I think my video card died :(

[failurbydesign]

So i just did a fresh install of vista last night, got all my programs up and running and what not, anyways when i left for work this morning i defrag the HD, but whem i got home, i had no screen and my video card fan was at full sppeed, so i held the power button in till it shut off, them i unplugged the pc, when i started it back up, nothing, just full fan and a red light inside my case was on..when i took the card out, the red light went away and it booted with the onboard video...are there anyother ways to test the card??

 

[Sazar]

Might just be a bug.

Have you considered doing a fresh installation and re-trying the card?

 

[failurbydesign]

i just did a fresh install of vista last night! it would kill me to do it all over again...when i removed the card and start up normal its ok, but when the card is in...it spins fast but i get nothing...through dvi and vga

 

[Sazar]

Perhaps contact tech support and maybe get an RMA going if you are convinced its the card.

Do you perhaps have another component you can try out in that slot and see if it does teh same thing?

Perhaps consider listing detailed system specifications for your setup

 

[failurbydesign]

well my card is an ati x700 pro pci-e 16x 256mb, my pc is a gateway..p4 @ 3.2 768mb ram, 160 hd....

 

[failurbydesign]

oh and the other pc in my house had pci and agp...

 

[failurbydesign]

ok right now i have the card it, but the monitor hooked up to the onboard video..the cars fan spins fast, but the computer doesnt see the card at all??? Any ideas?

here is a picture with the card installed and running, but the display doesnt work...and it shows there is NO sign of any pci-e device....is it the card or my MB...

 

[LeeJend]

here is a picture with the card installed and running, but the display doesnt work...and it shows there is NO sign of any pci-e device....is it the card or my MB...

Yes.

You need a working PCI-e card or another system with a pci-e slot to find out for sure.

Given the symptoms I'd bet the card is dead. The fan speed is controlled by the video card bios and if it's running full speed that means the bios thinks the card is running very hot which it should not be. My x800 fan starts out at low speed so I'd expect the x700 to do the same if it has it's brains on. The problem could be as simple as a loose heatsink on the vid card, but is probably a bad GPU or video card regulator. Also, unless the card is totally bad you usually get at least the bios boot screen visible in VGA mode.

Before you RMA-
Go into bios and see if there are any settings for video selection between onboard and card slot. There used to be a MB jumper or a bios disable "on board video" setting but all the newer systems seem to be auto detect. If there is a disable you will need to do a cmos reset to get any video back if the card is dead.

 

[vertigo]

my nvidia card runs the fan 100% until drivers are loaded (sometime during the windows logo).

 

[failurbydesign]

Ok, so i thought maybe it was my hd, so i removed the hd and connected it back in, same issue. But i thought, why not try another power connector..and it worked. for some reason one of my sata power connectors mess's up an dthe card stops working...weird huh?

 

[failurbydesign]

Ok now im getting pissed, every so often the card or the pci-e slot doesn't work, sometimes when i reboot, the card gets all fast, and it boots from the on board video,and it takes me like 8-10 restarts to get the card to work..WTF...can anyone help me with this..

 

[ShepsCrook]

Hmm... If windows isn't recognizing it, then it's going to usually be a hardware issue. I would give a good inspection of your X700. Check the heatsink for being loose, check for any small burn areas, clean the fan if need be, even reinstalling it with a little more force and even a slight wobble to maybe hit all connections properly. Check your boards bios and update it if need be. Maybe your boards bios needs to be reset.

 

[failurbydesign]

the card is in good shape including the fan...i dont see any burns, ive tried the wobble and "gard" install...and nothing...how can i find info fo rmy bios..like updates and such?

check out what it says about my pci-e..is that normal??

 

[ShepsCrook]

What kind of motherboard do you have? And when the bios starts, it will usually say a revision, or version number for it.

 

[failurbydesign]

its and Intel d915GSE..i'm not sure what version i have...


EDIT
so after i checked it again and used my can of air, i cleaned out the card and pci-e slot...installed, after two tries, i just workes...it does stupid crap like that...also in my bios should i change the primary video to pci-e?

my bios revision
se91510j.15a.1778.2004.1012.1001

 

[ElementalDragon]

hmm..... something else you might be able to try..... since i'm assuming the video card is one that requires a 6-pin PCI-Express power connector.... when the video card doesn't want to work, try testing the voltage on the pins with a volt meter if you have one. i recently got scared to hell thinking my video card died, and it turns out that my power supply just suddenly lost voltage on the two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. they were the only ones to lose power. kinda weirded me out a little. Thinking that it could be possible that the PSU might be a tad iffy.

While you're at it, check the wattage on the PSU that's in that there Gateway. i usually don't trust putting relatively high-end video cards into brand-name computers, cause half the time they put a power supply in that's just enough watts to power whatever is in the computer at the time of being built. Used to have a Sony Vaio.... put a GeForce 4 Ti-4200 into it.... within a few months, woke up to artifacts completely across the screen. the lack of power was stressing the PSU.... and the video card was what bit the bullet.

 

[failurbydesign]

do you maybe have a picture of where i need to test?? i dont mind checking...i have a btx case and may just get a new mb that supports dual core, but i have only found a few mb that are only intel...

 

[ElementalDragon]

Now that i think about it.... DOES your x700 Pro have a 6-pin PCI-Express power connector... or any power connector for the power supply to plug into for that matter? so far i haven't found a review of a single one that uses a PSU power connector. If so... here's the pinout for it:

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/psu/116

there's a website that shows the pinout of the power connector. you could probably just test it on the solder points you see on the back of the card going by the pinout.

 

[failurbydesign]

yea, mine doesn't have that..i just took the card out, i wish i had another computer with pci-e do i can see if its the card or my mb...

 

[ray_gillespie]

Oooh slightly off-topic but I noticed that 'Infra-red' by Placebo is in your sig at the moment - that's SUCH a great song!!