Display problems. Can this be fixed, or time for a new card?

[PsychosisSafari]

The other day I started getting this colourful display when loading my current game of choice.

Since it first started, it is now happening when loading into Windows. The screen is somewhat pixelated with pink or orange marks all over the screen.

I have tried various different drivers, and have installed them all cleanly, by removing the old ones, running driver sweeper, booting into safe mode, running driver sweeper again to be on the safe side, then booting into Windows normally, and installing a different driver.

I've also tried reinstalling DirectX.

Nothing has had any effect.

My machine doesn't run at all hot.

The graphics card is a 8800GTX, purchased when they first came out, so it's probably time for an upgrade anyway, but I wondered if anyone had any suggestions as to what may have caused this? Case is pretty dust free, no hardware/software chages recently either.

Also, on the topic of graphics cards, I didn't build this system myself. The graphics card is running off of the normal 2 power cables, but along the side of the graphics card there is also a thin black cable, with a metal end, which has been taped onto a small metal plate on the side of the card. Anyone have any idea what this is?

 

[randomkid]

The thin black cable is probably for the 8800GTX fan.

Do you mean to say that its happening Windows and all other games? Have you checked your monitor connection whether its loose or not? or the monitor itself with another PC?

 

[shadow187]

Probably the fan on thel ast question.

You might want to google, "Baking your 8800GTX". It's a technique used to fix dying 8800GTX's, and if you're upgrading, then it's a last-resort method.

As for upgrading, you'll want to go to no less than an HD5770 ($150) for an upgrade. Anything else will be a minor (1-3%) sidegrade.

 

[PsychosisSafari]

Thanks for the replies.

It's not a monitor issue, as this is causing blue screens too, and loose connection on the monitor wouldn't cause that. Also getting a windows pop up saying the display driver failed and recovered succesfully.

I'll take a look at the suggested baking method and try that before upgrading. I've been doing loads of overtime recently so have got a bit of money to play with, so was looking at 1 or maybe even 2, 5870's.

The idea is to upgrade everything fairly soon. Been sitting on some money since Christmas, waiting for the Fermi's to be released to see how they compare to the ATI's and to see if the 5870's drop in price at all.

I can't decide what to do in terms of CPU upgrade though. AMD have a 6 core processor on the horizon, which will be able to stand it's ground against the I7's, and Intel are starting to really annoy me with the change of socket every time a new processor comes out. I don't want to have to buy a new mobo and I7 now, and then when the new Intel processors come out, have to buy a new mobo again if I want to upgrade the cpu.

 

[Willakan]

Your graphics card is most likely dying. The visual corruption you are experiencing points to problems with the card's memory chips. Can you get a temperature reading from the card with rivatuner/gpu-z or a similar application? It is possible that there is some form of cooling problem.

Regarding baking, I guess it can't hurt.

 

[shadow187]

Teh AMD 6-core series is supposed to be very nice in terms of budget. However, they're not quite better for gaming, only for synthetics and applications. Games do not depend on cores as much as they do core speed. Software is way behiond in terms of utilizing cores and many games don't even have full quad-core support.