EVGA 8800GTS 640mb artifacts problem!

[Afterglow]

Processor: Intel E6600 @ Stock
Motherboard: Intel DG965RY
Graphics Card: EVGA 8800GTS 640mb (ACS3 edition – company OC)
Power supply: Thermaltech Purepower 680W
OS: Windows XP 2 32bit
PC age: 1 and a half year


In short:

Blue screen crash during playing the game NFS UC (1st time happened).
Every game now shows artifacts & gets hanged after 1 or 2 minutes
After some idle time artifacts shows on the desktop.
No artifacts in BIOS or XP installation windows.
Some artifacts on the XP loading screen.
No artifacts on the desktop & everything runs fine before installing driver.
Installing Driver cause serious artifacts & after the loading screen and before the welcome screen, everything goes black & whole screen flickered with artifacts.
Safe mode loads successfully.

Full Story:

I’ve a serious problem with my 8800GTS. I was playing game (NFS UC), when suddenly game hanged and some wired artifacts were all over the screen, which have never happened previously. So I hard restart my PC. After loading the XP, everything looked fine. I ran the game again and the game loaded successfully just after 1 or 2 minutes artifacts came back and the blue screen crash occurred and after loading XP a notice was given about that windows has recovered from serious error. This time I kept my desktop idle and after some time the color of the desktop got wired and artifacts were here & there.
I uninstall the driver & install the latest one, but still no improvement. I reinstall XP, there were no artifacts in BIOS. During the XP installation process I didn’t found any prob. But when the first time the XP loaded, there were artifacts on the loading screen from top to bottom of 40% of the screen. When the XP loading completed everything was fine, no artifacts. Then I installed the driver and when the restart notice window came there were artifacts again. I clicked restart now, after restarting everything looked fine before the windows loading screen. This time again same artifacts in the windows loading screen and just after the loading screen and before the welcome screen, everything goes black & whole screen flickered with artifacts. I hard restarted the PC, went to safe mode, safe mode loaded successfully. I uninstalled the driver and restarted the pc in normal mode. Again beside the loading screen there were no artifacts, but when I installed the driver the problem came back. I unplugged the card and I’m running my pc on built in cad, everything is fine.

Can anyone help me, tell me wat should I do. Is this because my 8800GTS VRam burned out?
Thanks in advance.

 

[w153r]

That's a tough one, try to clear out your old nvidia drivers and reinstall them, can you try the card in a different PC?

Edit: Follow these directions: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=16154

 

[Afterglow]

I always uninstall driver, restart & go to safe mode use driver cleaner, clear drivers & use Crapcleaner for both application and register cleaning. Restart pc and install new driver.

There is no old driver problems, as I've done a clean XP install. The whole install process went normally, but there were some artifacts in the loading screen of XP. There were no artifacts on the desktop after the XP loaded but when I installed driver then XP failed to load just after the loading screen. It only showed black screen with artifacts. Still I can load into safe mode without having any artifacts.

 

[coozie7]

Sounds more like overheating than a software problem. What does Rivatuner temperature monitor say?

 

[Outlander_04]

99.9% chance you are getting a new gfx card for christmas

check your power supply voltages

 

[Afterglow]

Sounds more like overheating than a software problem. What does Rivatuner temperature monitor say?

I didn’t use rivatuner, I used CPUcool. The temp was as usual 68C+. While playing games it usually stays less than 85C. In my country weather temp remains 25C+.

 

[Afterglow]

99.9% chance you are getting a new gfx card for christmas

check your power supply voltages

I don’t know how check the power supply voltage.

I’m also afraid that I’ve to buy a new card. Damn………it cost me 300 pounds!! I think I’ll go to a corner and cry……

 

[coozie7]

Look on the bright side; Just in time for an early Christmas present to yourself you get a improvement in your gaming experience.
BTW a HD4870 goes well with a C2D E6600 (check my spec).

 

[Afterglow]

Look on the bright side; Just in time for an early Christmas present to yourself you get a improvement in your gaming experience.
BTW a HD4870 goes well with a C2D E6600 (check my spec).

THX.
Still I could not believe I’ve lost my 300 pound worth card. It had 10 years of warranty, as I imported it from England and because of their 30 days damn registration process, I could not get my warranty. This time, I can’t spend that much money, so I’ll try to buy a 9800GT or ATI 4830, if possible ATI 4850. U won’t believe that in my country 9800GT at the moment cost 200 USD.

 

[Afterglow]

THX everyone who has read or reply my post.

 

[orangegator]

Yeah, sound like the card is dieing. Try using Rivatuner or EVGA Precision to underclock the card. Try with the core and the ram. That might get it to work.

 

[coozie7]

They`re not far off that here in the UK!
When you get the new card, make sure you change the fan speeds to keep it cooler, particularly if you choose a HD4850.

 

[Afterglow]

@orangegator

Thx for the advice. I'll Try.

@coozie7

Thx again, I'll keep that in mind.