Geforce 8800GTS Graphic Bugs

[Felix2]

Since about 5 days I'm experiencing heavy graphic bugs like temporarily black screens for a few secs, textures turning yellow or parts of models in games splitting up and being scrambled across the screen or just the whole graphic engine failing while playing a game in the sense of a black screen that totally locks up the PC (what also sometimes happens is that if I alt+tab out of the game then windows will be back in standard VGA driver mode with 800x600 resolution and 8 bit colors =/)

My first thought was that the graphic card is overheating and I checked the heat and well it was too high so I cleaned the fan and now its down to 60-65°C again while playing with hard stress on it (before it were temperatures along the 70-75°C) but the bugs didn't really vanish = /

What really is strange is that it only happens in some games. For instance in Prey it works with no problems for several hours while Stalker dies in 2 minutes and Civilization 4 too.

In Stalker it helped turning off antialiasing to fix the texture bug and make the game work for 5 minutes testing time without any problems at all once I turned it back on it died again = (

Civilization 4 even has problems with Anti-Aliasing multisamples set to 0 but sometimes it runs for some hours without problems ...

I just don't know what to do anymore I didn't overclock it in any way (even though the card is overclocked by default which I can't even change ... Core: 513Mhz Memory: 1587Mhz and if I try to change it back to 500Mhz and 1600Mhz and restart it just resets to the other values which I don't understand either)

The PC has been running without any problems for a few months but I recently moved it a long distance (first with a car to one place gamed there for a while and then problems started to appear (actually the problems started to really appear after I installed the latest Forceware drivers but reverting back didn't help at all) and then with a train to a different one where I still am right now.

I got the latest drivers again didn't overclock undusted the card and while its not being used by any application it goes with 54-56°C so that is alright. My PSU is sufficient (600W) and my normal memory and CPU (2GB DDR2 and Intel Core 2 Duo 6600) mainboard is cooled aswell and there are no parts particularly overheating ...

I really hope I didn't permanently damage my video card with the one time overheating which I might very well have but I'm open for any solutions or explanations you might have to offer.

Thanks in advance

[HawMan]

What PSU Do you have?

[Felix2]

Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 600W

[HawMan]

Id say its a power problem, ive never heard of 'Be Quiet Dark Power Pro' PSU's In my Life, Which makes me think that its an untrusted / poor brand, and when it comes to the 8800 Series, They want a nice, Stable PSU to run with.

I doubt you fried it, Someone on here said they saw a 8800 card at 70-80 *Celcius under load.

[Felix2]

Its a big brand and its actually very reliable.

That is the website if you want to check it out

[HawMan]

Ah right, My Mistake.

Not sure, Cant be a lack of Power, Someone else will be able to help you out.

[Deleted090308]

What driver version are you using? Have you tried this one: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_158.22.html

[Felix2]

Thats the driver version I used before upgrading to the latest drivers from the Nvidia site and which didn't help either but I'll try it again and see if it changes anything.

[Deleted090308]

Remember to uninstall the "old" driver first and install the new one in VGA mode with anti-virus turned off.

[Felix2]

Did exactly that and it didn't help one bit = /

Seemed to make things only a bit worse because now some objects in the game are blinking in and out in the sense of appearing and disappearing

[Deleted090308]

Is it only in certain games you get those artifacts/crashes? D3D or OpenGL?

[Felix2]

So far I had them in Stalker and Civilization 4

In Prey I didn't have them even though it uses my graphic card way more.

[Deleted090308]

So - it's most likely not the card or the PSU. Have you looked for patches for the games?

[Felix2]

They are both the latest versions available but the interesting part is they did both work really fine till like 5 days ago = /

So something must have happened in between to make them go crash like this

[HawMan]

If prey and other games worked, have you tried Re-installing STALKER and Civilization 4 ?

Have you tried running something like 3dmark 07? Just to see if they close / Artifacts appear while stressing the card.

Make sure the Video card is securely Seated and the PCI-E Power cable didnt fall out when you moved, Unlikley They did, but it is a possibility.

[Felix2]

3dMark 06 works without problems as does Aquamark 3

What doesn't work is GTA San Andreas which just displays a black screen and then exits and Star Wars: Empire at war which sais that it can't initialise the D3D9 Engine

I made the Direct Draw and Direct3d tests with Dxdiag which return errors as soon as going into full screen mode...

DirectDraw just in the full screen mode and Direct3d can't even complete one test without exiting with error codes = /

[HawMan]

Im at a complete Loss. Hopefully Someone else can offer some more advice that can help you more than i can.

Is the Card still under warrenty? Or is there another machine you could try it on, or even Stick an older G card back in and try STALKER etc?

[Felix2]

Rebooting actually fixed that problem with DirectX and I'm at a complete loss too = /

Can't test the card in another PC since this is the only one with a PCI-E slot I have and warranty not sure ... If I can't resolve this soon I'll try reinstalling windows or something ^^

[Deleted090308]

I don't think it's the card. I'll see if we can move this thread to the gaming forum.

[pharoah]

that is a strange little problem you have there.first off dont worry about the clocks those are quite normal for an 8800gts.being you have moved the pc in a car then on a train.my first thoughts would be check all the components to see if anything has wiggled loose.also double check all power supply connections to assure they are firmly in place.