Technical issue with ATI card. Please let me know your opinion.

[Lucidvizion]

This issue I'm having is driving me nuts, so I am here to get a second opinion, more or less.

What I have:
600w power supply
Abit AN8 SLI Mobo
AMD 3800+ X2 socket 939 cpu
2gig ram (don't know the brand off the top of my head)
and the problem component:
Ati x1950 pro pcie card (just one card, not using sli/crossfire)

The card worked fine for quite a while (8-9 months), then all of a sudden I started having problems when I was running 3d applications (I will use world of warcraft as prime example). If I ran the game at any resolution higher than 1024x786 my card/display would shut off and run its "vpu recovery" every 30 seconds to 10 minutes. It was bad enough that games were pretty much unplayable, as it would lock me up for a good 15 seconds and kick me to desktop. And we all know some applications don't like being kicked to desktop. It definitely wasn't an overheating issue, temperature at graphics card was never over 70C (while running 3d apps, it idles at 40C).

I tried all the manufacturer recommended solutions. I flashed the bios on my mobo, afterwards set the jumper to clear my cmos, uninstalled my video card drivers then ran driver cleaner and reinstalled, updated chipset drivers, etc etc. Nothing fixed the problem so I sent my card back for warranty repair service.

Fast forward to yesterday. They gave me a new card, the serial number was different. I put on my ground strap and put my card in. I started playing a game and it was good for about 30 minutes, then I got kicked to desktop with a vpu recovery error. I noticed some display corruption on my desktop icons. I reset my pc. My bios POST display was completely corrupted, the windows startup screen was completely corrupted, and when I got to the desktop all the icons were corrupted. Then the card would shut down into vpu recover from such processor hungry tasks such as clicking on the start button and expanding my quick launch icon tray. Basically, a LOT worse than my original card ever was.

They allowed me to send this new card back for warranty as well, thankfully. My question is do any of you think my motherboard could be destroying my vid cards? Is that even possible? I know a power supply can ruin a graphics card but I installed a new power supply after I was having problems with my first card, thinking the card was shutting down because I was slightly under recommended specs for amperage on the 12v rail.

What do you think? Dumb luck? Bad mobo? Anything I could be missing?

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

A guy I game with (BF2) had the same issues with different hardware. It turned out to be his MB, because so much data is being passed with the newer video cards and games, that his MB couldn't handle all the data.

If you have an older video card or on board, I would give that a try just to see if the same issues occur.

JohnThePhoneGuy

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

 

[NekoRuri]

It sounds like it could be a power supply issue, I've had a few instances where I was operating my power supply to its limit and when I started to do something that used a lot of power(cpu or video)the machine would shut down immediately.

If you've got an extra power supply laying around you can use it to troubleshoot if it is a power problem. First I'd hook the video card up to the 2nd power supply since those drain a lot of amperage. Second would be to try connecting all your drives to the 2nd power supply. If you're able to boot and play continuosly under either setup with the 2nd power you can either mount it somewhere in your case, or buy a larger power supply.

 

[smah]

Have you considered heat related issues?

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

he addressed heat issues in his original posting

JohnThePhoneGuy

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

 

[fizzak]

Run memtest86 for a few minutes, if you get any errors replace your ram....this isn't a guess.