Video card going downhill?

Hey all!


About two weeks ago I started my pc as usual, and went to play world of warcraft, only to find the game freezing and going to bsod. It said something about the nv4_disp error, but I had no idea what kind of problems I was about to deal with .

nb: Its only in 3d games - everything else works perfectly normal.

I did A LOT of googling, and tried every possible solution including the reinstalling of drivers - I even made a fresh install of winXP, still no luck. Then I decided to check my hardware parts one by one.
My CPU checked out perfect
Ran Memtest86 on my ram together and individually, no errors

Then I went to the Video card, and ran some 3d-video-test-program (cant recall which) and it insta-crashed. I installed Rivatuner and clocked down the Core clock from 600 to 500 and bam! I was able to complete the test AND play WoW without any issues again. If I clocked back up to stock speed the same issues would reappear.
^- is that signs of a video card dying?

Other than WoW I also spend a fair deal of time playing CoD4 - MW, and the downclocking didn't solve that problem - still freezes and bsod's.

So just yesterday I decided to upgrade to Win7 64bit, thinking it would add some stability to the system, and yea - I dont get bsod's anymore, now the game just frezes up and stops responding. TU.

I googled around some more today and found the Video Memory Stress Test from your site and thought I might aswell give it a go (since I'm more and more suspecting my video card), I ran the test and it gave me the: "Too many specific errors, try without ignoring colors bit mask option." I tried the setting it recommended, and it returned zero errors.
^- Is that another hint that I should get a new video card?

Unfortunately I don't have another video card to try and swap in my system (all my friends are on laptops these days :/), else I would have done so a long time ago.

So my question goes: Is my video card more or less broken? Is it the reason I'm getting freezes/blue screens/games stop responding? I've read in several forums people changing their PSU's, CPU's, RAM's and even GPU's but still getting the errors, so I'm in doubt here :confused

And last but not less important - pc spec:
Intel Core 2 duo E6850 @ 3ghz
2x2GB ram DDR2 400MHz running 5-5-5-18
Motherboard Asus Maximus Formula
nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512mb GDDR3 ram


Thanks in advance =)
- and let me know if you need more info

 

Hey, thanks for the answer but:

Am I stupid for not wanting to play on low-settings in world of warcraft when my system by far out-ranks what WoW requires?

I checked my harddrive for errors and it returned no errors.

I'm defragmenting as we speak, but I truly doubt thats what causing it.. (could be though).

EDIT: I haven't changed any clocks while being on Win7, and the freezing/blackscreens in WoW is actually not that random, its pretty solid every ~10sec untill it crashes completely

 

How hot is the video card running? If all else fails use the "poor mans" heat sensor. Run a game for 5~10 mins then feel the back of the card (specifically in the area marked). If its to hot to keep your hand on for any length of time, its to hot. Make sure you touch the bare metal of your PSU before you feel the card to ground yourself. Also try a slightly older driver. I have heard that nvidias latest driver has some issues, though I haven't tested it my self yet.

 

According to RivaTuner my core temperature is running at 50-53C idle - thats a tad high I guess?

At the moment I'm not able to play a game for more 1 minute before it crashes, but I was able to run the ModernWarfare 2 Intro video (which is rather graphics intensive - no freezes here though?) and then when I got to the gameplay-part it instantly froze, blackscreened, gave me 5-7seconds of playing, froze, blackscreened, 5-7seconds of playing, froze and tossed me to desktop with MW2 not answering.

During that time - about 4-5mins tops - the temp rose to about 68 at most, but I guess it could be higher during longer periods of time with more load?

 

Atm im just flying around in an empty area - same deal
edit: actually I'm getting freezes on the login-screen aswell

Yes, no changes

 

Okay, I tried to do the downclocking again, and now I was able to run FurMark 3D stability test for 10mins+

The temperature rose pretty quickly to 85C, but stayed there and didnt seem to go any higher at any point. Had it running for about 15mins.

A bit too high? Shouldnt result in hardware failure though, but I don't know much about it.

 

Check the video card fan for dust and use rivatuner or similar to crank up the fan speed. 85c is way to hot.

 

Dusted everything off, still seems to go about 85C, and rivatuner/ntune/evga precision wont let me change fan-speed for some reason :/

 

This just means that your motherboard does not support the changing of fan speeds.

Surely though the fan would max itself out at about 80 degrees?

Anyway, long periods at above 85 are not good for the card, but it will only become immediately damaged at 90 or more.

If you want to, get hold of a normal computer fan and just sit it on top of the card above where the fan would be on the opposite side. Plug it into a motherboard fan header, or a spare molex connector, and see if it makes a difference to the temps.