Hardware lurkers - help me find a new video card!

[DeeBye]

Like you, I am running on a 4+year old xp install. I am generally motivated when there is some game I want to run better, but alas no such games are out there to provide that motivation for me.

Yeah, I hear you. All the games I want to play work just fine on my old computer so I have little motivation to upgrade.

[DeeBye]

I just had another crash - this time my computer froze with my screen showing vertical stripes. I was happily playing HL2: Ep2 for about an hour with no issues and it popped up out of nowhere. It was a hard lock too - I had to reboot.

[LavCat]

My restarts have not been happening in WoW -- only, it seems, while scrolling or moving around in IE. No hard lockups, at least not yet.

[DeeBye]

Update on this, because I am getting terribly frustrated.

Here's a recap:

I started experiencing short bursts of black screens while 3D gaming, followed by a notice of “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”. After that, my cursor displays artifacts until I reboot. This problem still exists despite everything I have done to fix it.

Here's what I have done:

• Uninstalled/re-installed video drivers. Many times.
  
• Removed my old ATI 4890 videocard and installed a new ATI 6770 videocard.
  
• Installed a new case fan to provide more cooling.
  
• Replaced my 500w PSU with a 700w PSU.
  
• Upgraded my 32-bit Windows XP to 32-bit Windows 8. I didn't do a complete reformat/reinstall - just an upgrade.
  
• Ran Memtest86 to see if my RAM was bad. Memtest86 found no problems after a few passes.
  

My next course of action is to install Windows 8 64-bit after formatting. I really should have done that instead of messing with Win8 32-bit in the first place. After this, I'm really out of ideas. It might be possible that my new ATI 6770 really is faulty, but I'm not sure how to positively check that.

[LavCat]

If it helps you feel any better I am still having the problem here.

[Thenryb]

Well, I hope it is not a faulty video card. If it is, good luck on getting Newegg to make good on it. This is based on my experience with trying to RMA an Nvidia 650gtx which was not performing properly. Not only did it take forever to get it shipped because of the way you have to get the discounted ups labels, but they claimed the card had a broken fan blade and that I would have to deal with the manufacturer. Eventually, they sent the card back and it, indeed, had a broken fan blade. It was not in that condition when I shipped it back. The fan on that card is not encased and it is easy just to reach down and snap off a blade. I suspect if I had requested a replacement card instead of a refund, the fan blade would have remained intact. I will not deal with them again, and my wife gave them a good "facebooking".

[Kevin]

Update on this, because I am getting terribly frustrated.

Here's a recap:

I started experiencing short bursts of black screens while 3D gaming, followed by a notice of “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”. After that, my cursor displays artifacts until I reboot. This problem still exists despite everything I have done to fix it.

Here's what I have done:

• Uninstalled/re-installed video drivers. Many times.
  
• Removed my old ATI 4890 videocard and installed a new ATI 6770 videocard.
  
• Installed a new case fan to provide more cooling.
  
• Replaced my 500w PSU with a 700w PSU.
  
• Upgraded my 32-bit Windows XP to 32-bit Windows 8. I didn't do a complete reformat/reinstall - just an upgrade.
  
• Ran Memtest86 to see if my RAM was bad. Memtest86 found no problems after a few passes.
  

My next course of action is to install Windows 8 64-bit after formatting. I really should have done that instead of messing with Win8 32-bit in the first place. After this, I'm really out of ideas. It might be possible that my new ATI 6770 really is faulty, but I'm not sure how to positively check that.

Do you have another PCIE x16 slot on the board to put the card in (i.e. is it an SLI ready board), if so, swap slots.

At a quick glance at the steps it looks like you have isolated it to video card or somewhere else on the motherboard. If it's still using old school capacitors they can get flaky and generally it only shows up under load.

[DeeBye]

Do you have another PCIE x16 slot on the board to put the card in (i.e. is it an SLI ready board), if so, swap slots.

At a quick glance at the steps it looks like you have isolated it to video card or somewhere else on the motherboard. If it's still using old school capacitors they can get flaky and generally it only shows up under load.

Here's my motherboard: link

I originally bought it because of the all solid state capacitors. It's not SLI though, so I don't have another PCIE x16 slot.

[LavCat]

I have not had any problems since I installed Catalyst 12.11 Beta11 on 12/5/2012. Tonight I installed Catalyst 13.1 and I hope it works at least as well!