Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Coronado on January 30, 2011, 05:07:06 PM

Title: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 30, 2011, 05:07:06 PM
8800 GTS (?) driving along in my automobile (wirby) no particular place to go.....i step away for a minute,,, comeback and notice my cursor is a small white puff of smoke set where my sight is,,,then my monitor "flashes" and i have what i call an"HTpalet" in various places on my screen,,, one corner is 2 or 3 rows of small trees, another corner is all the town street signs arranged in a couple of rows. a metal rail fence with a gate set across my screen. I log off and reboot a couple times.. same thing but now my screen locks up...now when i log on to the computer,, when the black command screen comes on for bios setup,,it's a bunch of garbled numbers, letters and characters and when the desktop comes up,,i have a series of vertical dashed lines across the screen along with the desktop icons,,i took vid card out,, cleaned it..reseated it to no avail. and trying to continue on to Aces High,,it just locks up after clicking the desktop icon,,,,ideas? :( :pray
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Chalenge on January 30, 2011, 08:31:02 PM
Sounds like it cooked. If you feel up to it you can dissect it and replace the thermal material. The gooey stuff cooks off over time even on motherboards and CPUs so you need to maintain them over time. If you dont care to do that then its time to visit your retailer online or off.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 30, 2011, 11:43:05 PM
What's a decent upgrade?  and which companies?  Galaxy?    EVGA.. Jaton   etc?
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Chalenge on January 30, 2011, 11:55:16 PM
In my opinion EVGA all the way!  :aok

I live a charmed life and never had a problem with the 480s but today I recommend the 580s but you may not need that much card. If you can find a 460 it would probably be enough for most of the AH graphics details but I have taken to the shadows and high res and so on so I have the 580s. I modded my cards right out of the box for super-cooling and I use SLI with dual PSUs so be aware the two things you want to look at are cooling solutions (make sure you case has good air flow) and adequate power.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 31, 2011, 12:21:57 AM
Case has 4 fans, 2 -3inch and 2-4 inch   i thought i was pretty happy with the 8800, it lasted 3 years (?)
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: ebfd11 on January 31, 2011, 01:19:53 AM
Case has 4 fans, 2 -3inch and 2-4 inch   i thought i was pretty happy with the 8800, it lasted 3 years (?)

If you want to spend the money the PNY 470's work great in the game.
http://www3.pny.com/GTX-470-1280MB-PCIe-P2876C434.aspx
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Chalenge on January 31, 2011, 01:27:21 AM
Case has 4 fans, 2 -3inch and 2-4 inch   i thought i was pretty happy with the 8800, it lasted 3 years (?)

Did you try replacing the thermal material? Its like putting a new heatsink on your CPU except this time the only thing new is the thermal material. You will need a philips head screwdriver some cleaner (thermal material remover) some surface purifier and arctic silver 5.

I still use an 8800 GT for PhysX.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 31, 2011, 07:49:24 PM
so, the actual components on the GC are probably o.k. just needs new heat sink?
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Reschke on January 31, 2011, 07:57:24 PM
so, the actual components on the GC are probably o.k. just needs new heat sink?

Maybe you really will not know until you toss it back in the system and try to boot it up. I haven't used one as just the PhysX card yet but it might work like that with not a whisper of trouble...OR you might find out that it also fried the PCI-E slot on the motherboard and then you never know what else happened. I DOUBT IT HAPPENED like that though. The description you gave sounds like the GPU got too hot and that was it.

Here is what I just got from NewEgg and its working like a champ.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130550
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Masherbrum on January 31, 2011, 08:05:33 PM
What's a decent upgrade?  and which companies?  Galaxy?    EVGA.. Jaton   etc?

