Issue with Geforce 8800GT

SpikeKun

Distinguished
Aug 20, 2009
42
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18,530
I got my Gigabyte Geforce 8800GT (http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/gigabyte_8800gt/) in April last year and have been using it happily till a few days ago.

I was playing a game (a very graphically undemanding game at that) when it froze suddenly and all these colored artifacts popped up on the screen. I couldn't enter any commands or anything so I shut the pc off. When I turned it on again, artifacts started showing up on the windows start up screen too. When Windows started, the entire screen was covered with big black and white boxes and I couldn't see the mouse cursor or anything, though I did hear the startup music. I restarted the pc several times but the problem persisted.

I opened the casing (which is very roomy and airy by the way) and cleaned it (wasn't that dusty though), took the card out as well and made sure it was clean and stuff. I re-attached everything and tried again. All fans inside the casing were working perfectly including the cards, yet the artifacts remained. I tried again after like an hour and then everything started working again out of nowhere.

The next day, similar deal. Artifacts popped up in the middle of a game, refused to go even after several PC restarts and then just vanished after an hour or so. Yesterday though, they returned on desktop and now they pop up AFTER windows has started up.

Sorry for the huge description, but I wanted to keep it as detailed as possible. Please note the card was not overheating at all. I was monitoring the temperatures closely, they were perfectly normal and the fans were functioning fine. I also play in an airconditioned room it was chilly even! Furthermore, I don't overclock the card and use factory settings, I even tried to underclock it but that didn't fix the issue either. Also, I switched out my ram and tried some spare ones I had lying about but that didn't do anything either. I also uninstalled all nvidia drivers and then installed the latest ones fresh. Again, nothing.

So thats about it. I'm using my old Geforce 6 at the moment (which isn't causing any problems by the way), as I try to figure out whats up with the card. Any thoughts? The warranty on the card's run out and I got it from London (out of the country now) so I can't send it back to the shop. Is there anything I can do to determine whether the card's dead for sure? Want to be sure before I go and get a new one.

Thanks in advance to those who bothered to read all this!
 

Johny-O

Distinguished
Oct 4, 2009
3
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18,510
take out your card and look for any blowen caps but must likely you have a faulty memery dimm and you need to rma your graphics card see that problem at work five times a week allways one of thoose two problems , they will send you a new card back hope that helps good luck john