graphics card dieing??

[robcava]

Hi all. I have a few questions related to a problem that started yesterday. First my system specs

P4 3.2gHZ
Corsair PC3200 2x512MB
ASUS P4S800 mobo
Sapphire ATI x800xt
WinXP sp2
3 antek case fans (80mm)

System ran great for 11 months. Now, after about 2 minutes of load on my graphics card (EQ2/Doom/3DMark) the graphics become unstable and then the comp freezes and I must cold reboot. Sometimes when it freezes the final screen has alot of graphic corruption. Any non-graphic intense use and my PC runs fine. I am monitoring temperature and gpu fan with ATI tray tools during these episodes and I am hitting ~77C with fan running at 100% right before it fails. I verified the fan is running visually. I do not overclock.

I uninstalled all vid card drivers, ran driver cleaner and reinstalled the driver and still had the same problem. One odd thing I noticed is that when i open SMARTGart in ATI tray tools the AGP is listed current 0x and the slider set to off. When I move this to 8X and restart it gives the same reading in SMARTGart, still 0x and off. I verified that it is set at 8X in my bios and 3DMARK has it listed aas 8X in my system specs.

I am wondering if my video card is starting to fail. It is warrantied for another month at Newegg, but I dont want to send it back if the problem isnt the card. Any advice or suggestions? Is there something else I should try or check before blaming the video card?


Thanks in advance!!

 

[Nitestick]

i would send it back anyway!!! it can't do any harm but it will hurt your wallet if you miss the warranty period. perhaps try underclocking it? if a graphics card is being troublesome sometimes underclocking it can give it a little nudge.

edit: p.s. be careful about double posting, and welcome to Tech-Forums

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Unless their is dirt blocking airflow in your case / graphics card, it's probolly failing and I would send it back.