Graphic card won't start (code 10)

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

I loaded up Dragon Age 2 this morning and after 5 minutes or so my graphics went haywire.

After rebooting my PC can no longer find my graphic card. I deleted my Nvidia drivers and windows alerted me that it found a VGA hardware. After reinstalling the drivers windows can no longer find it again.

I removed them and downloaded the latest driver "266.58" and my PC shows a blue screen on start up and reboots again. Older drivers I install windows can't find after installing.

Is it my graphic card that is broken now? I had no problems in the past running DA2 for a few hours untill I grew bored.

Motherboard: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz (2CPU's)
GraphicCard: Geforce 8800 GT

Incase the card is toast, what Graphic Card would you recommend?

Oh yeah before you ask, I already hit my PC to see if it would fix it.

[knooger]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_13957.html

You can try put card into different slot and check if it works. Be sure that your card is not overheating ( clean it, check if fan works, check cabels etc. )

Your screen didn't look like this?

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

I'm currently running the general on-board graphic driver so I have a 4bit colour so no idea what that picture is showing.

I cleaned the card's cooler and general dustiness before meddling with the drivers. Fan is working fine.

[LennardF1989]

The screenshot is showing a shitload of artifacts, did you're game did too before dieing?

[scope2005]

From what you have described, this sunds similar to when my 6800GT died a few years back.. it sounds as though your GFX card is coming to the end of its useful life.

Artifacts such as white dots in lines down the screen, weird glitchyness and eventual bluescreen are hallmarks of the GPU massively overheating.

When this happened with my 6800GT, I managed to prolong the life a little by removing the heatsink, cleaning it up a little (removing dust etc and old dried on thermal gunk) and applying a little thermal paste to the GPU and heatsink.

This helped to counter the overheating somewhat, but it was a temporary fix at best and I found myself having to repeat this step at least once a week until I eventually bought a replacement.
Try the above steps (at your own risk, but the card sounds pretty much screwed anyway).

If its no better then I would start looking at a replacement.

Stick to what you know is my motto, so I would look at a nice high end DX11 Nvidia card to save having to replace it in a year or so.

Something like this looks pretty future proof, this is top of the line... 

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1536mb-gainward-gtx-580-good-4020mhz-gddr5-gpu-783mhz-shader-1566mhz-512cores-hdmi-dp-dvi-i

If you aimed a little lower however and got a good mid-range card it should be able to do anything yout 8800GT can but just a bit quicker :)

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

Just looked up the picture from my phone. That's the last thing I saw before I pulled the plug.

I've been reading up on the GTX 580 but I'm not sure if my motherboard can handle it.

I have 1 AGP and 2 PCI slots, would that card fit? Or is there something called a special PCIe slot? Which means I will need a new motherboard too.

[knooger]

PCI-E x16 same like you now use with ur 8800gt. IMO your processor is too slow and your card will not work that fast as it could with better cpu :)

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

Would an i5 processor be any good to handle the GTX 580?

[knooger]

Yes, you will feel that is a lot faster :)
i5 on 1155 socket right?

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

Yes, you will feel that is a lot faster :)
i5 on 1155 socket right?

I'm no computer expert so I have no idea what that would mean. Care to elaborate?

[knooger]

Motherboards have sockets for AMD we have atm AM3, for intel we have S1366 (example:i7-920), S1155( i5 2400 and i5 2400K(easier to overclock)) and S1156 ( i5 750, i5 760, i7 860 ).

So, if you want change your CPU in future buy motherboard with S1155 because intel killed S1156 after few months and there will be no new processors for this socket, if you will not change anything or change whole PC later then just buy this which is cheaper.

BTW. BE CAREFULL WHILE BUYING S1155 MOTHERBOARD! BUY FROM NEW FRESH REVISION BECAUSE THEY FIXED FATAL BUG WITH SATA II CONTROLLER.


That's socket.

[Wh1tE_Dw4rF]

Cheers man. Will have a look around using your info.

By the way, is there a noticable difference between AMD processors and intell? Be it price, performance etc etc.?

[frvge]

For triple cores or hexacores (6) and higher, go AMD.
For quad core, go Intel.

[LennardF1989]

@Knooger: Intel also has the 1366 socket, which is actually the image you showed.

@Dwarf: My first videocard I got with this new PC was defective and I have experienced exactly the same. At a certain temperature my screen started to display yellow and blue lines, flickering and loads of artifacts. After getting to this point 3 reboots later, the card completely died and wouldn't start at all.

[knooger]

I wrote it Lennard :P You just missed it ^^