Before I RMA, opinions please...

Z

zenogias

n00b
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Jan 29, 2006
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Hi, Skip this paragraph if you want to jump straight to my question. I have a 6800 GT running in one of my computers. I originally got it for gaming a while ago, and I just never played many games on it. Well, that is partially because the first game I really wanted to play (I think it was Half Life 2... not sure) would crash 10 min or so into the game. I figured it was a driver issue or whatever, and just decided that I would wait for new drivers. Well I basically forgot about it and kept using it to do regular old things like surf the net and go to work. Now, I've recently installed a few games on this machine, Battlefield 2, Sid Meier's Pirates, and Knights of the Old Republic. I started with Battlefield 2 for a LAN party, but tried the other games to confirm my suspicions. All of the games run for varying lengths of time before crashing the system. I've tried reinstalling WinXP and the newest WHQL drivers, and it doesn't matter. I put a 7900 GS in the system and it seems to run stable after almost an hour, and I put the crashing 6800 into another system and that system suddenly started crashing in the same way too... (but to be fair it''s an emachines)

So, since it's a BFG I was going to RMA it, but my question is: Are sudden black-screen, hard system crashes during games something that sounds like a graphics card issue or is it possible this is some other incompatability issue? The system has a 450 W power supply and runs fine with the 7900, which has the same 6pin power connector. I'm reasonably sure it's the graphics card, but I am not very savy about the best way to truly narrow it down. Any advice is appreciated, I don't want to sound like an idiot when I call BFG. Thanks!
 
In case it wasn't clear, the 6800 has run WinXP (internet, office, etc) stable for years now, and that's why I am worried about how I will explain the issue to BFG, and it's also why I would like some ideas about how I can confirm once and for all if it is indeed the card and not something else.
 
It looks like your card has some overheating issues to me, the best way to be sure is to put your vid card in anothe rig and test it, try removing your optical drives and your HDs (just leave one, duh) if u have them. And test it. u might also try reinstalling windoze from an empty HD
 
If all else fails and you get stumped go ahead and RMA it. That way they can test it in their systems and you will know if its good or not. So you will either get a replacement card or the knowledge that your video card is not the problem,


XFX Support
 
If you have another machine to test the card in do that. It sounds strange though Could be a faulty video card or it could be the power supply not being able to keep up under load. It could also be a ram issue, games are heavy ram intensive apps and if you have a bad stick can bring out the flaws. You can test that by puting in one stick at a time testing it, swaping to the other stick (provided you have two sticks) run a game and see if either will run a game.
 
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