Massive errors 2D Test. 3D games Texture corruption.

[Monketron]

Basically i have an 8800 GTS 512 which kept randomly giving errors and giving blue screens when it frooze. I replaced the card under warrenty for another 8800 which is now giving similar (but different) Texture errors. This mainly happens in GFX intensive games like Crysus / COD4 pretty much the moment the game is loaded. It also happens in less GFX intensive games such as World of Warcraft, but only very rarely and then only when in outdoor areas not indoors.

I feel it was unlikely that i had 2 faulty 8800's in a row. But decided to run a BurnInTest 5.1 test. The results were as follows:



I've run the Test multiple times with similar errors.
Now my question is, why would it give so many 2D errors but no 3D errors (when surely the 3D test uses the same video memory?). Also would 2D errors effect the symptons i am having in games?

I don't want to go buy another GFX card only to find out it was never the problem and it was another componant in the PC that was causing the errors. Its worth adding that the original 8800 worked fine for about 6 months before i began having problems.

Thanks for your time in reading / replying.

[David (PassMark)]

nVidia has had recent problems with defective chips. But as far as I know they haven't stated exactly which products are faulty. So it is hard to know if that is your problem.

The 2D test writes and reads the video RAM and so can detect bad video RAM. The 3D test makes use of other 3D functions and really requires a visual inspection of the output to check for some types of errors.

There is a small chance that the problem is device driver related or motherboard bus related. It would be good to try the card in another machine before returning it.

[Monketron]

Thanks for the reply. I put in a crappy lower spec 8400 GS card which is puny when compared to the 8800 GTS and there are no problems whatsoever.

Could a faulty PSU cause video card memory problems? As the 8400 draws less power it could be that the problem doesnt occur. Checking the bios shows that the 12v and 5v rails are withing normal numbers though.

Unfortunately i dont have any other PCI-e motherboards to test the card out in only older AGP ones.

[David (PassMark)]

I would note the exact error messages you get from the games and do a search for anyone with the same problem, to see if someone else has solved it.

Then I would check if a BIOS upgrade is available for the motherboard, or new device drivers for the video card.

If you are overclocking anything, then return back to the default speeds.

Check that the CPU / video card aren't too hot and airflow is good.

Yes, a bad or under spec power supply can cause problems. But if it was all good for 6 months, then I am more likely to blame the video card than the PSU.

The only real way to 100% sure however is to swap out components and re-test after each swap.

[Monketron]

Thanks for your time/effort. I'll give it a go