EVGA - Nvidia (get an "AR" as they are Lifetime Warranty.   The "TR" is a two-year)
XFX - ATi

Both have the best warranties.   
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: cattb on January 31, 2011, 08:13:02 PM
My 2 cents for whats its worth.
I like evga and xfx, because of the warranty. (lifetime in most cases but not all)
You watch though for some of the evga 460 cards because they are only warranted for 2 years.
I have been looking at cards thinking of a upgrade and selling my xfx 8800gt.
The 460 and the 6850 are very close to each other in performance.(this is for your information, not a suggestion to buy either)
The 460 has more performance then the 465.(This from reviews I have read 3 months ago, maybe this has changed)
I would make sure what ever you get, the drivers and card will work with your configuration. (MB,chipset, etc).
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 31, 2011, 08:37:32 PM
Mainboard :   MSI MS-7235
Chipset :   Intel P965
Processor :   Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2133 MHz
Physical Memory :   2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM )
Video Card :   Nvidia Corp
Hard Disk :   SATA (160 GB)
DVD-Rom Drive :   LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1P SCSI CdRom Device
Network Card :   Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd) 802.11b/g Wireless Controller
Network Card :   Realtek Semiconductor Realtek Semiconductor
Operating System :   Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 Service Pack 2
DirectX :   Version 9.0c  (September 2006)
 This is what i have,,inmteresting the video card isnt specified.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on January 31, 2011, 08:59:35 PM
EVGA - Nvidia (get an "AR" as they are Lifetime Warranty.   The "TR" is a two-year)
XFX - ATi

Both have the best warranties.   
yeah, I'm diggin the "LIFETIME WARRANTY" option.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Chalenge on January 31, 2011, 10:14:29 PM
You dont need a new heat sink. Probably the thermal material (compound) can be replaced and the card will work again. Arctic Silver 5 has worked for me and dropped the temp of some of my cards as low as 10C on first application. You can get a little more temp off by allowing the material to cycle through over the course of a few months. If you replace the thermal material and the card doesnt work then its cooked.

You can search youtube for "How to Remove thermal paste and reapply to your Video card" for a really geeky guy doing the operation but you will notice he isnt all that good at eye-hand coordination and the card he has doesnt have a heatsink on the memory at all. He is right though... most cards have really cheap thermal compound.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 01, 2011, 08:35:25 AM
Looks pretty simple and "just a dab'll do ya"..the one i saw , he used alcohol for cleaning, i assume that's not an issue.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Reschke on February 01, 2011, 08:58:57 AM
You can use alcohol just don't spill the bottle on the card. Make sure you wet your cloth to wipe away the old compound and you can get started with the next coating of new stuff when that one is clean.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 01, 2011, 10:36:17 AM
she's apart.. cleaned... cleaned again...took time to take out fans and power supply cleaned all those as well..  750 watt power supply...suffecient?
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Reschke on February 01, 2011, 01:04:24 PM
Yep that should be for what you have in there.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 01, 2011, 09:49:18 PM
and should i stick with a DDR2 card?
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Spikes on February 01, 2011, 09:58:05 PM
DDR2 video card or RAM?
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 01, 2011, 10:08:29 PM
vid card,,,i have a 8800 GTX now, if the thermal paste doesnt work,,i'm shopping.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Reschke on February 01, 2011, 10:17:41 PM
The RAM part of the card doesn't matter. If your power supply can support the card you are looking at getting as a just in case type then by all means go get it.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 02, 2011, 03:24:59 PM
lol...alrighty... cleaned everything...re-compounded the card....no power...period.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Reschke on February 03, 2011, 12:22:12 AM
Well ain't that a $^&(#...guess your power supply started going out and took the video with it. IF you have a different power supply trying plugging that in and do not plug in the video card. You should get power then; SHOULD that is and if you do then see if you have enough go juice in the psu to make the video card work. IF not then you might have to buy one and test it that way as well.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 05, 2011, 08:45:56 AM
Due to an excess of frustration and a lack of sense, I tapped it on the table twice, it's working (PSU) . Altho i still have graphics issues, i can browse anywhere,, reloaded AH but still freezes when i click the icon. :headscratch:
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on February 05, 2011, 10:23:49 AM
Due to an excess of frustration and a lack of sense, I tapped it on the table twice, it's working (PSU) . Altho i still have graphics issues, i can browse anywhere,, reloaded AH but still freezes when i click the icon. :headscratch:

Your PSU probably has a loose component and tapping it reconnected it and now when your displaycard wants to draw more current when going to 3D mode the PSU fails again. My guess.
Title: Re: vid card dead???
Post by: Coronado on February 05, 2011, 03:51:36 PM
deleted the nvidia files and downloaded the drivers,, went to reinstall them from desktop and it tells me it can't find compatible graphics hardware.