Torture test video card?

[Zoinks]

I am having bizzare windows crashes despite reinstalling XP, and changing out MB and memory. I'm not overclocking anything. The crashes occur more often in games. I want to stress the video card but nothing else to see if its the problem Something like memtest for video.

Recommendations?

 

[MarcVenice]

Erm loop some 3dmark06 tests ? You will need a licensed version, with the 'tryout' version you can't change any settings. You can also do built in timedemo's if you happen to have a game that has 1.

What kind of crashed though, be more specific. Videocards can eat a lot of energy, perhaps your PSU is lacking, although it might not be, but if you were to be more specific, people could give you more specific help or pointers to find out what's wrong with your rig.

 

[Zoinks]

I wish I could be more specific but mostly I get wierdness until I have to reboot. Most often it starts with display glitches which incldes the text disappearing under icons on the desktop. The white text disappears but the fuzzy black shadow underneath stays! Once this happens nothing displays right. Some lines of text on webpages will disappear. Some buttons will have no text in them, etc... Sometimes playing games the computer will BSOD or just reboot. Other times a program in the background will crash. I haven't noticed any pattern in the BSOD errors. The computer generally seems sluggish but I don't know if thats related. Outlook 2007 seems to take 5 minutes to start when booting but maybe thats just windows booting.

System
Intel 6600 Core2Duo
Asus P5N-E SLI latest BIOS (replaced once)
evga 8800GTX
2 GB generic (Apacer) RAM - this has been replaced twice for errors
Corsair HX520W power supply
two 7200.10 SATA hdd's (no RAID)
WinXP Pro SP2 up to date
Nothing is overclocked.

I'm probably going to get some Crucial RAM just because the Apacer stuff has been so unreliable. But since the glitches often involve video changes I'm now wondering about the video card.

 

[MarcVenice]

Bsods often relate to memory dumps and what not being invalid. Definately get rid of that apacer RAM. Did you memtest it ?

You're rig looks just fine, the ram sticks out like glow in the dark though, why did you try to skimp on allready cheap ram if the problem persists after getting new ram, or perhaps when using 1 stick, then look at your videocard, how about those drivers ? Did you get the latest for it ? Do you have an older videocard you could try ?

 

[Zoinks]

Yeah, the memory's got to go. Work bought the computer - I got to specify what I wanted but I didn't specify RAM. That won't happen again.

Trying another video card is a great idea - I don't know why I didn't think of it, but I do have another PCI-E card. I've tried both the lastest nvidia's as well as the XTreme-G drivers.

 

[fluffmonster]

rthdribl

Good for video stressing.

 

[apoppin]

you have a GTX ... download nTune from nvidia's site and run their torture test .... you can choose which components to stress

if you are OC'd on your CPU - even if not - change your divider if you suspect your RAM ... under-clock it 'till you get performance RAM