another BFG problem

[slagburn]

So I come home from work today. My comp, which was running when I left, is hung in the pre-boot stages saying it's missing an xp file, run repair. The screen is clear at this point. I reboot and in the POST and other black and white only pre-OS areas, the screen is a garbled checkerboard mess with white blurs where text should be. Reboot a couple times, same thing with varying severity. Lo and behold, somehow xp 'catches' and boots up. But I'm missing my vid card drivers, they seem to have been uninstalled somehow!

Up until this the system has been very stable, Prime95 tested 24+ hours, Memtest, etc, it's a rock.

What the hell happened? I'm getting ready to reinstall xp without a format.
The card is a BFG 6800GT that I got on Wednesday, that's right, 4 days ago. I exchanged an identical card that day, the old one ran really hot and would black out the screen once in a while. The guy at the store said my mobo sounded funky, it was replaced two weeks ago after my new MSI lost the IDE controller.

Power supply perhaps? help!

[Sentential]

Yea that sounds an aweful lot like a PSU issue. What are your rails looking like?

[slagburn]

+3.3v=3.26
+5v=2.85 (!!!!)
+12v=12.16
-12v=-3.39
-5v=-5.06
+5V=3.17
vbat=4.08

Might have found the culprit eh? Those numbers are from Speedfan, saw the 5v rail come up to 4.25, no higher.
What's it control?

Power supply is a 450W Cooler Master Real Power.

[jtracc20]

yea i dont think its your vid card at all... defenetly sounds like a PSU prob.

or just maybe somehow a file got corrupted in the vid driver, or windows files. never know man. after reformat, see if it does it again.

[slagburn]

OK- now I know this isn't the power supply forum, but the thread's already started- can someone tell me if the 5V is actually regulated by the mobo, or is that the psu? Because the 5V rail was actually 5V with my last mobo.

[Fireball_dbz]

you know on my experience, it depends of both, your psu and your mobo, i had the same thing with my ultra 500w. on my asus a7n8x it reported 4.95 by speedfan, on my neo2 it was 5.01 also by the same speedfan.... so i think it is both or the program itself

[slagburn]

It appears the voltage regulation is shot in the mobo. I tried a known good ps and still had 5v all over the map. However the gt won't run with the bad voltage but an old GF2 440 does so looks like that'll do duty until the rma is done. Oh wait I won't have a mobo :( Sometimes I wish I'd bought a Dell.


edit: tried the card in another box. Massive artifacting. Time for number 3.
I wouldn't recommend changing the heatsink on these or doing anything else questionable warranty-wise, because if my luck's any indicator, you're going to rma it at some point.

[slagburn]

Well. Got card number 3 today. That's 3 in one month. This one works fine, who knows for how long. Anybody need an NV5 in Colorado for free dollars?