PC crashing - possible graphics card problem?

[8]

Wondering if anyone can help me.

Recently my pc display has basically been crashing as shown in the picture. This happens pretty soon after i swith the pc on, it works fine for a short time then it does that. Im using a Radeon X800 XT Platinum and i have an artic cooler fitted and the temperatures were cool so i dont think its caused by overheating. My worst fears are that the card is just broke, memory problem or something, anyone got any ideas?

[pic]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y261/alasdair_rae/pic003.jpg[/pic]

[chriswright]

I had that problem with mine, I fixed it by turning down the AGP speed

[8]

chriswright said:

I had that problem with mine, I fixed it by turning down the AGP speed

Did you turn down the AGP speed to 4x from 8x and did you put it back up? wouldnt that affect the performance?

[chriswright]

i turned it from 8 to 4 and left it there, whenever i turned it back stuff kept crashing

[scorp]

Could be anything really, check these..

1) Power supply - is the card being supplied with enough power? (400+ watts these days)
2) Motherboard components ok? - capacitors and other components ok ?
3) Drivers - do you have latest drivers?
4) Cooling - is the fan clear of obstruction (dust/etc) and cooling the GPU down enough ?

[d-man]

My Radeon 9700 used to do this very intermittently. It looks like a hardware error and I couldn't clear it with the reset or soft power buttons, I had to turn it off at the mains. I assumed the card had a fault and just lived with it (happened so rarely I didn't really care).

I replaced the power supply (after I blew up the old one by mistake) and it hasn't happened since.





>> Edited by d-man on Monday 24th October 11:48

[Plotloss]

Almost certaintly a PSU lack of wattage problem.

You need more power captain.

I'd recommend going to a 550w PSU to future proof you.

I've seen this exact thing happen to a machine with a high quality 430w so if you have a lot of peripherals you need a lot of power.

[pentoman]

Obviously first thing to do before spending any money is.. try another graphics card!

Or try this graphics card in another computer..

It sounds GFX related, but something as random looking as that.. who knows? Does the computer still run in the background when this happens? Play some music then, when it happens does the music keep playing or get stuck in a loop? If it keeps playing it's almost certainly graphics card related.

good luck

Russell

[Plotloss]

If you do try a control test with another VGA card save yourself a headache from the outset by getting another identical X800.

The power drain on anything other than exact replica of the card you have will be different, so you will be no further forward in ascertaining the root cause of this.

I'm 99% sure its power related though.

[8]

Thanks for the replies guys, i've got my 9800pro back in for now and its working fine the x800 has ran faultlessly for a few months and i was under the impression it uses less power than the 9800 but i'll try putting it back in and reducing the AGP speed, then try it in a mates machine.