Video Card Dying?

[Nailbunny]

I'm having weird issues with my video card and I'm wondering if the card is dying.

Basically what it's doing is; I'll be sitting here using the PC (surfing, using word, anything) and suddenly without warning I'll get a solid white screen with small red "bowtie" shaped blocks. The machine is completely locked at this point. Doing a hard reboot fixes the problem...until it does it again. Sometimes it'll just be a solid white screen.

The video card is about 8 months old. It's a Chaintech GT21 Geforce ti4200 128mb. It was working fine until..oh..3 months ago. I had installed Splinter Cell and smack midgame this problem started happening, but ONLY when I played splinter cell. This was the 1st instance of it messing up. Now it has started doing it at other times.

I was using the latest detonator drivers, and have downgraded to 4345 drivers. I tried this once before when it happened during Splinter Cell gameplay, but that did not fix it.

So could it be a driver issue .. or is the card falling apart?

System Specs:
Dual AMD 1.2
Tyan 4622-4N mobo
512MB registered DDR

 

[DaveSimmons]

> So could it be a driver issue .. or is the card falling apart?

Yes.

First thing to check is whether the 25 cent fan on the vcard heatsink is spinning, if not your card is cooking itself to death.

If the fan's OK you should contact Chaintech with the symptons (1-year warranty I hope). Don't be too surprised if they make you do a fresh install of Windows and re-install the drivers that came with the card, to convince them it's not a driver issue.

 

[Frodolives]

That's my first thought also, heat is such a common culprit! Sometimes you'll notice a difference just by removing the side of your case and applying a box fan 🙂

 

[Nailbunny]

yea. I checked the fan and it's spinning fine. I was concerned about heat as well so I did remove the side of my case. Still did it. So far I haven't had the problem after downgrading to the 4345 drivers...yet.