Video card dying, or other problems?

[shadowmatter_]

Hi all,

So about a week ago I decided to install the newest drivers for my good ol' Radeon 4870 video card. The next day I booted into Windows and started playing TF2, and noticed that some of the pixels were turning green. And then the next day Youtube videos had "smeared" pictures. I chalked this up to the Windows driver I installed, and so I downgraded, but noticed the same problems. And then I booted into Linux, and noticed that videos there also wouldn't play correctly. And other times playing videos hosed Flash, or even Linux itself, and sometimes even automatically rebooted my machine.

So unless the official ATI/AMD drivers flash your video card's firmware (no, right?), I'm assuming no correlation between installing the drivers and the video failures. Given the failures in Linux, it's likely that my video card is dying.

I then poked around a bit, seeing what else might be hosed. (I don't want to purchase a new video card and experience the same problems, you know?) That's when I noticed in the BIOS that my 2.83GHz Intel Core 2 Quad CPU was showing an idle temperature of ~75C, and the motherboard is at 33C. The stock HSF is installed and the fan runs at 1200RPM. Is that, uh, a little hot? I've never had lock-ups or suspicious behavior before, but I certainly don't want to reduce the lifetime of my CPU. If so, I can reseat the HSF. (It was awhile ago, but I want to say that the HSF had thermal paste already applied.)

I think I have some Arctic Silver around, but it's a few years old… It doesn't go bad, does it?

Anyway, I just want to confirm that this is a good course of action:

Reseat the HSF and hope for lower temperatures. If that doesn't work…
Buy a new video card. Seems like the likely culprit. If that doesn't fix anything…
Probably replace the motherboard/CPU as well

Thanks!

 

[Seero]

Video card probably has gone bad. Your video card wasn't in good shape to begin with, and the new driver may have added a hair worth of stress which sunk the ship.

Your CPU is pretty warm, but I guess the entire setup is more than 3 years old. Reseating HS will help, but there are factors which a user can't fix, i.e. aged capacitors.

Reseat HS means to clean up whatever paste on it and the cpu and reapply new paste.

As long as it is in a sailed tube and comes out as glue, then the Arctic Silver is fine.

GPU doesn't affect CPU temp much unless the airflow is really bad.

Keep the CPU mobo for now until it gives. Reseat will help CPU temp, but don't expect too much. Just because you get better temp afterward doesn't mean those aged caps will suddenly becomes young again. Do backup though.

 

[tweakboy]

Redo everything. Take off HSF ,, clean cpu with alchohol,,, no silly not the one you drink,,,

clean the CPU spit shine. and clean HSF,, try again, apply paste a thin line then it will spread. Also make sure your fan is a bit faster. GL

 

[taltamir]

Hi all,

So about a week ago I decided to install the newest drivers for my good ol' Radeon 4870 video card. The next day I booted into Windows and started playing TF2, and noticed that some of the pixels were turning green. And then the next day Youtube videos had "smeared" pictures. I chalked this up to the Windows driver I installed, and so I downgraded, but noticed the same problems. And then I booted into Linux, and noticed that videos there also wouldn't play correctly. And other times playing videos hosed Flash, or even Linux itself, and sometimes even automatically rebooted my machine.

So unless the official ATI/AMD drivers flash your video card's firmware (no, right?), I'm assuming no correlation between installing the drivers and the video failures. Given the failures in Linux, it's likely that my video card is dying.

I then poked around a bit, seeing what else might be hosed. (I don't want to purchase a new video card and experience the same problems, you know?) That's when I noticed in the BIOS that my 2.83GHz Intel Core 2 Quad CPU was showing an idle temperature of ~75C, and the motherboard is at 33C. The stock HSF is installed and the fan runs at 1200RPM. Is that, uh, a little hot? I've never had lock-ups or suspicious behavior before, but I certainly don't want to reduce the lifetime of my CPU. If so, I can reseat the HSF. (It was awhile ago, but I want to say that the HSF had thermal paste already applied.)

I think I have some Arctic Silver around, but it's a few years old… It doesn't go bad, does it?

Anyway, I just want to confirm that this is a good course of action:

Reseat the HSF and hope for lower temperatures. If that doesn't work…
Buy a new video card. Seems like the likely culprit. If that doesn't fix anything…
Probably replace the motherboard/CPU as well

Thanks!

i see no faults with your logic or plan of action.