The World of Avlis

Okie,

So here's the deal. I had an NVIDIA 6500 256mb, and the ball bearings in the fan that cooled the gpu went out, and thus eventually the fan died, and thus eventually the 6500 went kaputz.

Soooo......I took out the NVIDIA, and in went the ATI Radeon 300 Xtreme 128mb, which is an older card I had in an older rig of mine.

Then I bought an NVIDIA 8500 GT 512mb, and installed that.

Then things went funky. I'd get an acid screen, everything would freeze up, then I'd get a blue screen of death (which was still in acid, so I can't read any of the error messages), and then the computer would reboot, then I'd get a warning after restart, that something funky went down with my video card. Only happens while playing video games mind you. So I went and searched the rig for ATI drivers, found some, removed them.....and the problem wasn't solved.

Furthermore, it's random, and only when playing games! Card games, provided by Microsoft, to NWN to NWN2. It doesn't matter. I can be playing NWN for 8 hours, without one single glitch, or I can be playing for 5 minutes.

I tested the setup on XP and Vista, and it goes down the same way either way. Mind you...same rig...different O/S.

Some other specs, though I really don't think it matters:

Intel Core 2 duo on a Nvidia SLI ready motherboard (don't ask what the fsb is, I'm not quite ~that~ geeky, though I do think it's 1k something.)
2 gig of ram dual channel, DDR ram (see above concerning fsb)
160 gig hard drive
dvd/cdrw
500watt powersupply
Windows Vista Home Premium/ XP Home w/ SP2

So without further adoo, I bring it to you. Any ideas on what could be doing this? Think the card is bunk, bought faulty from the store, or maybe I'm missing something?

Thanks in advance,

You have the same card as me and the exact same system spec's, except for the HDD. I had probs at first, but have sought them out. Talking to my bro(Computer Wiz), he said there is a good chance the card may be faulty, other than that, someone else may have a better idea. Its a good system setup, plays all the games brilliantly....enjoy(When its fixed).

Try to reseat the card, make sure all is clean. Check if you have enough power (though 500 watt should run an 8500GT fine, I run an 8800GT on 550W on an almost identical set up as you have).

Make sure you do NOT have the latest drivers from Nvidia, they fuck up your NWN, not constantly, not all the time, but fuck it up they will. I use the 94 or 96 series, never went to the 168 vista versions (they screw my games up).

This might sound dumb, but did you attach the seperate power cable to the card after you plugged it into the socket? Alot of the older cards don't have a seperate power supply need, but the newer ones do.

Can't find a power point any where on it. Don't think it has one. Really wish it did, as I remember one video card a few years ago, it was ~exactly~ that problem. I'll have to try re-seating it later, as I'm not in front of my PC right now.

Where can I find older versions of Nvidia drivers? The Nvidia website for what I could find, only shows the latest driver for the card. Will the older versions work on Vista?

Thank you for your replies.

For Windows 2000k/XP:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html

Was unable to find a similar page for Vista and replacing "winxp-2k" in the URL with "vista" only gave a blank page.

Sometimes a power plug for the videocard will be found on the motherboard, between the card and cpu, in most cases when I have forgotten to plug the power in it comes up with a warning upon boot that there is insuffitient power and its going to run the card in a safe mode.

1. Uninstall the drivers, re-boot, forget about the drivers on disk they are usually older, download the latest from Nvidia, be aware though that the latest drives cause some graphic corruption on NWN, nothing major though.

2. If that don't work, uninstall the drivers, switch off, take out the card, re install it, re install the drivers.

3. if that don't work, take out the card again, smear some KY gel on it, take it back to the store and shove it up their ass.
Don't waste to much time on it, if its faulty, nothing you do will get it working.

Yes, definitely make sure you remove all traces of previous drivers for the other cards. Get them all out of your ~\system and ~\system32 and then install the drivers for the card.

And/Or:

To rule out if the card is defective, you can try a live Linux CD and boot to that. That will temporarily factor windows out of the equation, and give you a clean OS to work with. See if it gives you a hard time at all. Try either knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org) or elive (http://www.elivecd.org/). The elive CD will cost you $5, but it is a cool disk, and it allows you to load the proprietary NVidia drivers at boot (which allow for accelleration), instead of default nvidia compatible one that knoppix will use (no acceleration). If it works with the livecd -- you know you have a good card, and your windows and/or windows driver is either dirty or misconfigured.

I'm gonna do a clean sweep on the hard drive, and a new rebuild of software, as well as reseating the card tomorrow.

I'll holler if that doesn't work. I also saw some where, that even though it's a 500w PSU, there is a possibility that it doesn't push enough amps to support the card? Anyway I can find out what amps are needed for the card, and what amps are being pushed by the power supply?

There is also a small chance that when your other card shit itself it could have done some damage to your PCI-X slot.

Pretty proof positive that it isn't that. The reason being, is I took one of my old video cards...PCI-ex 128mb, and was using it for about two weeks, before I bought the new card. No troubles there.

Thanks though.

Still wondering about PSU amperage?

And do to unreliable lackies, I the manager, am forced to work on my day off, so no chance to test tonight. I hope to get a shot tomorrow.

300w power supply is all that is recommended by the manufacturer.....so 500w will do. Leaves me one last prospect.....

What does a .38 Special 2 shot berringer do to a video card? I dunno, but I'm gonna find out....

*stalks off*

So.....I went and got an ATI 2500PRO Viper. Anyone know anything about this card? Seems to work pretty good.

At the very least my problems went away, and it means it was indeed the card.

Thanks for all the help guys. Now as soon as I get my new house connected to the web, I'll be back on.

I just got my nVidia 8600 GT - gotta say it looks amazing compared to my older 7600 GS. I have had no issues with this new card either. No glitches or anything, a thankful change.