Advice on faulty video card?


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Hello guys,

 

I'm an old time member, but (shamefully) I post only when I need help.

 

Here's the story:

 

A month ago I bought a second hand Nvidia GTX 470 with MSI Twin Frozr III cooling. I got it specifically for CUDA rendering with the Adobe suite. 

 

The temperatures for this card ranged from 60 degrees on idle to about 80-90 on load. The video card also made my CPU (Core 2 Duo E8500) run a lot hotter than previously - the CPU would go to about 76 - 78 degrees on full load with the stock cooler from Intel. 

 

I noticed that while rendering with CUDA, the GPU usage did not go up, and the video card would not heat up at all (is this normal?). The only times where the video card was stressed were while playing games. 

 

Yesterday I spent the whole day working in After Effects and rendering clips. The CPU, as usual would go to about 78 degrees max, the video card stayed at about 60-70. 

 

In the end I got these blue and yellow stripes on the screen and I can't get rid of them. I get them before starting Windows, during POST, please see the screenshot Windows reports that the video card has a problem and it's been disabled. Sometimes while booting I also get a BSOD that mentions an Nvidia .sys file, I forgot the name. 

 

DSC7780.jpg

 

I'm using an Antec 500W PSU. 

 

I've already checked with an older video card and stripes do not appear. 

 

So... is there anything I can do about this? Do you think the video card fried? I've read some forums that were saying it could be a VRAM issue. 

 

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. 

 

 

Thanks,
Paul

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for replying Andre. I tested the card on another computer and it's faulty indeed. I'll see if I'll try to "bake" it. 

 

If the VRAM is corrupted baking it won't make a difference, it'll actually make it worse, also it will heat up other components on the board which shouldn't be heated. Whoever started the "bake in a home oven" advice on the internet needs shooting, because it is *NOT* how vacuum solder reflowing works, we heat individual components up, not the whole board. Once transistors have failed in a chip, past their failsafe tolerance, the individual chips need replacing, you can't "fix" a failed semiconductor.

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Never heard baking it when referring to refloating a chip - I approve.   I dont think it will work, but I approve of the term... I know this will help you sleep better @ night knowing you have earned my approval.

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