Bad graphics card?

[jtl2901]

My comp froze up a few times while playing a game. I have a nvidia 8800 gts vid card and when the comp rebooted there were blue vertical lines through the screen and after a few reboots it would only boot into safe mode. Is this a vid card problem or a hard drive crash???? Please help....

 

[alvine]

vertical lines means the video card memory is going bad
when in safe mode do you still see the lines? if not then its the drivers
uinstall the drivers while in safe mode, restart, install fresh drivers

good luck

 

[jtl2901]

Vertical lines are still there in safe mode. Bought a nvidia quadro fx4600 to replace it, will that run games roughly as well as the nvidia 8800 gts? Also can you send me a reliable link to the drivers for the quadro fx4600 card???

 

[WeeKay]

Quadro graphics card are designed for professional graphcis, not for gaming. The main difference are the drivers as Quadros are still based on same chips like GeForces are, but it would have been better to buy GeForce instead if gaming is what you want. According to Wikipedia that card is based on GeForce 8800GTX, but as said, Quadro drivers might make it perform worse on games because they are not optimized for gaming performance. Look for Nvidia.com for drivers, there might also be software mods to make drivers think that the card is GeForce.

 

[jtl2901]

Gotcha. But it should still run games like mass effect and crysis decently right? Any idea where I would find the software mods to make it perform like a geforce 8800 gtx card? And is that process really technically difficult?