NVidia 8800 Windows 7 problem

[czajunia]

Hello,

Recently I've noticed some unusual pixel flickering under Windoews 7 using Gainward 8800 GT PCX. There are red pixels randomly switching on and off on some dark areas of the screen. First I thought it was definitely a graphic card problem but then I realized that I didn't see any of these under WinXP. I double checked and when running XP the card was fine. I had the latest Win7 nVidia drivers installed so I thought that maybe there was a bug and downgraded to the first Win7 drivers available but the problem is still there.

I uploaded a video: http://vimeo.com/7238207 showing what it looks like. The displayed picture was intentionally darkened with a color balanced changed a bit so it's not that extreme in real life and the pixels are usually more random compared to the video. Also they are red and look much smaller (pixel size).

Has anyone noticed similar problems? How likely is that the card is fine and there are some drivers/monitor incompatibility issues?

Thank's a lot for your answers and suggestions.

 

[jitpublisher]

I'd say its the card. The only Gainward card I ever owned several years ago did almost exactly the same thing. Red pixels randomly on the screen. Try slowing the memory speed down on the card and see if the situation improves any. It might just be coincidence that you are noticing it when you went to Win 7.

 

[czajunia]

I'll try slowing down the memory later on to see if this changes anything.

Another weird thing I've noticed before. Under Win7 I could run some nVidia 3D demo or GPUTool stability test and don't have one single red pixel and after that find the same problem when editing a picture for example. I am actually running GPUTool Render Test now rendering around 69 fps and don't have a single red pixel.

The question is - if there is a problem with a graphic card how likely it is that it doesn't show all the time? I mean, is it possible that it will work fine sometimes and give problems only occasionally?

 

[obsidian86]

a lot of 8800 dying lately could be that

 

[czajunia]

Cheers for that

 

[czajunia]

Weird thing is that after I posted on the forum yesterday I haven't had any issues even under Win7. The problem was unbearable a day before as I could see red pixels even while watching a movie. But it's gone now. It's happened before as well - the card would work fine and suddenly start showing the problem. Someone on other forum suggested that if this doesn't happen all the time maybe I should check the connections. So following this piece of advice I unplugged all the cables, removed the card and put everything back together just to make sure everything was plugged in properly.

So far so good - I still don't see any red pixels but maybe it's just a coincidence. If the problem comes back I'll try to underclock the card to see if this does the trick. I haven't played any games yet but I ran GPUTool Stress test for a couple of hours and it was fine.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[drkailinium]

how old is your card?

 

[czajunia]

About a year and a half as far as I remember. Give or take a couple of months.

 

[Hypertext]

About a year and a half as far as I remember. Give or take a couple of months.

I have the same problem since today and my video card is about that age. Red pixels is definitively video ram corruption. It can happen if the video ram is scrap, or if you have an overheating problem.
I've played Borderlands last night (8hr in one stretch) and red pixels started to appear on my windows 7 desktop this morning. Maybe there is a relation in the fact that windows 7 uses directx10, because there is a particular overlay color that is used by directx to render hardware accelerated graphics and that color is a very dark gray. For example, if you play a video in media player, open Paint and put the window over the video and pick the right color to fill the background with it, your video will be playing "in" (over) Paint. I think that's why red pixels appears on "dark areas"

So all this to say that I have the same problem and my solution is to update drivers and increase the air flow in my pc (cleaning the dust, speeding up front and back fans). I suggest you do the same. Do not remove the side cover because it's disturbing the air flow canceling the "wind tunnel" effect.
I hope this will be enough!

I'll keep you updated on my progress

 

[czajunia]

I am sorry to hear about your problem Hypertex. It indeed looks exactly the same as the one I had. I could change colour balance in image software to the very dark red/greyish and get tons of red pixels.

Fortunately my problem is gone so for anyone who followed this thread - just a closing post. After a few days of playing a 3D FPS I can definitely say it was a connection issue. I haven't had any problems since last week.

Thanks again for your input!

 

[unquist]

As a warning: I had this exact same problem with my 8800 gts. The card is a little more than 2 years old, and never had a problem. That is until about a week ago when upgraded from win xp 32 bit to win 7 64 bit. I installed the 191 drivers from nvidia (which apparently wasn't a great idea), and the problems began. Pretty much the same stuff as you're describing: I was playing Borderlands, red lines would appear, followed shortly thereafter by either the game crashing or a complete BSOD. I was also getting an error message about the driver resetting.

The problems got worse and worse until about 2 nights ago: the boot screen had messed up blue lines running up and down the screen, and the text in the boot loading screens was all garbled. One more reset after that and the card died entirely. The fan on it still spins up when I turn the box on, but it no longer puts out any video.

I switched out the card with a card a friend lent me, and everything worked fine (so I know it's the card and not something else in the system). I'm also fairly sure it wasn't a temperature issue: i turned on the nvidia monitoring tool and had it log the gpu temp. Looking at the logs after a crash, it was idling at 60C, and never went about 70C under load (which it still pretty high but I didn't think was high enough to destroy the card).

Anyway, the card is out of warranty so I'm pretty much stuck with getting a new one (which is not the end of the world). But just be careful: I've read elsewhere that the win 7 nvidia drivers are no good, and the dead card in my case right now might be living proof.

