Is it dead?

ok, my pc froze and I rebooted, only to be greeted by a screen with white dotted vertical bars, characters onscreen are scrambled and windows doesn't display.

Is the card dead?  ...if it is, then Nvidia cards are cr@p, this will have been the second one to blow in 4 years. 

Do you ever see the BIOS screen? It sounds a bit like a card issue, though, but like anything that goes wrong on a PC, you have to eliminate all the possibilities. I saw this happen on another monitor, where it would boot up fine and run okay for about twenty minutes.  Then the screen would go all jiggy and colored vertical bars took over. Although I never checked back with the owner about it, I'm assuming that was a video card issue.

here's some screen shots, I tried it on a different monitor & leads, still scrambled

UlsterFry wrote:

here's some screen shots, I tried it on a different monitor & leads, still scrambled

Yep, your card == fubar'd.

Check if it's still under warranty.

Fook,  card is 15 months old...  ..think I'm gonna go for ATI's from now on..  really pissed off with Nvidia...

UlsterFry wrote:

here's some screen shots, I tried it on a different monitor & leads, still scrambled

It almost looks as if there's something wrong with your computer?

Have you tried re-installing, or updating the drivers for the card?

I had something similar to this, not as bad, I admit; it all cleared up after an update of the drivers.

Angus Higgins

I'd been playing GTA San Andras when the screen froze, so it's possible the card popped, it's 6600GT.

UlsterFry wrote:

I'd been playing GTA San Andras when the screen froze, so it's possible the card popped, it's 6600GT.

You're lucky you can play games

My ATi Radeon 9800 Pro can't handle anything really; it should, but after about 5 - 10 minuites of playing the screen goes black; the system continues to run, but it doesn't respond, or display anything. This causes me to have to restart the system; a very, very annyoing problem.

Commiserations about the card though.

Angus Higgins

Angus wrote:

Have you tried re-installing, or updating the drivers for the card?

I had something similar to this, not as bad, I admit; it all cleared up after an update of the drivers.

Not going to help in this case, except if that driver package included a firmware update. The drivers aren't loaded until Windows is.

W3bbo wrote:

Angus wrote:Have you tried re-installing, or updating the drivers for the card? I had something similar to this, not as bad, I admit; it all cleared up after an update of the drivers.

Not going to help in this case, except if that driver package included a firmware update. The drivers aren't loaded until Windows is.

Is that why the Windows logo never seems to be as clear as the normal graphics when Windows has loaded?

Angus Higgins

Angus wrote:

Is that why the Windows logo never seems to be as clear as the normal graphics when Windows has loaded?

Naturally.

The default Windows bootlogo uses the VESA 16-color modes that commodity video cards are required to support. Once the driver is loaded, Windows knows what modes the card supports (so it knows it can reliably get it to run at 1600x1200x32bpp). I believe there are ways to get a card to run at non-standard resolutions without drivers (just using a common set of interfaces and instructions as specified by VESA), that's what some custom bootlogo programs use (IIRC/AFAIK) in order to display eye-candy bootup screens; let's hope Vista does the same.

Angus wrote:

Have you tried re-installing, or updating the drivers for the card?

I had something similar to this, not as bad, I admit; it all cleared up after an update of the drivers.

Angus Higgins

Looks like this is long before Windows loads...  The drivers wouldn't be loaded yet.  Firmware, possibly, but not drivers. [EDIT]: Damn, w3bbo beat me to it.

Angus wrote:

My ATi Radeon 9800 Pro can't handle anything really; it should, but after about 5 - 10 minuites of playing the screen goes black; the system continues to run, but it doesn't respond, or display anything. This causes me to have to restart the system; a very, very annyoing problem. 

Sounds like either overheating or lack of power. IIRC, the Radeon 9800 uses an aux floppy power connector. I'd guess it's not getting enough power from that source, as insufficient power from the bus would cause problems at all times [blackouts, reboots, but not just in games].

Angus wrote:

Is that why the Windows logo never seems to be as clear as the normal graphics when Windows has loaded?

Possibly.  Also possibly because the Windows splash screen uses lower resolution and probably lower colors to boot.

SlackmasterK wrote:

Angus wrote: My ATi Radeon 9800 Pro can't handle anything really; it should, but after about 5 - 10 minuites of playing the screen goes black; the system continues to run, but it doesn't respond, or display anything. This causes me to have to restart the system; a very, very annyoing problem.

Sounds like either overheating or lack of power. IIRC, the Radeon 9800 uses an aux floppy power connector. I'd guess it's not getting enough power from that source, as insufficient power from the bus would cause problems at all times [blackouts, reboots, but not just in games].

Yeah, I came across this idea as to what is causing the problem on another forum, it seems that it isn't just me.

I don't know how I could sort it out, but not being much of a power user in graphics terms, I may just buy a 8 headed card and buy some monitors so I can upgrade the current, very helpful, but limited dual monitor system.

Could over-heating be caused by the close proximity of a PCI card to the graphics card? I was looking in the case today and just thought that if over-heating was the problem, the small fan on the graphics card coupled with the close proximity to the WiFi PCI card could show me where to fix the problem.

I would; however; rather get a new graphics card that is 8 headed as I am really enjoying having the dual monitor setup, and more monitors would be useful.

Angus Higgins

Don't be dissing NVIDIA, every NVIDIA card I have had has worked perfectly and the only thing that went wrong with them was getting outdated. Now if only GFX cards could evolve.... Maybe you should quit trying to rubberband your heatsink onto your card...

IRenderable wrote:

Don't be dissing NVIDIA

That's kinda hard not to do when you've had 2 nvidia cards die in 3-4 years, and they ain't overheating or under-powered.

UlsterFry wrote:

IRenderable wrote: Don't be dissing NVIDIA

That's kinda hard not to do when you've had 2 nvidia cards die in 3-4 years, and they ain't overheating or under-powered.

Who was the OEM?  Some manufacturers stray farther away from the NVIDIA reference design than others.


Alien: We tried contacting the humans again.  But they believed our message was a malfunctioning video card...

We'll try again with their Fibonacci sequence instead of primes.  Surely they'll get that.

Well, it's a BFG card, so hopefully they'll stand by their 'Lifetime Warranty' and replace the card