[HELP] Possible GFX Card issue

[Bahumat]

Hi all,

System spec
Q6600
2gb ram
1hdd
1cd/dvdrom
8800GT
Hiper 580w psu

When I play Warhammer Online everything seems to be fine, however when I go into a Battle Ground it will instantly switch my pc off, then restart (with no error messages).

I installed this card yesterday and the problem has occured 3 times now. The old card X1950 Pro had no issues.

I uninstalled the drivers and ran a Driver Cleaner from Guru3d.

I have noticed when booting, there is an extra screen with some information on, however it goes way too fast for me to read it.


Any ideas?

[Bahumat]

Played CoD4 for about 30 minutes and no issues, seems war is the only game which suffers this. am gonna re-install the game and see what happens

[Kryten]

Still shouldn't happen at all regardless of which game, that sort of issue points at the PSU obviously but it would take a fairly serious software problem to cause it.
Anything in event logs? The absolute least you should see are warnings about "unexpected previous shutdown"

[Bahumat]

Originally Posted by Kryten

Still shouldn't happen at all regardless of which game, that sort of issue points at the PSU obviously but it would take a fairly serious software problem to cause it.
Anything in event logs? The absolute least you should see are warnings about "unexpected previous shutdown"

I did think about the PSU, however I played CoD4 for over 30 minutes and everything was fine. Also I ran a weird Japanese tool which tests the card. It supposed to put as much strain on it as Crysis.

Where are the event logs in Vista please?

[Bahumat]

Just spoke to the company i bought it off Overclockers UK and they have recieved a few calls on this.

The 8800GT can run on about 400w as i've seen this on tons of forums. I have 1 hdd and 1 cd/dvd rom so 580w should be fine.

Have used all the driver cleaner programs etc so I dont think its that.

Tried re-installing the game but the issues occured just as I pressed the Play button on character selection. Also happened 20-30 minutes after playing.

Have tried putting the game quality to Low and this still occurs

How do I disable the automatic reboot please?

I do not think its a RAM issue because when I put the old card back in everything was fine.

This seems to be one of two problems;

1) problem with Warhammer. No other game suffers this and CoD4, Crysis and graphical test programs are far harder to run than Warhammer.

2) psu problem, however I am not sure this is the problem.

I think I will use the old card for the time being, i'll wait a couple of months and see if any threads appear on this issue. If not, I'll buy a new PSU. If the problem still occurs, i'll pour coke on the 8800GT and buy a 4870 lol

[Kryten]

It's in Control Panel under Administrative Tools, or slightly easier type "eventvwr" without the quotes in the run/search thingy.

Any joy with the software re-installation? It does sound really odd, as I said some games place undue stress or just different types of stress on graphics cards, and some seemingly less hungry games can cause issues whereas monsters like Crysis behave fine.

I assume you've already had a search around for any other WAR players with similar issues? Would try myself but as I'm no even nearly familiar with the game it'd be a tad fruitless; the nearest thing I'm finding is something about stability with the latest patch. Still doubt that would cause it.

[Bahumat]

Yeah i've had a look round and alot of people get crash to desktop issues, but i have not seen any regarding the pc switching off & on. Thanks for the tip Kryton, will have to try that when I put the card back in.

The software re-install did not help, i got to the character select screen and it happened (just as I pressed PLAY), then about 30 minutes it re-occured

Old x1950pro seems fine, played for about 1 hour last night...gonna test the old card again tonight and see what happens

[Kryten]

Aye, it's not the wattage of the PSU that's an issue - my 8800GT ran on my akasa 460w supply without issue, thats with 5 hard drives, 2 optical drives and the rest of the gubbins it has to power - hence I'm thinking more along the lines of a fault, if it is the PSU at all.

To disable automatic shutdown, go to Control Panel then System. Under Advanced System Settings click the Settings for Startup and Recovery. Untick "Automatically restart" and that way you should get a look at the blue screen if anything at all.

Starting to wonder if it's IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL which still points at a software/driver problem.

[Bahumat]

It's hard cause it could be the psu, gfx card or simply the game (possibly even the ram, however i do not think so)...I think I will wait a few months till they iron all the bugs out. Stalker had issues with certain gfx cards so it could be the game at fault.

After a few months I'll plug it back in and see what happens. If it re-occurs, i'll disable the automatic shutdown and view the event viewer etc. I will then possibly buy a new PSU with 2 of the 6pin power plugs and see what happens. If still no joy, i'll get a 4870 lol.

By waiting I will probably be void of the 28 days return policy thingy, but it comes in a stupidly huge box 50cm x 80cm and it'll cost about £8 to send it back (they wont refund that).

[Bahumat]

I noticed the 8800GT needs 20a/22a but my psu is a little less, however with the fact I can run Crysis/CoD4, I did not think this was the issue.

+5v (± 5%) 2.0A - 36A
+12v 1 (± 5%) 1A - 20A
+12v 2 (± 5%) 1A - 18A
-5V (± 10%) -
-12v (± 10%) 0A - 0.8A
+5vsb (± 5%) 0 - 2.5A
+3.3v (± 5%) 0.5 - 30A
+12v1 & +12v2 < 360W (30A)
+3.3v & +5v < 240W
+3.3v, +5v & +12v < 560W