Bad GPU/Power Supply/Mobo/CPU ?

[bturchi]

So here is how it started. I was playing MW2 on my home built system (Built 2 years ago no problems). I was in the middle of a game, and it froze. I got alot of artifacts and crazy colors (tie dye look). So long story short, I send my card back to EVGA (Nvidia 8800GT), and reinstall the new card. Two weeks later, I get the same problem. So I call EVGA, and they send me another 8800GT. I put that card in and boom same issue, except it took like 2 minutes this time. Everything seems normal upon first installation of video card, and then as soon as I kick on my game it messes up. So I'm thinking okay its not the video card (3rd video same problem). I call EVGA and they say that its either the power supply (Corsair 450W) or its a bad PCIE slot on mobo (Asus P5k-e wifi). If its a bad power supply, they said that it could have fried my video card. If its simply a bad slot on my video card, then it couldnt have fried my video card. They said that they did however test my video cards, and they both were bad. So my first reaction is that it has to be my power supply. So i bought a new power supply (Corsair 550W), hook it up last night and I still have no resolution. My computer will only get as far as to let me login into windows vista and then a black screen with nothing. So i guess its possible that my power supply went bad and fried my video card this last time before I could shut it down, but is there anything else anyone can think of that might be an issue. Upon multiple restarts of my computer, I am getting some multi colored pixels etc. that suggest possibly another bad video card. Could it possibly be my Mobo slot, or my CPU? Right now I am swapping parts, and my next swap is probably the mobo. I am going to try my vid card on my friends computer first to see if that is the issue. Any help or suggestions would be great.

-Burtimus

 

[RazberyBandit]

Have you been using a tuning program to overclock the card that loads those settings at startup? And what about your driver version? Any chance you've got the 196's that were burning up GPUs installed on your machine?

The only way to prove eVGA completely wrong (aside from you telling eVGA that if they want to send a technician out at their cost to prove something else caused the problem, they're more than welcome to come do so... LOL) is to stick a working card in your system and test it.

But!

I would go into Safe Mode first, get rid of any and all OC software and related profiles, perhaps even the nVidia drivers as well. (Dunno if nVidia drivers will even uninstall in Safe Mode anymore...) Then go into Windows normally and reinstall drivers. And not the 196's that fry stuff or 197's that were focused on GTX4XX performance. Something archived that's known to work properly with the card, like the 191's, 186's, or 185's.

You can find archived drivers here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

 

[bturchi]

I thought that maybe it was a driver issue, and someone else told me about the 196's. I checked, and I dont have that driver version. I will try using an old driver version just to check. I dont believe Nvidia drivers are on during safemode. Thanks for the info. I will try and see. BTW, I dont overclock anything, because I dont know enough to do so.