Graphics card problem?

Sharpseh

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Jan 16, 2010
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Hey guys, pretty new here, and also, pretty much at a loss regarding a problem I'm having.

First of all -

P5B Deluxe Motherboard - E2180 @ 2.00Ghz with 2GB RAM
Asus 8800GT - SB Audigy
Windows XP SP3

Hoping someone here can shed some light on the issue.

I've been a Windows XP user for a long time, without any real hardware problems to speak of, but about a week ago decided to give Windows 7 a try. - Clean install

Immediately after installation, I really liked it, however, a little exclamation point on the device manager, regarding my graphics card really annoyed me.

Went on the Nvidia site, got the drivers - they installed, but that exclamation mark just wouldn't leave. After some more fidling around, I decided to go back to XP since I had some pending work that needed to be done.

After another clean install, no exclamation marks. But now, 5 minutes into almost any game the computer freezes, shows some pink horizontal lines for about 3 seconds, followed by a quick BSoD and auto reboot.

I immediately thought "Overheating", however my card is at stock speed (not OC'ed at all, by me or factory) and the temperature seems to be pretty normal across the board, at 55ish while idle and 82ish under heavy load. (which is pretty standard for a 8800)

I went around and eliminated certain possibilities, such as RAM, hard-drives, and power supply, so I know for a fact those aren't the problem.

My next suspect was the video card memory, but actually, I've never had a problem with those at all, so I had no idea how to test that.
Did some googling and found (apparently I can't post links) - Some small tool on a personal site.(mikelab)
That certainly found -alot- of errors on my video memory, but I just don't know how reliable or trustworthy it is?

My video card is 2 years old, it's off the warranty since November. It has never been overclocked, or messed around with.

Any sugestions that I might not have thought of?
Any "official" program or tool that I can use to accurately test my video card?

Also, if the video memory on a card can just go puff like that, what could possibly be the reason?
Just want to make sure I'm identifying this right, to prevent getting some new hardware and facing the same situation...

Thanks for your time, and sorry for the icky english!
 

Sharpseh

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Jan 16, 2010
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At the moment I'm running the latest one at the Nvidia site - 195.62.
I've tried 2 older ones, including the one I had before all the problems began, so I kinda expect that one to be completely stable. - 191.07

This is driving me nuts hehe :heink:
 

Sharpseh

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Jan 16, 2010
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Downloading it as I write this... will post some results.


Small situation update - I bought a cheap 9500GT to serve as a comparison, ran that small utility thingy to scan for memory errors and it reported errors again, so that tool just lost all credibility with me.
I'm back to the drawing board.

Plugged in the 8800GT again, downloaded Rivatuner to monitor the temp, and ATItools for the cube stress test thing.
No real conclusive results - It ran for 10 minutes and temperature stabilized at 80º - Pink lines, freeze and BSoD after 15 minutes.
Testing it again, it stabilized at 82º with no crash after 30 minutes. (Also no artifacts found)
Ran Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 to test it out, and the pink lines + auto reset 3 minutes after it loaded up.