Video card dead?

[odannyboy000]

Hi recently I was playing BioShock and I think it broke my vid card. When I was playing, all of a sudden the screen turns into weird colors (like 4-8 bit colors). Now whenever I play games like Team Fortress 2, that same thing happens. Anyone know the problem? My temps are fine.

[jlreich]

Hook up another monitor to make sure that isn't it.

But it sounds like the video card went south. :(

Did you over clocked the card? If you did lower it and see if that helps any.

[odannyboy000]

I don't need to hook up a new monitor, my card works fine for normal things, even Counter strike source, but not team fortress 2 or bioshock.

[mjc]

You may want to try reinstalling the drivers...or updating them.

[odannyboy000]

Can't. It's a 7950gt apg video card. There are no drivers available for it except the one on disk. How do you think this would help mjc? Maybe part of my driver is messing up and reinstalling it will fix it?

[mjc]

Nvidia 7950? No drivers?

Try here...http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

[odannyboy000]

They don't work. I have contacted XFX about this issue and they told me to install the drivers manually since it won't work automatically. This way you write the drivers manually even though the system says "no". When I did this it broke my video card like the messages promised it might. Then I got this one about 1-3 months ago.

But, yeah, the CD drivers are the only one that works. Probably because the 7950gt I own is an AGP platform.

[odannyboy000]

I reinstalled my drivers using the CD and it completed successfully. I was then prompted to restart the computer in which I did. When I got to the windows logo screen my computer restarted. Then when it restarted it ran fine. What to you make of this?

[odannyboy000]

Ok now my card is dead, and I have RMA'd it. Wow, this is the second 7950gt I went through from XFX.

[saphalline]

PC GAMING RULE #1 - Always run the latest reference drivers for all your hardware! If the ones straight from NVidia didn't work, XFX needs to get on that!!

Bioshock is not the most stable game in the world. :rolleyes: Actually, it performs much better on Vista in a true DX10 environment, but how many people are running that??

Bioshock also requires the latest 163 ForceWare beta drivers in order to even run the game engine. If you were using the ones that came on the CD, they were most likely replaced during the Bioshock install. The game simply will refuse to install without them, so it's part of the install routine. If you had problems after installing and playing Bioshock, the beta drivers were most likely part of the issue (although they shouldn't have been - my system runs better in both WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate 64-bit after installing those beta drivers!).

[odannyboy000]

the beta drivers were most likely part of the issue

Do you mean BioShocks beta drivers or the new forceware?

[Gecko 1123]

PC GAMING RULE #1 - Always run the latest reference drivers for all your hardware! If the ones straight from NVidia didn't work, XFX needs to get on that!!

That makes sense in some situations...but in others, its best not to update the drivers if they work fine (don't fix it if its not broken.) I learned this the hard way, after a ForceWare driver caused my card to fail and give the graphics POST beep (even though I never did find out why I got a POST beep while the machine was running. :p )

[saphalline]

That makes sense in some situations...but in others, its best not to update the drivers if they work fine (don't fix it if its not broken.)That's true in general for computers, but not for gaming. I listed that rule as a PC gaming rule and I stand by that. You can't expect games to run well without using the latest drivers for your hardware! That's one of the first things listed in the troubleshooting section of any PC game's readme file.

I learned this the hard way, after a ForceWare driver caused my card to fail and give the graphics POST beepTalk to your vid card's manufacturer about that one! The GPU companies (NVidia and AMD right now) design the GPU's and test them with Windows. They're the ones who know how they work and how to write the drivers. They're also the ones who give strict guidelines to the vid card manufacturers for assembly purposes. If your vid card died from a driver update, it's the vid card's manufacturer's fault! Period!

Shoot them an email or something.