Graphics I think my graphics card maybe on it's way out?

Morning all, hope your weekends are going alright?

I've turned my computer on this morning after having a few issues last night with the display driver having to recover (not entirely sure what that means but obviously not good). It's a BFG 8800GTX OC

Anyway, I turn it on this morning and find jagged red lines all acorss the screen, running at a default res of 800*600 on a 24" monitor! I can see through the lines, they are just ghosted above the rest of the screen content.

So I updated the driver (by removing the old one first etc, did it all properly) to no avail.

When it boots I can barely read the text on the screen, and there are other paterns that appear on the screen, virtical red lines seemingly made up of '-' characters, but it changes too quickly for me to get a picture.

In device manager I'm getting the following error code of for the display adapter:

According to microsoft this means:

I'll add some pictures up later if that helps matters (I need to do this from my laptop though), but what are you initial thoughts, buggered card right?

Edit: I've just looked in the event viewer and whilst I can't find anything specific, there is a hell of alot of errors that I've never seen before.

 

Have you checked the screen? Taken out the gfx card, maybe cleaned it and the pci-e slot, then reseated the card?

 

I've seen very very similar symptoms before - Sounds like the RAM on the card is borked unfortunately.

 

Thanks for the replies. I've reseated and cleaned the slots etc with an air duster, it's the first thing I did.

I've also noticed that one of the DVI ports on the back no longer works, I had to swap them over the other day and completely forgot about it. Does sound Fubar to me.

I'll give scan a ring tomorrow and sort out an RMA. Seeing as they no longer sell my card, and may not have a replacement for it, what card would you see as a fair replacement?

 

Unless they can give a an 8800gtx or 8800 ultra then I think that any of the other cards in nvidia's 8 and 9 series will run slower on a 24" screen due to being memory bandwith limited.

A GTX 260 would seem fair i think...

 

cheers for that mate, just what I needed to know! If I was to go down the ATi route then I'm assuming 4850?

 

Possilby - I would say a 4870 to be safe on a 24" screen

Although I assume BFG would be providing the new card?

 

Just a quick update, I've arranged the RMA, and I asked about the replacement and the opperator said once it's been tested and found faulty they would discuss the replacement with me then as they don't have any of these in stock anymore.

So yes, whilst I agree with you Sir Digby, it may not play out that way. I'm assuming they'll stick with nVidia though, we'll see. I've done some searching and bit-techs 9800gtx review came up trumps. I play alot of CoD4, WiC and CoH and the 9800GTX at 1920*1200 seems to pip the 8800GTX in most instances (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/04/01/nvidia_geforce_9800_gtx_512mb/12)

 

Ah, fair enough - I was just going on that the 8800gts 512 has the same core as the 9800gtx and remembered that at higher resolutions the 8800gtx beats the 8800gts 512.

Forgot the 9800gtx is clocked higher

Looks good and the 9800gtx+ is better too (well, slightly)

 

Looks like the 4850 owns it though(http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/09/23/powercolor-radeon-hd-4850-pcs/5) I might have a leg to stand on by saying I've had lots of problems with this (I've returned it as part of another RMA twice, apparently it's been alright but I doubt it has) so I would like to try the ATi offering. We'll see, I'd be happy with the 9800GTX obviously.

 

Ok quick update, they are sending out a 9800GTX+, I don't know if it's the 1GB or the 512mb version yet, I forgot to ask! Silly me.

Eitherway, from the benchmarks I've seen it looks good, beats teh 8800GTX at 1920*1200 most of the time and uses less power. However, if it doesn't give me the same performance my old 8800gtx did then obviously it's going back.

It is a refurb, as they state, and as most places send out, so not too big an issue there. I just hope its the 1GB model hehe