Hardware question

[Seniosh]

Hey guys,

Does anybody know a good way to determine if a Video Card is damaged? Mine's been artifacting, making my computer restart, freezing, etc. I've gotta figure out if the hardware has been damaged, or if it's "just" a driver problem.

I've browsed hardware forums, but i thought maybe you guys would have some suggestions on where to look further. Nothing i can find seems to tell me whether the card is damaged.

My card's an EVGA Nvidia 8800GT. Probably can't RMA it at this point.

Any ideas on what to do would be appreciated

[bob196045]

Not the expert here but my uneducated understanding of such happening is to check your connections, make sure all your intakes are dust free, if you have enhanced settings reset them back to the original setting and see if this goes away, if not the card is probably no good

And this one I know from personal experience if you have ATI and your chainging it to Nvidia... forget it

Enjoy
Bob

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

I had issues with my video card not too long ago. Good signs that show if your video card is messing up:

1: You are playing a game and suddenly it blacks out, but is still running
2: Your desktop changes occasionally, and Anti-aliasing on fonts stops working.
3: Your computer doesn't appear to be turning on, but keyboard controls still work (Num Lock, Caps Lock, etc, just things that will trigger a light to turn on fron your keyboard)
4: Your computer bluescreens under too much visual stress.
5: Try to find a different video card to test out and see if the same problems remain.
6: Your computer is unable to support resolutions that are a little bit above 1024x768

See if any of those apply and make sure it's not another piece of hardware giving you issues.

[Razorwing]

Could be just a fan problem. My comp shuts down about once a year when too much dust have built up on the fan for it to be able to sufficiently cool my graphics card. At least I hope that's the problem because fans are one of the cheapest components there are. Nigh-on impossible to switch on your own though... and regardless of that one doesn't want to make a mistake fitting it becuase then fzzzt the comp starts belching fire or somethng.

[InsanitySorrow]

It depends on the drivers you are using, if they are beta drivers, downgrade to the released stable version before them.