Video card broken, or WTF?

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neko_ceko

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Whenever I play games I have massive problems with them. Like, sometimes game crashes after 30 sec. of playing it, sometimes my PC turns off after 1 minute, but not completely, I can still hear the sounds and I hear the PC is on, but monitor just goes off, sometimes error come out like "[Game name] failed to initialize, press ok to terminate the application" etc., sometimes the games won't load at the first loading screen, when I turn the game on, and the game crashes after that, and all the graphics on my PC are ****ed then, and I need to restart my PC, etc., stuff like that..

It started happening like 6 months ago, or so. I thought it was overheating because firstly it was only turning my PC off., like I said above. I got another fan, but that didn't help. Then I figured out that if I turn off the programs that run in background that helps, and it did, but then it started getting worse every day and today (well, for the last 1 month), I can't play any 3D games I tried at all. I tried everything and nothing helped, so I came here to ask what's wrong with it.

I'm getting a new PC soon, but I need to know what's wrong with it, so I can sell it.

My PC specs are (if you need them):

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3
Processor: DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, 1800 MHz (9 x 200)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 (3 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)
RAM: 1024 MB (DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM) (2x 512 MB)
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (256 MB)
 
First question i would ask is have you updated teh drivers? If so then get a different graphics card and try it (lesser one is fine, this is just to test teh slot on the MB). Also see if the fan on your Graphics card is working. One last thing what level PSU are you using?
 
One more question: When was the last time you reinstalled windows? Do you have a spare HDD around you can test with? It sounds like you might have driver issues like ben said, but you could also have some video card issues, what you are experiencing when your desktop is F****d is called artifacting, which when unoverclocked means either bad drivers or faulty hardware. Have you tried feeling around inside the pc when it messes up like this? Mainly checking the temp on the gpu heatsink and cpu heatsink. I think you should run a memtest aswell, try and pinpoint what is causing this, it could be a variety of things.

hmm, after a couple of seconds of thought, does this only happen when you run 3D applications?
 
I updated drivers yesterday, don't have a different graphic card to try it with ;o, the fan is working, and how do I found out PSU level :p?

Well, I never did reinstalled Windows, and I got spare HDD because I deleted most of the stuff on this computer which I don't need (because I'm gonna sell it soon). I didn't tried feeling arround.. And yes, it only happens when I run 3D stuff. (I'll go do a memtest now).
 
What wattage? It should say something like [number]w like 450w or something of the matter. But seeing as how its a 7300GT, it shouldnt be that demading. I had a 7300TC/LE OC that was very minimalistic on power requirements, i ran that sucker on a 230w and it was still plenty. Im thinking that maybe it could be a component reaching its MTBF limit, and maybe is hittin the curb? seeing how 2d works good and 3d is failing, it could possibly be a GPU isolated issue, but could also be pinned down to the more memory intensive stuff (hence the memtest). what happens with the visualizers in WMP? how about 3dmark? (if you dont have a copy you can just try 3dmark2000, its free and small download, for testing tho, not benching hahah 7300 is a budget card)
 
Said 0 errors on the memtest.. And visualizers work just fine :/
Runned the 3DMark200, and 19035 3D marks..
 
lol it wasnt for the 3d marks haha i was "memtesting" your graphics card. it passed, thats the point... were there any artifacts or problems during the 3dmark?

does anyone out there know of a gpu stresstest like prime95 but for a gpu?

hmm... have you tried reinstaling DirectX? thats all i can think of, this has me officially stumped
 
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