another 8800GT XT problem

[chrisking69]

Hey guys I'm new to these forums and was wondering if anyone here might be able to help me. I've had to go through 2 RMAs already for defective 8800GT XTs and now my third card has an entirely different problem.

I woke up this morning to find my computer had no videofeed, and my monitor in standby. I wasn't able to get a picture back so I restarted the PC. After running XP for about 5 minutes I lost picture again and had to restart. Then, before it even got to my XP logon the screen went dead again. The only thing I changed in my system was replacing my defective 8800GT XT with a new one XFX just sent me (through cross-shipping RMA). So now I am inclined to believe my replacement card is in even worse shape than my previous cards (previous cards had defective memory, unable to run at factory default of 950MHz).
I sent in a ticket and am awaiting a response, but I'm beginning to feel that though XFX's customer service is excellent, their product quality is not.

My setup consists of a 100% stable E4500 with 2*2GB of PC2-6400 RAM, on a Gigabyte P35-DS3L motherboard, powered by a Corsair HX620Watt PSU, along with hard drives and optical drives. My system I have checked continuously for stability and high temps and have had no problems. With all my 8800GTs I used RivaTuner to keep my GPU fan speed at 70% and temps never got above 60c.

Can anyone help me? Has anyone run into this problem?

[werty316]

Make sure every power connector is firmly plugged in.

Is your E4500 overclocked?

When your screen goes dead can turn on and off either of the "Caps Lock", "Num Lock", or "Scroll Lock" LEDs on your keyboard?

Do you have access to another computer where you can test your video card in?

[chrisking69]

Everything is securely connected in my case. My e4500 is overclocked to 3GHz and has been entirely stable in the past, even running the Folding@Home SMP client on it. all the same I'm running it through another stability test to be sure (8 hours of dual instances of Prime95). I didn't try the caps/num/scroll lock lights, and i'm currently running my old XFX 7900GS XT in the same computer. Unfortunately I don't have another computer to test the card in either

[werty316]

Try running your CPU at its default clock speed and see if that helps.

[chrisking69]

OK, so here's a little update. I spent most of my evening and night yesterday testing my computer with dual instances of Prime95. I upped the voltages on my vCore and DRAM a little bit to ensure stability and prime95 worked perfectly. I'm positive my motherboard/CPU/RAM/overclock are 100% stable, as are the voltage rails from my power supply. The only thing I can think of that caused my problem the other morning was the videocard.
I'm running my computer with my 8800GT XT right now and so far haven't run into any problems. But I'm curious, is there perhaps a BIOS update for my videocard that I'm not aware of? Something that might ensure 100% compatibility with my Gigabyte P35-DS3L?

[chrisking69]

Well my card did it again last night. Watching Employee of the Month and boom, videofeed cuts out and monitor goes to standby. No screen saver, no power saving feature in windows or any of that. I press reset on my computer and videofeed cuts out again, first when XP starts to load, then again while I'm in the BIOS. Anyone had this problem with their 8800GT XT before?

[Miker]

Know just because tests show it is stable doesn't mean it is. My CPU/Memory passed memtest all night, then ORTHOS the next night. Then randomly the next day in FireFox my PC randomly rebooted from to much OC. The question is, with no OC does the game crash?

[xfxsupport]

Really the only BIOS out is to put the video cards back to PCIe 1 as there have been motherboards that have issues with PCIe 2. In your support ticket request the BIOS to see if that helps. Keep us posted.

[Miker]

A P35 mobo should be good with PCI-e 2.0.

[sushrukh]

P35 mobos are not PCI-E 2.0 capable though.X38 & X48s are.

[Miker]

It will run a 2.0 card in it at 1.0. It is not like a VIA chipset that won't even boot.