Video card dying?

T

themorningbells

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2004
Messages
136
So I built this computer about 5 months ago. Running a E5200 on a GA-EP45-DS3L with a Sapphire 4850. PSU is a Corsair CMPSU-620HX, RAM is G.Skill Pi 4gb kit. Running Windows XP. All was working well until about two days ago when my problem started. I'd just be at the desktop and all of a sudden my monitor would flicker in an out (both of them, I'm running dual displays) and my computer would freeze (well, get really choppy like it was trying to work something out and then freeze). Also, one (random) of the monitors will just go black and I have to go into my video control panel and re-enable one. This would sometimes work if the mess didn't cause my computer to freeze that particular time. Things will work sometimes for maybe a couple hours then it'll start doing this. Or it'll work for about 30 seconds and do it. Also, when a monitor blacks out for a second then turns back on (by itself), I'll get the windows has detected new hardware sound. I had it just setup to one monitor last night and was watching a movie and after about 20 minutes it started to flicker, then it would go black, half a second later the detect new hardware sound, it would turn back on, and it would repeat this rapid fire until I turned off my computer. I've never had a problem like this before so I'm turning to you [H] to help me diagnose it. I can only assume my video card is the culprit. I opened up an RMA and I plan to send it back, but I was wondering what you guys thought before I do so. Also, I tried updating drivers and it did the same thing. /shrug
 
how about your temps? are they too high?
is your system overclocked?
 
Not overclocked. Temps are not high. Video card under load is about 53c. Idles at about 38c. CPU is 32c idle, and maybe 42c under load.
 
well the vid card does seem to be the problem :(
do you have another PC in which you can test the vid card?
 
oh boy! that sucks :(
let just wait, to see what other think about this, maybe someone can help you
I don't know ATI card that well :eek:
 
So, two weeks later... Newegg didn't have my 4850 so they sent me a 4870. I install it. Uninstall old drivers. Reinstall drivers. I'm still having the same problem. My monitors will undetect then redetect, and also occasionally cause my computer to slow down or freeze altogether while it does this. When I first installed this card, I played a good 1.5 hours of CoD4 with no problems. When I was done, I enabled 2 monitors and started watching a movie, about 30 minutes into it the same problems started happening. My monitor got undetected and reverted to my 2nd monitors settings, framerate in the movie started getting choppy, etc etc etc. I really have no idea what my problem could possibly be, and after having waited 2 weeks without a computer, expecting it to be fixed with a new video card and it not be, I am heartbroken. SOMEBODY HELP ME! Why would my computer possibly be doing this???
 
I was really trying to avoid it. I did a system restore to a week before my problems started happening when this first started to occur. It didn't help any. Do you really think it could have something to do with my Windows install? I've never heard of/had a problem like this before, let alone it seeming like something that would be fixed with a Windows install. But I guess that's my only logical next step before I move on to other sorts of hardware failure (psu maybe?).
 
themorningbells said:
I was really trying to avoid it. I did a system restore to a week before my problems started happening when this first started to occur. It didn't help any. Do you really think it could have something to do with my Windows install? I've never heard of/had a problem like this before, let alone it seeming like something that would be fixed with a Windows install. But I guess that's my only logical next step before I move on to other sorts of hardware failure (psu maybe?).
Click to expand...


yup, thats the next step i would take before trying to troubleshoot anymore hardware. especially if its an almost 6 month old xp installation
 
So, anyone else with suggestions? I'm in the process of copying everything I need off my windows drive before formatting/fresh install of XP. Sort of hoping someone knows exactly my problem before I have to reinstall (as it's an especially huge pain). Stupid motherboard not booting from CD if it is a SATA CD drive. :\
 
themorningbells said:
So, anyone else with suggestions? I'm in the process of copying everything I need off my windows drive before formatting/fresh install of XP. Sort of hoping someone knows exactly my problem before I have to reinstall (as it's an especially huge pain). Stupid motherboard not booting from CD if it is a SATA CD drive. :\
Click to expand...

weird issue.

turn ahci off? i can boot from both my SATA drives...
 
Yeah it booted from the SATA dvd drive (didn't the first time I installed windows on this machine, had to use an IDE drive), anyways same problem. I reinstalled windows/drivers/games/etc, played COD4 again for an hour. Everything was fine. Start watching video, monitors turn on and off, and one gets defaulted to the same settings as the other. This is really exasperating. Have no idea what could possibly be my problem. New video card, new windows install, don't really know what else would cause something like this to happen. Anyone?
 
hdcp is broken on one of your monitors? have u tried different video cables? swap your normal primary/secondary and see if the problems moves?
 
Before any of that i would have tried an older driver version. Have you installed all service packs and updates? When you reinstalled did you use the same driver installer as before or did you download a fresh one? The reason i say this is you mention driver crashes. Also just for good measure i would try downclocking the video card. Hope any of that helps.
 
blame the motherboard, do you have a friend's computer or another whom you can try your parts on, that way you can narrow down the possibility.
 
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