Dying video cards look like______________?

[rivethead]

What's it "look" like, general, when a VC starts to die?

I have a "feeling" that something in my system is about ready to die. I think it's the video card.

My specs are below, but here's the run down.

I haven't had problems with the system in years. An occasional crash, but nothing frequent.

I had some problems last summer with BF:BC2, but that was narrowed down to a audio driver.

However, I just started playing ME2 a few weeks ago and now I'm getting blue screens daily/hourly. Last week playing Spider Solitare and listening to music with Media Monkey cause a crash (Steam running in the background).

And last night after 20 minutes of ME2, the video just cut out.......the game kept going (sound anyway) but on the monitor was nothing but vertical lines (pinks, reds, oranges...kind of faded and very narrow).

I'm thinking that's gotta be the VC. But could it also be the power supply? My PSU is the oldest component in the sytem at seven years old. I've been worried about it for years now, but it's an Antec.......

Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts, advice, and comments.

I'm going to do an extensive testing this weekend (turn off all the overclocks, and I've got onboard video in the mobo....I'll try using that to see if the problems disappear...then I'll know it's VC-related).

Thanks!

 

[tweakboy]

Do a memtest as I feel the culprit is the RAM possibly.

well figure this out.. gl

 

[RavenSEAL]

Artifacts, high temperatures, random crashes, etc.

 

[rivethead]

Artifacts, high temperatures, random crashes, etc.

Yeah, that's the one thing that I would have expected: artifacts. I haven't seen those.

But man, this gut feeling I have is strong. I know you guys and gals know what I'm talking about....you build a system, you set it up, you stress it (even with or without overclocking) and you know when you've got it stable.

And then things start not acting like they have been......that's where I'm at.

The crashes are random, but I haven't thought about looking at temps - good call.

 

[rivethead]

Do a memtest as I feel the culprit is the RAM possibly.

well figure this out.. gl

I'd take that.....since RAM is about the cheapest component to replace these days!

 

[notty22]

There are a couple free ram tests.
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/ runs under windows, let it go for a day in the background.
http://www.memtest.org/ runs off a bootdisk or a boot stick usb.
You could also stop o/c both your cpu and gpu or one at a time.
I would consider that psu suspect at 7 years old, and @350 watts.
Bad video cards often trip the gpu driver under any conditions.
Or allow you to install windows, but when you install the driver, then you get constant crashes.

 

[rivethead]

Well, I don't think it's the video card after all. Worse. The bleeping motherboard isn't all together. When I go into the BIOS, none of my four hard drives are there (all six SATA ports say "Not Detect".

And although it still boots to Windows, Windows explorer only shows my C drive (SSD boot drive) and D drive. E through H drives (I had multiple partitions) are gone.

Time for research. I think I'll start with carefully taking everything apart, cleaning and reconnecting.

 

[Zorander]

My guess would be on overheating VC and, to a lesser extent, bad driver. Have you tried cleaning all fans and re-applying thermal paste? Re-installing/updating all drivers might be worthwhile too.

And FYI, I used to have heating issues with my video card as well. Games (and the whole system) would crash randomly without exhibiting a single artifact.