Could my sons 2 month old graphics card be broken?
Discussion
My son is experiencing problems with his graphics card and so I've posted his message from www.majorgeeks.com tech support forum here in hope of more replies, theories and ideas. I'll just copy the post.
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Hey guys,
(This post may be lengthy but if you think you can help for the love of god please keep reading.)
My PC is an AMD 64-bit Athlon 3700+, with a 600W fan and 2GB of Kingston DDR 400mHz RAM.
About 2 months ago I ungraded by ATI Radeon 9800+ PRO 128MB card to a Nvidia GeForce 4, 7600 4xAGP 256MB card.
When I got the card it ran perfectly, and I've only started experiencing a deterioration in it's performance in the last few weeks; more specifically, the last two days.
It started as this error: (click to enlarge)
This error would occur and close my Medieval 2 randomly last week; It has run fine for a few months since getting my card. This error would appear in the most non-graphical places such as on the campaign map or diplomacy window.
In an attempt to fix this, I reinstalled DirectX and my Nvidia drivers to their latest versions.
Since then, whenever I load Windows Media Player, my PC slows down entirely, flicks my monitor off and on and I need to restart.
When I load QuickTime it slows down the PC and takes ages for the whole window to construct itself.
When I load VLC Media Player, my PC restarts itself.
World of Warcraft usually runs at an FPS of 30 in a capital city (Ogrimmar to be specific) and was working fine on Sunday 15th April, however since Monday night it has been running at an FPS of 9 in the same area.
I've tried re-installing different gfx drivers from both the CD that came with the card, and the drivers listed on the website, however these have not helped. (Infact I believe since doing this is the cause of WoW's low FPS)
However
Facing a possible reformat it dawned upon me that perhaps this issue was being caused by a deterioration of the hardware itself, i.e. the physical Graphics Card within my PC.
My brother, a capable person in terms of PC tech support, is currently at Uni and so not on hand to lend assistance, however he suggested on MSN to pull out the card, blow it clean and replace it firmly, and see if this helps.
Before I did this however, I realised I still have my old card, and so uninstalling the Nvidia drivers, I took the card out of my PC and replaced it with my old Radeon, loaded up, installed my drivers and 'Lo: Quicktime, Windows Media Player and VLC all worked perfectly. WoW was still experiencing low FPS (11-14 to be exact which is higher than the low FPS experienced on my 'newer' and possibly broken card!) However I put this down to not having optimised my settings since the removal of the old card.
So, wiping out the possibility of spyware, viruses and worms from my mind I re-inserted the GeForce and reinstalled the drivers. Only to my sadness, witness that the same problems were occuring.
What is happening here, and how can this sudden death of performance from my 2-month old brand-new graphics card be fixed?
Thanks!
James
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey guys,
(This post may be lengthy but if you think you can help for the love of god please keep reading.)
My PC is an AMD 64-bit Athlon 3700+, with a 600W fan and 2GB of Kingston DDR 400mHz RAM.
About 2 months ago I ungraded by ATI Radeon 9800+ PRO 128MB card to a Nvidia GeForce 4, 7600 4xAGP 256MB card.
When I got the card it ran perfectly, and I've only started experiencing a deterioration in it's performance in the last few weeks; more specifically, the last two days.
It started as this error: (click to enlarge)
This error would occur and close my Medieval 2 randomly last week; It has run fine for a few months since getting my card. This error would appear in the most non-graphical places such as on the campaign map or diplomacy window.
In an attempt to fix this, I reinstalled DirectX and my Nvidia drivers to their latest versions.
Since then, whenever I load Windows Media Player, my PC slows down entirely, flicks my monitor off and on and I need to restart.
When I load QuickTime it slows down the PC and takes ages for the whole window to construct itself.
When I load VLC Media Player, my PC restarts itself.
World of Warcraft usually runs at an FPS of 30 in a capital city (Ogrimmar to be specific) and was working fine on Sunday 15th April, however since Monday night it has been running at an FPS of 9 in the same area.
I've tried re-installing different gfx drivers from both the CD that came with the card, and the drivers listed on the website, however these have not helped. (Infact I believe since doing this is the cause of WoW's low FPS)
However
Facing a possible reformat it dawned upon me that perhaps this issue was being caused by a deterioration of the hardware itself, i.e. the physical Graphics Card within my PC.
