EVGA Geforce 8800 GTX failure

[Coilz]

I am afraid my good old trusty Geforce 8800 GTX has been broken or at least completely disabled from showing any display. After having some serious problems with Nvidia drivers crashing and then getting recovered (flicking screen, short black screen, then back to normal) I started up the computer one day and card seems to have been either overheated or destroyed.

The drivers installed by windows or myself causes the computer to reboot upon entering windows 7 64bit but can run in safemode or before driver updating. Beyond that I got blue stripes down the monitor.

I've tried:
Driver Sweeper: Which seemed to even have made it worse somehow. It might have been my bad use of the program that started the boot up problem.
Changing around the ram, trying 2 sticks instead of 4.
Changing monitor
Cleaning for dust/filth in the cabinet
Tried the other PCI-e slots in the motherboard
System restore to before the reboot problem, but not the nvidia drivers malfuctioning (or gpu failing).
Updating/resetting/defaulting bios.


System specifications:
ASUS P5Q PRO deluxe
Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 4096MB CL5
EVGA Geforce 8800 GTX 756 mb
Windows 7 64 Bit

While I'm pretty positive that its the GPU that's failing, I was just wondering if anyone had ideas to solving it without going out and buying a new graphics card.

 

[katanadude]

Do a search on the web about baking your video card. It repairs microfractures in the soldered connections.

 

[Coilz]

I'm going to try that and get my more technical inclined brother to watch just to be sure.

Thanks a lot for the link!

 

[djcoolmasterx]

Come back with photos

 

[jeffredo]

If its truly dead I hope you registered your card at EVGA's website within 30 days of buying it for the lifetime warranty. They'll send you a comparable card if you RMA (if they don't have 8800 GTXs for warranty replacement anymore).

From what I've heard the "easy bake" method almost always works on failing cards - but it seems to be only a temporary fix for some.

 

[Coilz]

*** ed myself over on this one :/

I'm guessing there's no RMA if I haven't registered the card?

 

[djcoolmasterx]

You might aswell try, they may be feeling charitable.

 

[daship]

Why would you buy a lifetime warranty card and not register?

Odds are you can still register maybe?

 

[Coilz]

The long warranty doesn't count for people in Europe anyway, so either way it seems like this time Im not getting it replaced.

Regardless I baked the card today and Im going shopping for some more coolpaste before testing the card tomorrow. Took some pics/videos with my poor quality handphone, but other than that no news.

Also Im not even sure that European purchasers got this opportunity.

Never the less I acknowledge my fault and do not blame EVGA for any of this and rightly so. I might write an email for their customer support asking if there is any chance for RMA.

 

[Coilz]

To my great surprise it worked.

I took the card out, unscrewed the heatsink, took it off the CPU and followed the general instructions and videos posted by the previous user.

Artifacts errors are gone, the stripes on the screen has also dissappeared. After a quick system restore to previous state, I'm currently going to play some games and see if it holds up.


I applied new cooling paste of course.

200 C in a preheated oven in 10 mins.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

Congratulations. Remember this seems to be a temporary fix for some, so It may be time to start looking for a replacement anyway.

 

[Guest]

Im from canada and my gtx 8800 nvd went i followed the steps 385 degrees 8.5 minutes baking and it sure as *** is better.Oover 1920 resolution and it runs cooler last 2 weeks. the only thing i recomend is a six pack and tiny magnetic screw drivers

 

[shikirocks]

Where did you get the baking instructions? I have the same identical problems for the same card. thanks.

 

[djcoolmasterx]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792