frustrating

:oops:

Fri May 23, 2008 5:02 pm

sounds like some kind of hardware conflict. i would try another video card.

Fri May 23, 2008 6:42 pm

see if there's a patch update from geforce, check the compatibility with the asus mobo. after that it could be a bad card.
keldog
A+ Certified
MCP

Fri May 23, 2008 6:57 pm

Your video card burned imo.too hot.....

8800GT is not stably,the consumption of core is easy to increaser.Just changed a new one from shop。

Fri May 23, 2008 7:33 pm

If you have another monitor (LCD or old school) I would check that first.
If the problem continues, then go on to the Video Card. You could try buying a cheapie from Best Buy and test it.

Sat May 24, 2008 9:02 am

I'd bet video card.

Sat May 24, 2008 9:27 am

I agree with the video card assessment, but you might also have an underpowered power supply.

Get a 9800GX2.

Sat May 24, 2008 7:17 pm

I've heard it may be my power supply from other people too. This is mine. Would it not be enough?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371002

Sat May 24, 2008 7:44 pm

MRshotglass wrote: I've heard it may be my power supply from other people too. This is mine. Would it not be enough?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371002

550w is a little bit on the low side, thats another option you can try.

Sat May 24, 2008 8:36 pm

I would replace the video card.

Sat May 24, 2008 8:42 pm

Check cable from monitor to vid card, if all good I would reseat the vid card; does this happen while in the bios too? If so, it's a vid card issues if you rule out the monitor. Get a replacement card and send the bad one back if its under a valid warranty, they'll send you a new card in a few weeks.

Sun May 25, 2008 11:40 pm

Sun May 25, 2008 11:41 pm

Clean the contacts on the video card. This happened to me after I overclocked my card though...so i would say its a heat issue...its probably dead :(

Mon May 26, 2008 12:16 am

Hate to say it on these forums, but it's time to upgrade to water cooled. 8)

Mon May 26, 2008 12:38 am

miniman82 wrote: Hate to say it on these forums, but it's time to upgrade to water cooled. 8)

haha, a friend of mine decided to do that and spent a ton of cash on a case that both sides of the case were aluminum radiators and he got all the gear, and it was pretty much useless. unless your running some balls to the wall server its not really necessary, its a cool bragging right though.

Mon May 26, 2008 12:55 am

It's not a necessity, but running the CPU at cooler temperatures has proven benefits. You can read up on the net to your heart's content on the subject, I won't regurgitate here.

If I did it, I'd run the cooling plate to a rad first, then a peltier cooler (or possibly through a circuit mounted in my fridge), then back to the computer. All that, and you only get a few points cooler than air cooled, and a negligable performance increase. It's probably worth it if you have a bad ass video card you'd like to protect, though.

Mon May 26, 2008 8:10 am

You could try some arctic silver on the GPU along with an aftermarket cooler.

sounds like it's kaput to me though.

Mon May 26, 2008 8:48 am

I tried turning down the clock speed to 550mhz (from 650) and now it will run most every game except for Crysis, which still locks up. I guess it turned out to be the anemic power supply after all. What wattage do you reccommend running with this thing? I want something big enough to run dual cards in SLI mode later on down the road.

Mon May 26, 2008 9:41 am

The Antec 550W you're running now should be ample. I'm using a 500W ThermalTake power supply that came with a power meter for the front of the case. I just checked, and it hits 335W while running Crysis with Winamp also playing.

I'm running an AMD Phenom 9750 at 3GHz with a GeForce 8800GTX, 4 HDDs and a DVD drive.

Mon May 26, 2008 10:48 am

MRshotglass wrote: I tried turning down the clock speed to 550mhz (from 650) and now it will run most every game except for Crysis, which still locks up. I guess it turned out to be the anemic power supply after all. What wattage do you reccommend running with this thing? I want something big enough to run dual cards in SLI mode later on down the road.

invest in a new power supply, clean your connections, and hook up an aftermarket heat sync and fan if you can, should take care of your problems if turning it down worked.