8800 Artifacts.

[DaedalusHex]

Greetings,

I've been using this comptuer for about one year. It mounts the following hardware:

Intel e6600
nForce 6 680 SLI
nVidia 8800 GTS 640
Vista 64 Business

It has been running smooth and nice for the whole year, normal temperature on the card would elevated to 80-90 celcius on load.

Yesterday though, as I started a game on Left 4 Dead, I started seeing red dots, black cubes and purple/cyan lines all over the screen, until the whole computer froze, then I had to reboot manually. Upon restarting, I got a BSOD.
I am now running Vista in safe mode... I tried updating my GPU drivers, nForce drivers and still no success. Sometimes I can boot in normal mode, but it only takes a few mins before I start seeing the red dots all over the screen before it freezes. Its very cold here and the GPU temp is sitting at a steady 67 celcius now. The GPU fan is running.

Any ideas?

 

[carnageX]

80-90 is pretty high for a card...starting to get too high. My GTS 320mb only ran in the 70's on load in Crysis... Have you tried turning up the GPU fan? Use RivaTuner to do so and see if that alleviates the problem. Do you have the card overclocked? If so, downclock it some.

 

[Baez]

Grab RivaTuner like carnage said and turn it up to at least 80%.

 

[DaedalusHex]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.
It was set on 'auto'. I raised it up to 100% and will give it a try.
Is it dangerous to raise the fan's speed in any ways?

 

[carnageX]

I have my 8800GT's fan running at 90% all the time. It'll just reduce the life of the fan by a bit...but I'm sure by the time it does die, you'll be ready to upgrade anyway .

 

[DaedalusHex]

I just tested it...

Everytime I try to render something 'GPU hungry', I get artifacts and the computer freezes. Boosting the fan didnt seem to help (even after letting the computer rest for 4 hours)

Any ideas?

And no, I never overclocked it.

To be precise, the 'Artifacts' looks like red dots and lines appearing at multiple locations on the screen.

 

[philbar71]

sounds like the card is dying. what were your temps with fan speed at max

and try not to double post. please use the edit button.

 

[carnageX]

Try removing your drivers completely using DriverCleaner Pro: Driver Cleaner Professional download from Guru3D.com (Read the README file!!)

And then install the latest drivers for your card after that.

 

[DaedalusHex]

Sorry.

The temps were at 57 celcius (idle). The second I started a 3d program, it crashed so I couldn't see the difference in celcius.

 

[Baez]

Need the load temps not the idle temps. Run ATITool to stress your card.