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Video card problem, computer dies during gaming. Please help!

M

mattdude

Junior Member
Hi,

I have a Sparkle Geforce 6800 card and sometimes when playing 3D games (Doom 3 and Far Cry in particular) the card seems to suddenly just stop working in the middle of a game. This happens around 15 - 30 minutes into a game. The sound stops, the screen goes blank, and it stays blank until I cut off the power to the computer and turn it back on (the ordinary power switch doesn't work). Pressing the reset button causes something to happen, the HDD light starts blinking a little, but the screen remains blank and the computer doesn't actually seem to completely restart. I cannot control the computer in any way by entering windows or anything, the screen is blank and the computer seems totally dead.

Any ideas on what may be causing this and how to fix it? My power supply is a 450 watt Cooler Master so I don't think that's the problem. I recently upgraded my CPU from 2.4 GHz to 3GHz P4 and also my ram from DDR333 to DDR400 because of that (old ram wasn't compatible with with the new CPU). This problem didn't happen before the upgrade. So has my graphics card suddenly gone faulty, or is my graphics card not compatible with 3GHz either? 🙂 Anyone have any clues? I've tried various different versions of drivers, the problem is always the same.

Thanks for any help!
 
Possibly an overheating problem? The CPU and vid card works pretty hard during those games and you did just increase the amount of heat in your box with the new components.
 
Yeah I suppose. Any way to find out if this really is the problem? Any way around it?

I actually did buy two fans to put in the case when I made the upgrade. When not playing a game, the CPU temperature is around 47 degrees celsius and the system temperature around 50. The GPU is at around 71. Are these high temperatures high?
 
Checked for dust bunnies, but found none.

Opening the case cools it down quite a bit. It puts the GPU at 66 and system temperature at 41. But it doesn't solve the problem when gaming. Any other ideas? Anyone?

Thanks!
 
Download Prime 95 and run the setting which stresses Heating the components the most for 24 hours. If the computer doesnt freeze, you know its not your cpu or ram. Also that program lets you test memory and cpu more extensively for stability. You can test the ram by downloading WinMemTest86 onto the floppy disk.

As far the videocard is concerned the temperatures seem OK. Download Motherboard Monitor 5.3.7.0 or some other version and run Prime 95 to see the load on the PSU rail voltages and their fluctuation during the day.

These programs can help pinpoint overheating system problems, system instability, and a problem with your power supply.
 
Thanks. I haven't run Prime95 for 24 hours yet, but I don't think the CPU or RAM is the problem. I will give it a shot though. I ran it for a little while with no problems.

My QDI motherboard is not supported by Motherboard Monitor. Should I just choose any old motherboard from the list or what? Is it important?
 
MY first thought here is your PSU is not stable enough causing your cpu to shut down maybe. Had same type of problem installed new PSU know problems since
 
It could be a driver issue. I had the same problem where the monitor would just shut off and the rest of the system would still be running. I uninstalled all the drivers and then reinstalled and that seemed to fix it.
 
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