Any advice appreciated!
HAd weird problem yesterday - rendering all my games unplayable…:mad: (windows + IE still fine).
Games now end up with red + green ghost image, smearing then screen goes black approx 1min into gameplay.
Fans (CPU, gfx card, + case) are all working and temp is in the 50s and card seems seated OK.
Does this mean the card (8800GTX with 178.xx drivers) has kicked the bucket?
Should I try some other drivers?
Latest WHQL drivers of course yes Flash, bad luck mate. Maybe use Driver Cleaner Pro beforehand too just in case
Make a Restore Point right away
red + green ghost image, smearing
Sounds a bit videocardy unfortunately, means you’ve lost your blue gun information somewhere along the line but check and tidy up all your connections to your monitor in case it’s just a plug loosened, could be that simple. Try the card’s TV connection if no luck with that, if available
No luck with anything, try to confirm your card’s gone bad by installing it in another machine if one is available, and see my note in 602 about using onboard video to tide you over if that’s available
Ming
I have your card, Flash, with latest drivers. Perfect so far. Is there a lot of dust on your fan? Take off cover and blow out/wipe those fans.
Cheers chaps - I’ll try the blowing dust off fan with the cover off see if that works and the latest drivers…
(although it was messing with gfx drivers that got me into mischief a couple of weeks ago!:))
Onboard video Ming? You mean run Il-2 in 200x100 C64-o-vision???:eek:
Could be useful for picking up dots at long range I suppose :D- I may be that desperate soon!
Update
No dust in the fan and same tresult with different drivers… 30 secs play in 3D environment and then kaput:(
Windows, IE and game menus are all fine…
Still sounds like a overheating issue. Does the fan speed up when you start something that use 3D? Are you using any kind of tweaking programs, any overclocking?
And just to be on the safe side, have you taken out the card and put it back in again?
(…it was messing with gfx drivers that got me into mischief a couple of weeks ago!)
See he didn’t mention this before, probably overclocked the **** out of it 
Onboard video Ming? You mean run Il-2 in 200x100 C64-o-vision???
Would eliminate your monitor/monitor cable from the fault-finding process mate.
It wouldn’t matter what resolution you’d see, you wouldn’t be flying it at 0.001 frame/sec anyway
Could be useful for picking up dots at long range I suppose - I may be that desperate soon!
You could well be because it’s sounding more hardware by the minute if you haven’t fixed it yet
Recapitulating
Fans (CPU, gfx card, + case) are all working and temp is in the 50s and card seems seated OK.
Drivers don’t go bad 1 minute into playing a game if temperatures and physical connections are ok
Btw if running under OpenGL try D3D (DirectX) to see if it’s the same
DO NOT BE ON CUSTOM GRAPHICS OBVIOUSLY AT THIS DELICATE TIME
Ming
Ta for advice gents…
Nah - haven’t overclocked it - its a s/h card and I actually underclock slightly it using RivaTuner (as when I first put it in I had some tiny gfx atifacts that went away when I dialled things down).
Fan is working OK - temp ok according to temp control panel. I’ve also tried starting a game straight away from cold pc left off all day - as I thought overheating might be the issue - same result.
I’ll try swapping to D3D and pulling the card out and putting it back in - see if that cures it…
I have a similar card.
-Try to run IL2 in DirectX graphics and see if it is more stable
-If this works, it should be a driver problem. I run at the latest Nvidia 18x.xx drivers, as I am always upgading.
Hmm, that you have to downclock it to have it run as it should does point to something beeing wrong with the hardware already before the latest issues. I wouldn’t expect a working card to need downclocking from factory settings if everything is ok with it…
Could possibly be a memory or somthing else other then the GPU itself that overheats.
If you run speedfan, that can log the temperature when the game is running. A GPU that isn’t cooled will very quickly reach critical temp, even when satrting from cold. The speedfan will show you how high the temp goes while your in game.
Ok this is strange.
Tried il-2, Left4Dead and CoD:WaW, plus a couple of other games - and everything now seems back to normal…
(Didn’t change anything at all, but just tried the games in a different order. For some reason running Il-2 first solved all the other ones…)
So…
:w00t:
Ta for all the advice!
(Mikke - card is second-hand so I live with a bit of underclocking in as I got it cheap!)
NB: - Thinking about this - what does anyone think of the ATI HD4850/4870 cards? I used to be a true Nvidia supporter with my 6800GT - but last two cards (including this one) have been a bit flaky.
I can now (touch wood) hang on to this one a bit longer - but anyone recommend those cards as an upgrade…?
If you hang onto it a bit longer something newer and better will probably be out… :tongue2: :wink2:
Did you pull it and put it back in?
Did you pull it and put it back in?
No - just fired up Il-2 as I was going to do an OpenGL/D3D comparison and than, finding that OpenGL was working oK - decided on a whim to try Left4Dead… to find that was now working again…!
Bizzare!
I was going to do an OpenGL/D3D comparison
I’m claiming a partial kill 
Ming
ATI HD4850/4870
Thumbsup and very cheap now too. 4850 is comparable to the 8800. The 4870/512 may not be as quick as the new NV flagship cards…but at a little over £150 you can’t complain