Is my 8800 GTX dead?

[Glamthaus]

Hey all,

I built myself a new computer just recently, E6600, 2 ghz ram, Sparkle 8800 GTX. I've been using it for around 2 weeks now (maybe 3?) playing oblivion, fear, hl2 and whatnot, and its been fine.

Anywho, just an hour ago now I was browsing the net (not gaming or anything) and my entire screen basically went to artifact hell... I mean like the entire screen went all different blocky colours, and i couldn't see anything whatsoever. I rebooted, only to be greeted with the same artifacting immediately upon startup. I rebooted again... and now I get a 'no signal' error from my monitor.

I fear my precious 8800 GTX has just crapped out on me ... has anyone had anything similar occur? Or could shed some light as to what the hell just happened?

- Glamthaus

 

[gypsiesun81]

Im afraid your card may be crapped out...This happened to my 6800GT , I swapped in a old radeon 9600 and the problem disappeared... so my only recourse was to RMA the thing....

 

[AKJ]

What PSU were you running it on? Sounds like the card is faulty though... Return it to the place of purchase ASAP

 

[Glamthaus]

Im afraid your card may be crapped out...This happened to my 6800GT , I swapped in a old radeon 9600 and the problem disappeared... so my only recourse was to RMA the thing....

I just swapped in an old video card aswell, and everything seems fine with it. Looks like my precious 8800 IS dead then .

In reply to AKJ, my psu is a 600w extreme gamer vortec. I'm curious though, now that you mention psu, would having only a single 12v rail (37a from memory), instead of dual 12v rails, cause the video card to die like that? I'd hate if that is what caused it and it kills my replacement 8800 GTX as well.

 

[AKJ]

I dont know much about PSUs, but id say 37a is more than enough hey. So i dont think it was your PSU.. The only way you can damage that card is if you pump too much power into it, if thats even possible..

I think its just faulty memory on the card or something arb like that.. Goodluck

 

[mkaibear]

>swapped in new card

Don't suppose you've got another machine to test the 8800 in? It does sound like it's died. Bad luck!

 

[chilli]

RMA is the way to go. I just had to RMA my near 2-year old 6800GT because it failed for the third time.

As it is only a couple of weeks old you shoudl have no difficulty RMA'ing it to where ever you bought it from, or if froma shop taking it there...

 

[Glamthaus]

Alright guys, thanks for the replies . I'll be RMA'ing it first thing in the morning.

Again, thanks for the help everyone, I really appreciate it.

- Glamthaus

 

[AKJ]

Believe me dude, i know how frustrating RMA'inng hardware can be!
I had to RMA my 7900GTX thrice! Finally have a working one now lol!

Hope you come right man. Maybe even try and check that your new card is not from the same batch as the bummed out one coz maybe it came from a bad batch, which is what happened in my situation.

 

[Morton]

Hey all,

I built myself a new computer just recently, E6600, 2 ghz ram, Sparkle 8800 GTX.

and some people don't believe in superstition 8O

 

[Glamthaus]

*** UPDATE ***

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates but I've been doing major testing on my 8800 this last week (Yes, it still works). Heres the lowdown.

The day after my original post, before I rang to get the card RMA'd, I decided I would, just to be sure, put the card back in to test it one last time. It worked.

It worked. Or at least it worked for about 10 seconds, then promptly did the same full-screen corruption as I mentioned in the OP. I rebooted, and received the 'no signal' from my monitor. I rebooted again... and it worked! And not only did it just 'work' but I used it for a 5 hour session without issue.

Thats what its doing now.

On my first cold boot (meaning, turning the power on at the wall, then pressing the on switch straight away), i'll either get 'no signal' or the corruption, and then after one or two restarts I'll be good to go, and can use it for any extended period. If I turn on the power at the wall and wait for a bit, it'll boot up fine first go. The only other time I've gotten any kind of corruption (2 - 3 times in the last week), is after playing a game for maybe a good 2 - 3 hours, after which point the computer has the corruption for 2 - 5 seconds, then restarts.

I've done plenty of testing on my machine in the last week. Enough to determine my CPU and RAM are fine... and almost enough to say that my video card seems fine as well. I mean, it works perfectly beside those few hiccups. At this point I'm almost certain its the fact that my system is running with a psu that has single 12v rail (38a), though I have no way to test that.

Has anyone had any similar issues? Or any other thoughts as to the cause of this?

My system is as follows (Not at home at the moment so its only rough).

E6600 Core 2 Duo (Stock)
2 ghz RAM
Sparkle 8800 GTX
2 x 250 Gb SATA hdd (Cant think of brand at the moment)
Creative X-Fi Platinum w/ front bay
DVD/RW+-
Floppy drive
Leadtek 2000 XP? I think. TV tuner



Thanks in advance for your replys.

- Glamthaus

 

[function9]

Just curious, what motherboard are you using? Is there a clip or some other mechanism for actually locking the card in the slot?

A couple years ago I had a problem with my 6800gt and DFI NF4-Ultra board. When I put the card in and screwed it to the case. The case and the bracket on the card didn't line up perfectly. So when I would secure it with the screw it would pull the one end of the card out of the slot slightly. Enough so at times I would get artifacts and other times I would get no display at all, though I could tell the machine was booting to Windows.

