gfx card dead?

[sirtoby]

not my gfx card but I'm posting on my brothers behalf..

He sat idling in windows and all of a sudden his comp crashed. When he rebooted he got a load of violet and green squares (and some lines). When he got into windows he got a bluescreen. These squares and lines showed up already on boot by the way.

If he got the computer turned off for a lil while it seems to take longer for the squares to appear. However, they do appear.

The cooler is a Zalman heatpipe and the card is a ti-4400. The card has worked fine for almost a year and he hasn't touched it since he installed the cooler. Note that this also happened while he was idling in windows. He was not gaming.

Any ideas as to what might be done to fix this? It would be much appreciated.

[Rav]

Sounds like the card died. Try popping in another card just to make sure its not the AGP slot or any other part of the system. It sounds like maybe a video memory problem. Also, have you checked to make sure that big zalman hasn't come loose? If it takes longer to happen from a cold boot it could be heat related.

-Rav

[Black_Paladin]

OK, since you are saying: If he got the computer turned off for a lil while it seems to take longer for the squares to appear. However, they do appear.

Then it is possible that the heatpipe has somehow lost contact with the GPU. Not completely perhaps but to a degree where it is not cooling the card well.

What is interesting here is that the artifacts you describe are almost always the result of memory errors BUT memory on most graphics cards don't need to be cooled with RAMsinks or fans unless you are overclocking the card (even then cooling them with RAMsinks usually has little impact) so it's unlikely that the artifacts that appear on the card are happening because the memory is overheating.

On the other hand, the blue screen error messages, in contrast to the artifacts you see on the screen are almost always result of errors with the GPU core.

In this case, is your brother only getting artifacts now OR is he getting artifacts AND still getting the blue screen crashes?

If just artifacts, then I would say that the problem is most probably with the memory.

In EITHER case though, if these errors/artifacts don't start showing up immediatly (as soon as you turn on the computer) then the chances are nothing is damaged but simply overheating.

I can tell you from experience. I volt modded the memory of my Radeon 8500 to insane levels and the card ran fine for 2 days but then I started getting the kind of artifacts your brother is seeing from the moment I turned on my computer (I never got blue screen error messages though).

The only time I would get blue screen error messages was when I overclocked the core of my card too high.

I think the most important question that needs to be asked here is this: Is your brother overclocking his card and by how much?

EDIT: Overclocking the memory on the card can cause the card to start displaying artifacts even when you are idling in Windows. The desktop might look fine for a while after overclocking and you might leave the computer for 30 minutes only to find when you return that you have a bunch of squares and lines all over the desktop.

[sirtoby]

Yeah.. I figured it might be heat related.. but then again it seems unlikely that the heatsink would have somehow come loose when the computer hadn't been touched for a very long time? It's attached with screws so that was why I questioned it.

The card has now been tried in two puters, with the same error.

Any ideas on anything to do?

[sirtoby]

And no, the card is running at stock speeds.. it's a Creative TI-4400

And as stated before, the problem appeared when idling in Windows. The computer crashed all of a sudden and when he rebooted, this happened. No settings had been changed and he had not done anything to the computer lately.

The really crap part is that he just ordered some new parts and he was making back ups of files when this happened.. so now he's got a system waiting to be used and he can't use it because of this video card.. so.. it'd be nice with a solution to this problem..

[Black_Paladin]

Allright, first of all I just edited my above post so you might want to check it.

Second, I think that the problem here could be related to the thermal paste that goes between the GPU and the Zalman cooler. Since you just said that the computer crashes suddenly while idling in Windows, the problem must be with the core overheating. That's the most logical conclusion here. Since you have tried the card in more than one computer, you can rule out any problem with the drivers.

I would say that the Zalman cooler might be attached properly to the card and you might not be able to see anything wrong BUT the thermal paste that connects the card to the GPU might have somehow dried out. If this paste dries out, you don't get good heat transfer between the cooler and the card and as a result, the card overheats.

Touch the Zalman cooler to see if it's getting hot at all. If the cooler seems cold to the touch, then there is definately a heat transfer issue there.

In either case, I would suggest removing the heatpipe and re-attaching it with fresh thermal paste.

EDIT: There is one thing I'm curious about though. You said in your last post that the card makes the computers crash now but does it still make the colored squares and lines appear before this happens?

Like I said, artifacts are usually related to memory problems and lock-ups, crashes and freezes are related to core problems. My Radeon 8500 is messed up now and I see really terrible artifacts when I open up a game ( I can't actually make out anything) and I see squares on the desktop BUT I don't get crashes because the core is good and functioning OK.

[sirtoby]

I need to get in touch with him tomorrow and ask.. and I'll suggest that he'll re-apply the thermal paste and remount the thing..

It's 00:15 am here right now though so it'll take a while before I can get in touch with him again..

if anyone else has some more suggestions please feel free to add them here.. :)

And thanks for the suggestions Black_Paladin.. :)