Good luck!
-Pete

 

[tomstowell]

I just want to join the misery. I recently installed windows 7 and the red pixel's started followed by the driver error. Soon after the system reboots. I have cleaned the card and reseated it but the problem remains. The card is 13 months old. May or may not be windows related but I wanted to let others know that their problem may not be an isolated issue.

 

[Mousemonkey]

As a warning: I had this exact same problem with my 8800 gts. The card is a little more than 2 years old, and never had a problem. That is until about a week ago when upgraded from win xp 32 bit to win 7 64 bit. I installed the 191 drivers from nvidia (which apparently wasn't a great idea), and the problems began. Pretty much the same stuff as you're describing: I was playing Borderlands, red lines would appear, followed shortly thereafter by either the game crashing or a complete BSOD. I was also getting an error message about the driver resetting.

The problems got worse and worse until about 2 nights ago: the boot screen had messed up blue lines running up and down the screen, and the text in the boot loading screens was all garbled. One more reset after that and the card died entirely. The fan on it still spins up when I turn the box on, but it no longer puts out any video.

I switched out the card with a card a friend lent me, and everything worked fine (so I know it's the card and not something else in the system). I'm also fairly sure it wasn't a temperature issue: i turned on the nvidia monitoring tool and had it log the gpu temp. Looking at the logs after a crash, it was idling at 60C, and never went about 70C under load (which it still pretty high but I didn't think was high enough to destroy the card).

Anyway, the card is out of warranty so I'm pretty much stuck with getting a new one (which is not the end of the world). But just be careful: I've read elsewhere that the win 7 nvidia drivers are no good, and the dead card in my case right now might be living proof.

Good luck!
-Pete

I've had no problems with the WHQL'd W7 drivers, so stop spreading FUD.

 

[IzzyCraft]

I've heard not to use drivers past 178.xx for the G80 chips quite a few times over the years.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I've heard not to use drivers past 178.xx for the G80 chips quite a few times over the years.

That's nice for you, I've been using the latest drivers on all the G8x, G9x and G2xx chips with out issues.

 

[IzzyCraft]

Just saying i've heard that story more then enough times even one where tech support told someone to.

I have a 8800gts 640mb downstairs running a somewhat new driver it's no longer my computer so its maintenance no longer my priority

It's doubtful nvidia would be making drivers that cause their cards to fail if that ever got that i couldn't wait to see the PR department at work.

A lot of 8800's failing just shows how the 8800 was one of the best selling cards in a long time just look at the serverys. And the card is getting old 3-4 years now so failure chance has gone up.\

 

[unquist]

I've had no problems with the WHQL'd W7 drivers, so stop spreading FUD.

My intention was not to spread FUD, but merely to explain my problem in light of the OP's issue. If you're using the new drivers on win 7 with an 8800 model card and not having issues, that's great. I have no conclusive empirical proof that the drivers caused my card to fail; but I find the fact that the card started failing immediately after the installation of the drivers, coupled with the error messages about the driver resetting, to be a bit too coincidental to be merely chance.

If anyone with similar problems comes across this thread, I hope it serves to let them know that (1) other people are having similar issues and (2) it's possible, though not guaranteed, that the problem could get worse. Apologies for any scaremongering; as I said, that certainly wasn't my goal.

 

[Guest]

As a warning: I had this exact same problem with my 8800 gts. The card is a little more than 2 years old, and never had a problem. That is until about a week ago when upgraded from win xp 32 bit to win 7 64 bit. I installed the 191 drivers from nvidia (which apparently wasn't a great idea), and the problems began. Pretty much the same stuff as you're describing: I was playing Borderlands, red lines would appear, followed shortly thereafter by either the game crashing or a complete BSOD. I was also getting an error message about the driver resetting.

The problems got worse and worse until about 2 nights ago: the boot screen had messed up blue lines running up and down the screen, and the text in the boot loading screens was all garbled. One more reset after that and the card died entirely. The fan on it still spins up when I turn the box on, but it no longer puts out any video.

I switched out the card with a card a friend lent me, and everything worked fine (so I know it's the card and not something else in the system). I'm also fairly sure it wasn't a temperature issue: i turned on the nvidia monitoring tool and had it log the gpu temp. Looking at the logs after a crash, it was idling at 60C, and never went about 70C under load (which it still pretty high but I didn't think was high enough to destroy the card).

Anyway, the card is out of warranty so I'm pretty much stuck with getting a new one (which is not the end of the world). But just be careful: I've read elsewhere that the win 7 nvidia drivers are no good, and the dead card in my case right now might be living proof.

Good luck!
-Pete

i have seen the exact same effect. my 8800gts got toasted by the nvidia driver for win7 64bit that is.
odd BSOD at first later odd colored single pixels showing up finally during boot i got lines and colorings (during bios part) .. finally it just didnt starte.. same problem also past 2yars .. dont know if to blame Microsoft or nvidia

oh stuopid me yes i was warned during install that both of those companys could nopt be blamed for any thing at all if i should decide to be stupid enough to use the install cds for anything but pingpong (that might even not be covered either)

 

[Guest]

I've had no problems with the WHQL'd W7 drivers, so stop spreading FUD.

you didnt have the problem so shut up, idiot.

 

[Mousemonkey]

you didnt have the problem so shut up, idiot.

It took you a whole month to come up with that? (and you missed the apostrophe.)