game crashes, reboots, lockups on Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTX....

[zoldos]

Recently almost all of our games have been acting buggy causing system reboots and "critical errors". For awhile we've noticed minor graphic glitches, things disappearing and coming back during play, elements of rendered objects will become distorted, and several other problems on multiple games (Test Drive Unlimited, WoW, Need for Speed Carbon and Pro Street, and others). This is tolerable.

But now it has gotten to the point where games just don't work. We installed Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion after a completely clean format/re-install of Windows XP Pro SP2, and even during the loading screen the game will simply freeze for 10-15 seconds then continue. This also happens during play and then results in a reboot and system "recovery from a serious error" when it comes back up. Test Drive Unlimited also has the same problem, as well as World of Warcraft and other games we have tried. We have updated the video display drivers to the absolute latest version (released 10-7-2008) and downloaded them directly from the Nivdia site. The hard drive has been tested and is working fine, and everything else works great, browsing, general usage, but all games are buggy to the point where they cannot be played and cause severe problems.

Could my video card be going bad? I've run every test I can think of and everything else checks out. I purchased it around January 2006. Here are my specs:

Windows XP Pro SP2 (cleanly installed)
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe mother board
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTX video with 512 megs
400 gig Western Digital SATA hard drive
Sound Blaster X-FI Xtreme sound card
Antec Truepower 430 watt power supply

Any help would be appreciated. We don't want to purchase a new video card unless we are pretty sure that's where the problem lies. Thanks to all who reply.

 

[vacunita]

Could my video card be going bad?

By what you describe, i think its very likely the video card is going bad.
\your best bet is to try the card in another system just to rule out potential Motherboard connector problems, but i'd say its likely time to start looking for a new card.

How old is the card?



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[SimonDavies]

The best bet would be to get a can of compressed air and use it on the card, what you possibly don't realise is that over time dust accumulates on the fan, this then makes the fan work harder and causes the card to heat up, over time the card doesn't perform as well and takes shorter times to heat up and fail.

As a rule of thumb you should ideally dust out the computer at least twice a year, pull out the cards and dust them thru, use the air on the PSU as well as all other fans.

I have a 7900GTX that is still going strong, it's cleaned approx every 4 months or so.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I have had issues with my video card similar to that and it ended up being the driver of all things, it acted like hardware issues but when I replaced the driver it worked great again, worth a try before buying a new one. For me the latest driver caused the problems, I had to find the previous driver and reinstall it.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[zoldos]

vacunita,

I bought it Janurary 2006 and I'm guessing it came out in the middle of 2005. It was fairly new since it cost quite a bit. I don't have any other system to test it on. I did notice that the fan on the video card is spinning really slow. When I first power up the computer it appears to spin really fast then as XP comes up, it slows down a lot and then stays constant at the slow speed. It is probably overheating (I didn't notice this before I made the original post). Can this fan be replaced?

SimonDavies,

We clean the whole system with compressed air about once every month or so. I noticed the video card fan spinning very slow both before I cleaned the card and after (I removed the card and cleaned it as much as I possibly could).

Johnthephoneguy,

The driver we were using before was from mid 2006 and we had the same exact problem (which is why we installed the newer one). I do have the original driver CD from when I bought the card. Should I try that one?

 

[vacunita]

Replacing the fan is quite possible. Just need to find the one that fits your particular card.

http://www.xpcgear.com/vgacooler.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835887008

Overheating could be an issue, and it could also lead to a failing video card if it has been going on for very long.


Obviously a fan will cheaper than a replacement card.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I would try it.

You can also install ATI tool and it has a thermometer that reads the nvidea cards also. I am sure there are other prgrams that do the same thing but I have good experiences with the ati tool on my Nvidea 7950 to overclock it.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[zoldos]

Excellent! Thank you both! I found a nice Vantec cooler that replaces the entire fan/heatsink on my 7900 GTX and actually closely resembles the newer 8800 and 9800 cards with the wind tunnel/blower design. For a later upgrade, we plan on getting the 512 meg Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT.

 

[SimonDavies]

You should be able to use the EVGA Precision utility (free download from

http://www.evga.com)

or a trial of Everest to see what speed your fan is going at, off the top of my head I want to say it should spin at 69% but that could be way off.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[zoldos]

I ended up downloading the latest EVGA Precision (1.3.3) and the very lastest Speedfan beta. Both are supposed to support video fan speed adjustment. I was thinking about seeing if I could speed up the fan hoping this would help it work better (if it was truly overheating). I did notice at idle and after the system was on for awhile, the GPU temp never went above 40C. I couldn't test it on any games because they always make the system reboot rather quickly.

EVGA Precision failed to adjust the fan speed as the only Forceware drivers that even support this feature are the beta 180.xx series. But this version only supports the Nvidia 8000 and 9000 series so I didn't bother downloading it (I have a 7900).

Also, to elaborate on my original post, my wife said while playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion, the game almost immediately crashed (and rebooted the computer), before she even started playing, and then again once more when she tested it later, again before any gameplay whatsoever. This tells me that the card may simply be going bad, because if it was merely overheating, why would it make the game crash so soon and before any actual intensive graphical gameplay?

Comments are appreciated. Thank you!

 

[SimonDavies]

The games engine starts up as soon as you click the executable and that's why it has the problems straight away.

I have a G15 keyboard that shows me temps on it (well when using a 3rd party tool or Precision), anyway when I start playing WoW (I mean as soon as I double click the icon) I see that my GPU has started to increase its temps.

I would suggest that if Precision doesn't work for you that you have a look at Rivatuner instead.



Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[vacunita]

Just for completion sake, Right click My Computer, Click on Properties, then go into the Advanced Tab.

Click on the Settings button under Startup & Recovery.

Then un-check "Automatically Restart" under System Failure.

O.k your way out, and then try to run a game. Hopefully you should get a blue screen with an error message, copy it here so we may take a look


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[zoldos]

Thank you! However we already considered that option, but per the suggestion from the previous poster, I gave Rivatuner a try. It turns out my video card's fan was only spinning at 49% "duty cycle" (I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I could tell from looking at the fan that it was spinning slow). I used the low-level fan control settings and increased the speed quite a bit. It is now at around 2100 rpm and I played Test Drive: Unlimited (one of the games that had severe problems and ended up not even working at all) and it worked great. I played it extensively and on full graphics settings. It ran even better than it did when we first installed it about a year ago.....

We are still testing it, but so far, it seems to have corrected the problem...

I will go ahead and give a big thanks to all who have replied, you have saved my wife and I a lot of money and we have sorely missed our PC gaming.

Thanks!

 

[paparazi]

Nice quality PSU but a bit border line for your hardware I would have thought.
With an FX60 and a 7900GTX plus bits I would be using a PSU 500watts plus (idealy 600-650 to give headroom)
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[zoldos]

Thank you. I chose the PSU very carefully and after much research.

As for your concern. I've never had an issue with power. I even used to have 2 hard drives (a 150 gig 10,000 rpm Raptor and a 300 gig Seagate, both SATA) and several other components and it was still fine...

 

[paparazi]

Zoldos
That's not to say you aren't having an issue with power now.
Like I say...Great Power Supply but very close to being maxed out....and after running the PSU at say 80% since it was built the strain on it can make it weak and prone to voltage dips under load etc causing restarts. All I am saying is don't discount the PSU out of hand just because it used to work OK.
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[zoldos]

The system has been running very stable since we got the GPU fan to spin at its normal speed. And even when it did not, we never a problem with general use (browsing, etc) which is why I tend to discount the PSU.

However, with my tax return, several major computer upgrades are planned.

Thanks!