How do you know if you have a bad video card?

Well I've been getting blue screens on my 7805 for about 2 weeks now. I assumed it was from trying to get XP to work on it, but now I have vista ultimate and its still doing it. I've tried almost every single driver imaginable and still get same thing. Possible product defect?

 

possible... will it boot? if so get PCmark 06 etc. and get the GPU to work as hard as you can get it to... the idea is to kill it if there is an issue. If it's defective you'll know pretty quick once it gets hot, if it's not defective then nothing harmful will happen.

maybe there is something wrong with you windows installation... maybe try again? or try Ubuntu 8.10 to see if it has similar issues.

 

Did it always do this? If you've re-installed the OS the chances it's a software issue are greatly diminished.

 

the first step to getting help with any blue screen is to report the error code

STOP: ?x???????? {various text perhaps even listing a specific file}

Providing such information will result in useful, specific answers.

 

Uhh well it didnt happen at first. I put XP on it first day i had it around feb 11th or so. Unfortunately I messed that up by auto uppdating everything, and since it wasnt made for XP, SP3 and some other updates messed things up. So i re-installed xp again fresh, then a week or two after the blue screens started happening. They were NV4_disp.
Stop : 0x000000EA (0x85D46888, 0x85E847c8, 0xB84EBCBC, 0x00000001).

Now I have Vista ultimate and Ive had.. 2 blue screens. First time it told me there was a problem with the nvidia driver, so i changed to to the one that came with it. Then i got another error which sadly i forgot... was something_something_something (not much help..) but it said theres chances of errors in drivers, something (again sorry not much help) and/or bios (hopefully not bios...). Id much rather avoid bois, any chance its just my lap isnt liking the drivers? Any recommendations on drivers that have worked for past 7805's running a x32 vista?

 

Im just installed Dox 181.22, i think its one of the only kind i havent tried. What do i do with the folder it put on my desktop after I installed it? Its called Vista_Dox_18122. Is that just the extract of the driver i installed?

 

Believe so, but I just move that folder to another folder off the Desktop just incase

 

That is a fairly uncommon error that is often related ot bad hardware. It can be brought about by a bad driver, but since this occured in both Windows XP and Vista, my money is on the gpu is defective.

If you are under warranty, I would contact the manufacturer.

 

EEEeee well i didnt get the best buy warrenty and its been more then the 15 days or w.e... It comes with a gateway 1 year warrenty i think?

 

New Blue Screen...
PFN_List_Corrupt.

 

I just delete the folder on the desktop, I think it gets put there only for the install. Blue Screens are more than often a hardware conflict, could be a bad driver.

 

So i think ive decided to try to return it... When I bought it im 99 percent sure i was told i had 30 days to return it, but i hear 14 days everywhere else. Could of been a mistake? I also think my fans are not working. I dont hear them, and however on the 7805 they are pretty loud so i dont no why i dont hear them. the system is running at a constant 47 according but IDK if its true or not.

 

Again, another rare BSOD stop error message

this points defective physical ram (possible on the GPU itself) or bad drivers. Don't like rare stop errors. They are usually indicative of bad parts

 

If you bought it from Best Buy, you should only have 14 days to return it. However, I do believe you have 30 days from the date of purchase to buy their extended warranty.

So you can either pick up the extended warranty from best buy in hopes the manager might just let you swap it out then and there (sending it out will take awhile, and in my experience, they usually don't fix the problem anyways), or you will have to ship it off to gateway after contacting them and jumping through their hoops. Good Luck!

 

My FX runs around that temperature while idle, give or take a few degrees so that's normal. But constant crashes aren't normal. If doing a full system restore and driver change doesn't solve anything, definitely return it before it's too late. I can run WoW with virtual sync on at 60fps (capped) and it only drops a little in populated areas. Also, the only crash I had was with the official drivers. After upgrading to Dox 181.22 there was no crashing.

 

@Bombshell - Im running 181.22 right now, but ive also noticed a heavy decrease in quality and performance on games. I was playing Wc 3 TFT for christs sakes and it still crashed. On top of that Crysis was running hard, and the core temp went to 52 with no fan kicking in. It again crashed.

Yeah I will probably try to get the extended warranty.

 

you may have a bad ram. Just test your rams by removing one and using the computer like that for a period of time or do what ever you do to get the bsod. GPU usually does not give bsod.

 

but removing the ram would be a real void of warranty and given the event that it has some sort of sticker (even though i think it doesnt) I dont want to void my warranty over that. Even if it did have bad ram I would return it instead of buying all new ram. I think a bad GPU would give a bsod, definitly considering a majority of them were saying display error, then when it says "Check for solution" it was telling me possible hardware issues etc...

 

I too get random bsods but I don't know what the problem is. Everytime they happen I'm not right there at my laptop. I just comeback and it is at the login screen; when I login I'm greeted with a bsod error. Doesn't say anything but numbers... Doesn't specify what kind of error it was exactly.

 

numbers are important.

STOP:0X????????? means something. If you report things like that, people may be able to help

 

Do you hear the fan spin up every couple of minutes?

 

USUALLY (not saying always) a bad GPU will cause the pc to lock up/crash. A bad GPU driver will cause a BSOD, but it will list the problematic driver.

"A majority of them were saying display error and then check for solution"? Do you mean you would get a BSOD with a nv_ or the like error, and then on next boot recieve the check for solution popup?

Are you properly removing the old drivers before installing the new ones..? You said you've tried almost every driver imaginable.. that would take a very long time if you were doing it properly..

 

Run a check on your HDD, I've had my last 7805u give my blue screens because it had a bad sector. That HDD was a seagate, now I have a WD scorpio black.

 

Yes I installed correctly. I uninstalled exactly how the nvidia driver upgrade thread told me to. I still get BSOD when i play games and when windows boots back up, its telling me driver errors... Was I just lucky enough to get a comp that doesnt like any driver what-so-ever or something???

 

What is the exact error? There is also a nvidia high-definition audio device on this board.

 

Well, after I log back in from the blue screen it tells me that it was the Graphics driver everytime. It doesnt change with whatever driver i put in there..

 

Sure does look like you have bad video memory

 

Aside from bad video memory, anyone know any other possible reasons? BIOS errors? Possible driver that might work? Anything would be helpful.

 

check out my thread here

i spent whole weekend trying different things. under XP, vista32, vista64 once driver is loaded (and ive tried many - diff versions too, stock, dox's, xfastest) and any 3D app is started PC would freeze with little disortions around icons which leads me to believe it's the faulty GPU.

I understand that powermizer which is built into the driver (correct me if im wrong) switches the frquencies of mem/core/shaders depending on 2D/3D (low/ high perf). In my case i guess whenever it was trying to jump to high freqs(8800m defaults) it would freeze up the whole system and hard reset was needed. i also tried few drivers with powermizer disabled and the system would freeze from the beginning since it was going into high (default freqs) at the startup.

 

Maybe my GPU clock is off somehow? What should I put them at, or should i slightly overclock it? Any help is appreciated.

 

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA8008751010
BCP2: FFFFFA600221F1A0
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000002
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1


Thats my constant BSOD error details that windows gave me. Its really annoying, sometimes i cant go like 2+ hours gaming, other times (like right now) it shuts off 10 minutes or less into a game. The GPU temp was only 70C and cpu was only 48C...

 

Bump!!!!!!!

 

not test personally try at your own risk:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=518749

 

The guide says they used it on Vista x32bit, my system happens to be x64bit. Do you think this will make much difference? Im still going to try it, not many options...

 

Sadly, I BSOD with the same error after trying that fix.