is this a graphics card issue?

kaen

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my rig is almost a year old and it's never had problems til around 2-3 months ago when my computer would start flickering, tearing, artifacts, and pixels showing up and usually ended in a hard lock while playing games so i would have to manually reboot..counter-strike 1.6/source seems to work without problems most of the time

i remember the problems started happening after the WoW 2.0 patch came out.

my specs:
ocz gamexstream 600w psu
gigabyte 965P-DS3
core 2 duo e6300 OC'd to ~2.4Ghz (i've tried running it with default bios and nothing changed)
have a scythe mine heatsink
2GB ddr2-800 in dual channel
radeon x1950pro with a zalman heatsink
250gb 16mb 7200rpm hdd

coretemp says my idle temp is 30-35 and speedfan says my idle temp is 20-25 and both read my load temps are 50-51

i've tried defragging my hard drive, updated my bios and all chipsets, my graphics drivers are the latest catalyst ones, ran orthos for 5 hours and memtest for 2 hours with no errors, and i also formatted and installed a fresh copy of windows and that didn't help either

my NB is hot to the touch not sure if that's alright or not..also all the programs i've tried to check my gpu temps says my card isn't supported but it never feels like it's overheating

is this most likely a faulty gfx card? the only spare gfx card i have is an agp and my mobo doesn't support it

edit: i tried the show 3D view and scan for artifacts with ati tools and as soon as it opens my computer freezes, goes black with a "no signal" message, then returns to normal
 

systemlord

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Sounds like a PSU or graphics card problem to me. Either your PSU is strugling to keep its output voltage stable but can not or your graphics card is slowly dieing. It does seem video related because that cube in ATITool is very demanding to display. When I was overclocking my 8800GTX a few days ago when I reached my limit for the GPU my computer hard locked requiring me to turn off my PSU switch. I'm guessing its you ATI x1950Pro, do you have another videocard that you can use for testing?

 
Im going to assume that you have tried removing the WOW 2.0 Patch if as you say it was around the same timeyou installed it the problem started ?
If not then try it if only to rule it out, probably just a coincidence but i have heard of these things causing problems before.
Apart from that it sounded like a bad over clock or set of drivers to start with. You didnt update the drivers at around the same time did you ?
Those two things aside systemlord has it pretty much covered, i also think that its probably more GPU related than PSU but you wont know unless you can maybe get someone to lend you one or buy a cheap GPU yourself and then keep it as a tester in future.
Mactronix
 

systemlord

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High quality power supplies such as an OCZ GameXtreme are much more reliable than almost any graphics cards. This is just a best guess based on experience, but I can't say that I'm a 100% sure either way. The only way for you to be 100% sure is to rule out either PSU or GFX card.
 

kaen

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it seems heat is an issue. my room is heated most of the time now and when i boot up my comp i can see many different colors of pixels on my screen mainly on black backgrounds (booting up, loading windows, etc). I have a hanns-g 19" widescreen.

also when my room is heated, doing simple things like surfing the web or even opening the start menu to run a program will cause my comp to freeze for a second or two go black for a second or two and then return to normal with some VPU recovery error and this happens 3 or 4 times before my comp stops recognizing my gfx drivers and asks me to reboot. i've tried installing different versions of catalyst and tried omega drivers and have cleaned everything in safe mode each time with driver cleaner pro and nothings helping. i won't be getting a card to test out for a few days but it definetly seems more graphics card related than psu.

coretemp and speedfan is reading my cpu as 21-27c right now, so i'm pretty sure my cpu is fine
 

Conumdrum

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Why don't you download ATITool and check the GPU temp with it? We don't know what your GPU temp at idle or when playing a game is yet. And whats the temp (C) of the room your in and link a picture to your case too.
 

systemlord

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I would guess now that its your graphics card because since you can't even monitor your GPU temps you have no idea what they have been for the time that you've had it. I think you have slowly cook your card over time and didn't even know it, but thats just a good guess. I would never own a graphics card that I couldn't monitor, thats like not having a temp gauge for your car, the only way you'd ever know is if you saw steam coming from your engine. :ouch: