PSU, Video Card, or Drivers? Please help.

Mloot

Diamond Member
Aug 24, 2002
3,037
25
91
I got a new vid card today, and something is wrong. I bought a Inno3D 128mb MX440 PCI card to go in my AGP-less Dell. After the initial driver installation headaches, I got everything up and running great. I ran through several loops of 3DMark, UT2K3 demo, and DroneZMark to test for stability. That took a couple of hours and I was very pleased with the card.

However, after having left the computer for a few hours, I came back and as soon as the monitor came off stand-by mode, the screen turned very fuzzy and the monitor went back into stand-by mode. I could not get it back up. I tried rebooting several times and I was able to get to my desktop, but the screen would go fuzzy and stand-by mode would kick in after about a minute. I was using the 41.09 Dets from Nvidia's website. I took out the card and made sure there was no dust in the PCI slot, no wires were touching the card, and I made sure the card was seated well and all connections were secure.

Here is my system:

Dell SFF
2.4 P4
512mb pc2100
CDRW
40gb HDD
180w PSU
WinXP home edition

That's all the components I have. Do the symptoms I have described sound like my PSU is too weak to run the card? Could it be the drivers that are fruity? Or could I just have a messed up video card?

I know the PSU looks weak compared to most rigs, but I have used several video cards in the past for several weeks each with no problems like this. These included a 7000 PCI, a 9000 PCI, an AIW VE PCI, and a 64mb Inno3D MX440 PCI (the exact same card as the new one, only half the memory).

I am back to integrated video and am having no problems at all. I would appreciate any input you guys could give. Thanks.
 

kidjan

Member
Jan 29, 2003
32
0
0
Offhand, I'd bet the barn that the video card just went bad on you. Sometimes new components will do that.


Do you have another video card you can swap in? I doubt it's the PS, since that card draws very little power (certainly not much more than whatever you were using prior), and it seems unlikely that it would be the monitor to me given that you haven't had problems with that before.


I would try to swap in a new video card - if that works, then you know it's just a defective video card, which isn't all that uncommon or unfeasable.