Weird 8800 GTS Problem

[carmen510]

So I have a 8800 GTS nVidia graphics card, and I have several problems.

1. Usually when playing games that require moderate to high levels of graphic power, such as Company of Heroes or sometimes the Orange Box, I get weird green dots that move around, that won't go away until I exit the game or game action slows down.

2. Sometimes, my computer will shut down for no apparent reason in the middle of one of these high-graphic intense games.

3. What exactly is overclocking? What are the pros and cons?

 

[Quintillus]

It sounds like you have artifacts, which appear either when you have driver trouble or when your card is overheating. Given that your computer sometimes shuts down in the middle of graphics-intensive games, my guess is it's the latter.

There are a number of utilities that allow you to monitor temperatues of GPU's, such as nTune, and Rivatuner (haven't tried this one, pretty sure it has this feature, though). You might want to download one of these, and alt-tab to its monitoring feature when the green dots start appearing - then note the temperature. It should be below 100 Celsius, preferably below 85. You may need custom drivers to view the temperature, but hopefully you can get the temperature monitoring to work without that extra step.

You also should make sure no dust/desks/walls/etc. are blocking any of the fans on your computer. This would certainly contribute to overheating.

Overclocking is forcing the card to run at a higher clock speed (frequency in physics terms) than it ran at when you bought it. The pro is that it gives you better graphics performance; the con is that it makes the GPU run hotter. I wouldn't try overclocking given the apparent overheating you're having - and the games you mention don't need overclocking to run on that card (I've run CoH at max on a lower card with good performance). If you already are overclocking, you ought to set the clock speeds back to what they originally were are see if the green dots/random shutdowns disappear...excessive overclocking can certainly cause such things to occur.

Overclocking isn't inherently bad - I've overclocked my laptop with no ill effects - but it does require some measure of caution and a good amount of monitoring when applying the overclock.

 

[GVBN]

1. Overheating. Check your video card temperatures
2. What kind of power supply do you have?
3. Overclocking means raising card's core/memory/shader clocks above default values

 

[carmen510]

1. Now I doubt it, I run at a solid 67 - 60 degrees.
2. A very good one by earthworks or something. Saves energy and is still enough for me to run my computer.

 

[carmen510]

God dammit. It happened again while I was playing Team Fortress 2.

 

[ainwood]

In the nVidia control panel, you can download an nvidia utility to monitor graphics card temps.

I recommend updating to the latest drivers, making sure that there is no dust etc collecting on your graphics card, and making sure that the card is firmly in its slot.

 

[mdwh]

2. A very good one by earthworks or something. Saves energy and is still enough for me to run my computer.

How powerful is it?

I mean, I'm not sure we can conclude it's "a very good one" and is enough to run your computer, if the computer switching off all the time - the PSU is one possible culprit here (I once had similar issues - display corruption and sometimes the computer turning off, and getting a more powerful PSU fixed it).

But if you tell us what its W rating is, people here might have an idea as to whether it's likely to be underpowered for your setup, or not.

 

[carmen510]

Its Earthwatts Model: EA-380, EA-430, EA-500 compatiable with ATX12V 2.2 specification, has 80 PLUS certification, has OPP, OVP, and SCP, uses AC power outlet between 100~240V, has active PFC made by Antec.

 

[warpus]

I have had some issues with my 8800GTS - but I think the problem might be my powersupply.

Are there any utilities out there that monitor the voltage that the GPU and/or the CPU are getting?

I've been working on this problem for a while now, and I'm down to two possibilities:
1. faulty motherboard (which I think is unlikely)
2. faulty powersupply

 

[Pyrion]

Yup, overheating. I tend to refer to this behavior as "chroma flicker," as the green dots correspond to individual polygons and they increase in intensity as the video card's temperature rises.

My old 6600GT on its stock cooler used to do this quite often, and it sometimes got so bad that the framerate (and the system) would literally grind to a halt.

You can stave off the inevitable by keeping your case open, but ultimately you're just going to have to replace the stock cooler with something better.

Also make a habit of blowing out the dust with a can of compressed air every month or so. That'll increase the life expectancy of your hardware.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Bad idea to keep the case open. More often than not, this will hamper air flow and worsen the overall effect ( Unless he lives somewhere where the temperatures are like -10 all the time). Plus it makes the thing a dust magnet.