My brother, a capable person in terms of PC tech support, is currently at Uni and so not on hand to lend assistance, however he suggested on MSN to pull out the card, blow it clean and replace it firmly, and see if this helps.
Before I did this however, I realised I still have my old card, and so uninstalling the Nvidia drivers, I took the card out of my PC and replaced it with my old Radeon, loaded up, installed my drivers and 'Lo: Quicktime, Windows Media Player and VLC all worked perfectly. WoW was still experiencing low FPS (11-14 to be exact which is higher than the low FPS experienced on my 'newer' and possibly broken card!) However I put this down to not having optimised my settings since the removal of the old card.
So, wiping out the possibility of spyware, viruses and worms from my mind I re-inserted the GeForce and reinstalled the drivers. Only to my sadness, witness that the same problems were occuring.
What is happening here, and how can this sudden death of performance from my 2-month old brand-new graphics card be fixed?
Thanks!
James
Personally I'd suggest the following:
Malware scans.
Replace A/V (if applicable).
Make sure all games are at current/most stable (not always the samething) patch level.
Make sure all fans/heat sinks are free of dust/grime.
Make sure all fans are spinning freely.
Usually hardware failure in a graphics card is things like permanently blank screen, random coloured blocks on screen all the time, windows freaking out like crazy about the drivers. The inital description sounds like either heat or the system is being pushed by something else, considering what you've said about how slow Windows is acting in other systems I'd suggest its the later rather than the former.
If this is an X2 processor (dual core) you can get an updated CPU driver from the AMD website that will help Windows make best use of it, but that won't fix the issues you've described...
I think, if everything I've suggested above turns a blank... your looking at a reinstall. A clean system + drivers will rule out software glitches and infections of nasties, so if it still acts up it's hardware.
If that is the case, then something like Sandra or other benchmark/diagnostic programs can help you pin down the issue as it might not be the GFx card but say the mobo's northbridge dieing a death.
Malware scans.
Replace A/V (if applicable).
Make sure all games are at current/most stable (not always the samething) patch level.
Make sure all fans/heat sinks are free of dust/grime.
Make sure all fans are spinning freely.
Usually hardware failure in a graphics card is things like permanently blank screen, random coloured blocks on screen all the time, windows freaking out like crazy about the drivers. The inital description sounds like either heat or the system is being pushed by something else, considering what you've said about how slow Windows is acting in other systems I'd suggest its the later rather than the former.
If this is an X2 processor (dual core) you can get an updated CPU driver from the AMD website that will help Windows make best use of it, but that won't fix the issues you've described...
I think, if everything I've suggested above turns a blank... your looking at a reinstall. A clean system + drivers will rule out software glitches and infections of nasties, so if it still acts up it's hardware.
If that is the case, then something like Sandra or other benchmark/diagnostic programs can help you pin down the issue as it might not be the GFx card but say the mobo's northbridge dieing a death.
Just a thought - the radeon cards have a quality setting slider control I think, where you can set either super-high quality but with lower performance or super high performance with lower quality - have you tried changing this setting? Perhaps the error message is correct and your quality setting is too high such that it can't keep up with the game?
also is the radeon card plugged into the main power supply e.g. via the cd drive cable.. the cards with the built-in fans need more power than they can get from the slot in the motherboard IIRC..
also is the radeon card plugged into the main power supply e.g. via the cd drive cable.. the cards with the built-in fans need more power than they can get from the slot in the motherboard IIRC..
James here again:
The problem was with the GeForce, not the Radeon (to above poster
) but thank you both for replying...
Having testing my old card extensively on a multitude of games with my previous settings, and media players, I can safely assume that it was the GeForce card itself at fault, and not anything within the PC, or the drivers.
Scan (the company I purchased card from, about 20 miles away in Bolton) has issued an RMA order to retrieve and replace the card.
Thanks again for your help
- James
The problem was with the GeForce, not the Radeon (to above poster
) but thank you both for replying... Having testing my old card extensively on a multitude of games with my previous settings, and media players, I can safely assume that it was the GeForce card itself at fault, and not anything within the PC, or the drivers.
Scan (the company I purchased card from, about 20 miles away in Bolton) has issued an RMA order to retrieve and replace the card.
Thanks again for your help
- James
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