vid card dead???

[Coronado]

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?

[Chalenge]

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.

[Coronado]

What's a decent upgrade?  and which companies?  Galaxy?    EVGA.. Jaton   etc?

[Chalenge]

In my opinion EVGA all the way! 

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.

[Coronado]

Case has 4 fans, 2 -3inch and 2-4 inch   i thought i was pretty happy with the 8800, it lasted 3 years (?)

[ebfd11]

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

[Chalenge]

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.

[Coronado]

so, the actual components on the GC are probably o.k. just needs new heat sink?

[Reschke]

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

[Masherbrum]

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.   

[cattb]

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).

[Coronado]

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.

[Coronado]

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.

[Chalenge]

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.

[Coronado]

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.