Signs of a bad video card

[Magnum]

I have never had a video card go bad.

What are the symptons of a bad video card ?

On my desktop, I get very frequent "freeze ups".

It has an internal video with the ability to add a video card.

It has the same O.S. as my laptop which never freezes up.

The screen has these repeating slashes across it.

What do you think ?

[FORTRANS]

Hi Andy,

I have never had a video card go bad.

   I have had some problems, but with much older computers.
I have not had the video go bad in a long time.  I have seen or
heard of other's problems (like at work).

What are the symptons of a bad video card ?

   For me it was "snow" across the image, loss of an RGB channel,
loss of synch, and flat out dead.  The "snow" was a bunch of bad
or flickering pixels among the good ones.

On my desktop, I get very frequent "freeze ups".

   Have do not think I seen that myself.  The bad video has been
separate from other system performance.

It has an internal video with the ability to add a video card.

It has the same O.S. as my laptop which never freezes up.

The screen has these repeating slashes across it.

   That sounds a bit like my "snow" maybe.  Bad video RAM I
think.

HTH,

Steve N.

[Vortex]

Hi Magnum,

You see a lot of abnormal patterns on the screen and they are a part of your display.

[Magnum]

Interesting investigation.

I did a test of all the voltages of my 250 power supply.

All values within specs.

A typical SATA drive draws about 1.0 Amp = 120 Watts while under load.

My case fan drew                            .16 Amp = 19 Watts

CPU fan drew                                  .12 Amp = 15 Watts
----------------------------
Subtotal                                                         153 Watts

I was not aware that a AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+ used so much power.    

But I got this reply.

the cpu alone is rated up to 90 watts...the gpu..who knows...and the rest of the circuitry...it just sounds very marginal...at least eliminate this as a factor.

I had a salvaged 400 Watt power supply that I installed and voila, no more freeze ups. :-)

I love learning, even the hard things.

Andy