Help! I think i fried my card...

In the past week iv been noticing a major performance loss on all games, and it happened ever since i tried to go back to xp. I did a clean install, but half my comp wasnt recognized (no drivers...) so i went back to vista (all clean installed) but i noticed that the framerate of games was chopped in half. Ive tried reinstalling vista, going to xp (acer recovery discs and this time restoring factory settings) and using about 4 different gpu drivers from ati and from omega. I think iv ruled out that its a software problem...

The problem has stayed constant. Could it be that by some slight overclocking in the past that iv damaged my graphics card? If anyone has any helpful ideas I would be incredibly greatful.

 

Maybe try 3dmark and compare some one else results see how it come out

yes you cound have fired you gpu

the ati overclock util will let you card for artifacts maybe you messed it up stock speeds

 

Im at my work right now but when i get home ill run 3dmark (in the past it was around 2600-2900 i think), but what iv seen in game C&C3 goes from 30 to 15 and Company of Heroes takes a slightly smaller but similar hit. I use ati tool tray to overclock and before said reinstall i never had problems with it so i dont think thats the prob.

 

You sure your notebook isn't overheating? Acers kinda have that kind of rep.

 

It isnt overheating anymore than it has the last 6 months... Maybe the extra few degrees that the summer has recently added might have made the difference, but i doubt it as iv even been undervolting my cpu recently which has dropped the temp quite a few degrees.

Is there anyway to check if ur card is damaged other than comparing performance? Any kind of diagnostics program that would pick up the difference?

 

other than something like atitool with its artifact detection thingy i dont see how. you could reinstall XP or install Vista and see if performance improves.

 

i tried the checkin for artifacts with ati tool tray but there wasnt an artifact in sight. And im afraid I already tried wipin the HD clean and reinstallin twice, once with vista and then with XP

I think u guys might be startin to see my frustration...

 

I'm not really sure what to say other than I don't think you fried anything. I wouldn't expect the outcome of a fried card to be low performance, I would expect it to be no performance. Also, the fact that it happened right when you re-installed is too big a coincidence.

 

Like squeaky said, if you had somehow "fried" your card (which I don't see how it could have happened since all you did was just switch OSes) then you would be getting NOTHING on your screen. A fried card will not work at all leaving ur screen completely blank. If you see stuff on ur screen, then ur card is not fried. It might not work correctly, but it is no fried.

 

Well no a fried card in his words just means one that has been damaged, there could still be a problem but in these cards you usually see it either not working, not being able to run 3D games or artifacts showing when it does. slowing down of performance probably means a driver issue, but maybe there is some device or chip that is stuck or damaged which is causing the card to work in a power saving mode hence the slow speeds.

 

Try checking your pwoer settings and performance settings in driver tools etc, make sure it's set to max

 

Im usin ati tool tray, but for some strange reason, my card has seemed to speed up a bit, just as randomly as it slowed down... So weird. Not perfect, but at least some improvement.

 

when you do a fresh installation of an operating system, do you update your gpu drivers?

 

Most definetly, often many different ones. Btw, I just checked out my 3dmark05 score and it wasnt too shabby for a 128mb x1600 with a 64bit memory bandwith: 3545@540/480.

 

If you did fry your card you would see nothing. Most likely you have a heat problem. As your notebook gets hot, the bios will automatically supply the card with less voltage as to not overheat it. Therefore you lose power. There are many programs that will allow you to see your current clock speeds and monitor your card temperature. Compare your current clock speeds with software, to that of recommended manufacturers specs. If you notice that yours are lower check the temp and I bet you will find your solution.

 

From NHC (notebook hardware control) i see my cpu temp during intensive gaming gets into the high 60s and the cpu is right next to the gpu, but the heat has always been this way so i dont see why the performance change would happen now.

 

The performance drop is onli in gaming or other areas as well?

Edit: 1 thing funny happened to me when i was setting up CNC3... when i set the graphic to low, it was performing more terrible than it was on medium setting... i have no idea what's wrong so basically i just went back to the medium setting.

I think i fried my card as well
Actually, i have the same problem as u have now, but i realized that the gpu is not powered to full power for some reason, which i dunno yet, normally the gpu temperature will be like 65celcius, for some reason it is constantly 55celcius now. It started to happen since i installed VPN client.

 

Speaking of which, what i exactly did between my bad and my improved performance is i setup automatic over/underclocking with ati tool tray (350/250 for 2d and 540/480 for 3d) and in CNC3 i tried putting the graphics to max to see what the performance there was, and suddenly for max my framerate was 20 fps, and at medium it was back to 30! Somehow it was fixed.

 

Well, i fixed mine.. it was weird but it did the job. What i did is to reselect max power at the powermizer (mine is nvidia, for ati it will be different).
Desktop - right click- settings- graphic page - advance settings - ur video card - and just mess with the stuff there... like choosing from a max power to balance and then back to max again... something mess up the registry, dunno what but this actually help it to go back to where it suppose to be. AT least this is wat i ll do if i face this problem again.