The DFI board didn't have a clip or anything at the end of the slot that would snap down and lock it into the slot. Your card might just be bad, but it's one last thing to check before you have to go through RMAing it. I know because I spent almost 2 weeks without my motherboard only for them to tell me nothing was wrong with it.

The problem was the side of the bracket that you screw in didn't sit up against the case. So I had to cut a piece of plastic and use it as a shim so it would work.

 

[ch1ckench0wme1n]

*** UPDATE ***

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates but I've been doing major testing on my 8800 this last week (Yes, it still works). Heres the lowdown.

The day after my original post, before I rang to get the card RMA'd, I decided I would, just to be sure, put the card back in to test it one last time. It worked.

It worked. Or at least it worked for about 10 seconds, then promptly did the same full-screen corruption as I mentioned in the OP. I rebooted, and received the 'no signal' from my monitor. I rebooted again... and it worked! And not only did it just 'work' but I used it for a 5 hour session without issue.

Thats what its doing now.

On my first cold boot (meaning, turning the power on at the wall, then pressing the on switch straight away), i'll either get 'no signal' or the corruption, and then after one or two restarts I'll be good to go, and can use it for any extended period. If I turn on the power at the wall and wait for a bit, it'll boot up fine first go. The only other time I've gotten any kind of corruption (2 - 3 times in the last week), is after playing a game for maybe a good 2 - 3 hours, after which point the computer has the corruption for 2 - 5 seconds, then restarts.

I've done plenty of testing on my machine in the last week. Enough to determine my CPU and RAM are fine... and almost enough to say that my video card seems fine as well. I mean, it works perfectly beside those few hiccups. At this point I'm almost certain its the fact that my system is running with a psu that has single 12v rail (38a), though I have no way to test that.

Has anyone had any similar issues? Or any other thoughts as to the cause of this?

My system is as follows (Not at home at the moment so its only rough).

E6600 Core 2 Duo (Stock)
2 ghz RAM
Sparkle 8800 GTX
2 x 250 Gb SATA hdd (Cant think of brand at the moment)
Creative X-Fi Platinum w/ front bay
DVD/RW+-
Floppy drive
Leadtek 2000 XP? I think. TV tuner



Thanks in advance for your replys.

- Glamthaus

RMA your gpu(just to be safe). If problems arise once again get a new psu.

 

[hatsurfer]

RMA'ing the card gets my vote.

 

[AKJ]

I had a problem similar to that with my old rig.. I had an ATI Radeon 9550 with a 300w PSU. When ever there was a load on my system, the monitor would lose signal. Also used to get "VPU Recover errors". Then restarting would sometimes fix the problem, but i usually had to switch everything off (at the wall plug), wait till the MoBo loses power completely (till the MoBo LED turned off), then turn the power back on.

Eventually, the card stopped working all together.. So i RMA'd it and they gave me a reference model 9600XT. Then that did the same thing.. So i changed the PSU to a 400W and all the problems went away. The old PC is still up and running 2 years later. (Younger brother plays all the latest games on it) LOL

So therefore I suggest that you get a 550W Dual Rail PSU. nVidia says 450W is minimum, but just to be safe, get a 550W.

 

[Valtiel]

I've had some unique problems with PSUs too. My last PSU (it was a Rosewill ><) was apparently causing my computer to not power down. It would just hang at "windows is shutting down". then the power supply died on me and I swapped in a new one and it worked fine. Best thing that ever came out of a dead PSU -the hanging thing was driving me crazy

 

[Digitalcaveman]

Guys,

I am having the same problem, though not as bad as the first guy here. Only when I play games I get horrible artifacting. My setup is in SLi so I don't even know what card is causing the artifacting. I have reinstalled the drivers like 5 times already and I have a 1KW PSU so I know that's not it. I've got a call into EVGA now to troubleshoot.

I hope I don't have to RMA, this thing screams just wish I could get rid of the artifacts in games.

Digitalcaveman

15901 3DMark06 1-21-2007
EVGA 680i Motherboard w/Zalman Copper Cooling
Intel QX6700 C2E Quad Core @3.3Ghz OC stable 12x mult
OCZ Flex HLC DDR 2 PC 9200 2 GB Ram 5-5-5-18
BFG 1KWatt SLi Power Supply
nVidia Dual 768Mb 8800 GTX x 2 in SLi Mode
Western Digital Raptor 150GB x 3 in Raid 0 or Raid 5 array
Dell 3007WFP 30" LCD TFT Display
Bose AM7 Surround w/Onkyo Receiver

 

[chilli]

To find out which one is causing the problems, try them on their own in non sli. If neither causes the artifacts then I would take a strong look at the mobo.

Do you have a friend who has a similar rig at all? Ie a mobo that supports SLi. Ask them if they mind you testing to see if the cards work ok in their machine (offer to let them play one of their games using them for half an hour in compensation or something, then they can tell you if they get any artifacts )

 

[SmilesLikeJoker]

I'm fixing to buy 2 of these bad boys and run in SLI so I'm browsing the forums lol.

I'm was thinking....I know these boys put out some heat. How's your cooling? Could this maybe be caused from the card(s) overheating?