Magnum4c
Baseband Member
- Messages
- 63
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
Hello,
I have a Dell XPS 6301 outfitted with 2 Intel quad core Q9400 CPUs and dual nVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512mb video cards, and Vista Home Premium 64. Not sure what the mobo is.
Yesterday out of the blue, my screen slowed down and then froze completely...I was merely surfing the web at the time with little running in the background. I couldn't get anything to work so I hard-booted the machine, and when it began to load up, the monitor was grainy and a bunch of zeroes flashed all over the screen. I tried starting it normally and after awhile a message popped up indicating there was a problem and Windows was shutting down my system to prevent damage to the computer.
I was then given the option of starting in Safe Mode (with Networking) so I did, and after it was up and running a message popped up that the abnormal shutdown was probably caused by a problem with my Display driver or card. I tried installing the latest driver and restarted again, and Windows again shut down the boot process.
I again restarted in Safe Mode and did a system restore to an earlier point prior to the video driver update. After restarting "normally", Windows AGAIN shut down and at restart I am now back in Safe Mode, writing this missive on the forum.
To make a long story short, I suspect one of my video cards bit the dust. My question is, can I replace the dual cards, which have 512mb video RAM each, with something like a single EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1 GB DDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card? I THINK the dual cards I have are installed in PCI-Express slots on the mobo, but I don't know the difference between a PCI-Express slot from whatever else there is. They are a little longer than the other slots, and they're blue. Attached is a couple pictures....
Does it sound like I'm on the right track, suspecting a bad video card? And can I replace the dual cards with one single?
Thanks for any and all help, and sorry about the length of my post....
I have a Dell XPS 6301 outfitted with 2 Intel quad core Q9400 CPUs and dual nVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512mb video cards, and Vista Home Premium 64. Not sure what the mobo is.
Yesterday out of the blue, my screen slowed down and then froze completely...I was merely surfing the web at the time with little running in the background. I couldn't get anything to work so I hard-booted the machine, and when it began to load up, the monitor was grainy and a bunch of zeroes flashed all over the screen. I tried starting it normally and after awhile a message popped up indicating there was a problem and Windows was shutting down my system to prevent damage to the computer.
I was then given the option of starting in Safe Mode (with Networking) so I did, and after it was up and running a message popped up that the abnormal shutdown was probably caused by a problem with my Display driver or card. I tried installing the latest driver and restarted again, and Windows again shut down the boot process.
I again restarted in Safe Mode and did a system restore to an earlier point prior to the video driver update. After restarting "normally", Windows AGAIN shut down and at restart I am now back in Safe Mode, writing this missive on the forum.
To make a long story short, I suspect one of my video cards bit the dust. My question is, can I replace the dual cards, which have 512mb video RAM each, with something like a single EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1 GB DDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card? I THINK the dual cards I have are installed in PCI-Express slots on the mobo, but I don't know the difference between a PCI-Express slot from whatever else there is. They are a little longer than the other slots, and they're blue. Attached is a couple pictures....
Does it sound like I'm on the right track, suspecting a bad video card? And can I replace the dual cards with one single?
Thanks for any and all help, and sorry about the length of my post....