Here's a little backstory...
About 6 months ago, I noticed some weird graphical corruption on my screen. Pixels that appeared to be greenish-yellowish in color would pepper my desktop and there was massive graphical anomalies that would occur in a game if I tried to run one. After extensive troubleshooting, I finally swapped the CPU and motherboard and things finally returned to normal...
Until now.
Getting the same problem. I have no clue what could cause this. Was just starting out on a new game of San Andreas when it locked up. After a minute or two it crashed to desktop and I tried to run it again. This time I got the massive graphical anomalies in-game and later a crash. When it went to the desktop this time, I got the peppering of pixels again just like a while back. When these are visible, the desktop is fairly unstable, crashing at any kind of video playback and occasionally a BSOD.
A list of things I've tried:
1. Different Nvidia drivers, some going as far back as TNT drivers.
2. Taking out my Audigy 2 card (sound card problems sometimes manifest as visual artifacts).
3. Reapplying Arctic Silver 5. It has a 3rd party cooler that keeps it in the 50s the vast majority of the time, 60s under load.
4. Swapping motherboard (via chipset to nvida), and trying different CPUs.
5. Setting the hardware acceleration selector (or whatever) in the troubleshooting tab of the video properties does not help, even at the lowest setting.
6. Uninstalling nvidia drivers and working with it as a basic video output board *does* work and allows it to be stable, albeit incredibly slow. (closed/minimized windows "peal" off the screen)
As of right now, I can only think of two things:
A. My GeForce is dying for whatever reason. I'm not big on this theory because for absolutely no reason it was brought back from the dead after swapping the motherboard. Also, I was briefly able to get it back to normal for about a day when I had turned off the PSU and unplugged it from the back overnight.
B. My PSU is somehow responsible. It's a newish PSU from Antec and is more than capable to power my system but I've always noticed that when it's been unplugged, it takes time for it to be able to power up my system once it's plugged back in. I would guestimate about a 2 minute "charge" time from plugging it in and turning it on and being able to power my PC. An older Thermaltake PSU I have does not do this and is able to power my system immediately after switching it on.
I also suspect the PSU because I can actually hear it whine. Like an older CRT monitor, it'll make sounds when it's powered up and when my GeForce starts dying on me and eventually shuts off (PC still on but no display), I can hear a distinct pitch change in the PSU when it does this.
Anyway, I thought I'd through this out for you guys to guess on. I'm not going to replace anything right now since I'll likely be building a new system late this year or early next. I would like for a working desktop though, even if I can't play any games anymore.
About 6 months ago, I noticed some weird graphical corruption on my screen. Pixels that appeared to be greenish-yellowish in color would pepper my desktop and there was massive graphical anomalies that would occur in a game if I tried to run one. After extensive troubleshooting, I finally swapped the CPU and motherboard and things finally returned to normal...
Until now.
Getting the same problem. I have no clue what could cause this. Was just starting out on a new game of San Andreas when it locked up. After a minute or two it crashed to desktop and I tried to run it again. This time I got the massive graphical anomalies in-game and later a crash. When it went to the desktop this time, I got the peppering of pixels again just like a while back. When these are visible, the desktop is fairly unstable, crashing at any kind of video playback and occasionally a BSOD.
A list of things I've tried:
1. Different Nvidia drivers, some going as far back as TNT drivers.
2. Taking out my Audigy 2 card (sound card problems sometimes manifest as visual artifacts).
3. Reapplying Arctic Silver 5. It has a 3rd party cooler that keeps it in the 50s the vast majority of the time, 60s under load.
4. Swapping motherboard (via chipset to nvida), and trying different CPUs.
5. Setting the hardware acceleration selector (or whatever) in the troubleshooting tab of the video properties does not help, even at the lowest setting.
6. Uninstalling nvidia drivers and working with it as a basic video output board *does* work and allows it to be stable, albeit incredibly slow. (closed/minimized windows "peal" off the screen)
As of right now, I can only think of two things:
A. My GeForce is dying for whatever reason. I'm not big on this theory because for absolutely no reason it was brought back from the dead after swapping the motherboard. Also, I was briefly able to get it back to normal for about a day when I had turned off the PSU and unplugged it from the back overnight.
B. My PSU is somehow responsible. It's a newish PSU from Antec and is more than capable to power my system but I've always noticed that when it's been unplugged, it takes time for it to be able to power up my system once it's plugged back in. I would guestimate about a 2 minute "charge" time from plugging it in and turning it on and being able to power my PC. An older Thermaltake PSU I have does not do this and is able to power my system immediately after switching it on.
I also suspect the PSU because I can actually hear it whine. Like an older CRT monitor, it'll make sounds when it's powered up and when my GeForce starts dying on me and eventually shuts off (PC still on but no display), I can hear a distinct pitch change in the PSU when it does this.
Anyway, I thought I'd through this out for you guys to guess on. I'm not going to replace anything right now since I'll likely be building a new system late this year or early next. I would like for a working desktop though, even if I can't play any games anymore.
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