Crash causes my nvidia gts 450 to break

[timscscs]

 I bought the copy of steam and after a couple of uses it crashed my computer and made the graphics all distorted. I then tried to play a game of call of duty black ops and found that all my graphics were corrupt. I tried some other games and found the same problem. So i installed the latest drivers from nvidia but still the same problem. So i switched over to windows 7 ( was on windows xp) and still graphics corruption. HELP. Thanks

[Joshimitsu91]

I bought the copy of steam and after a couple of uses it crashed my computer and made the graphics all distorted. I then tried to play a game of call of duty black ops and found that all my graphics were corrupt. I tried some other games and found the same problem. So i installed the latest drivers from nvidia but still the same problem. So i switched over to windows 7 ( was on windows xp) and still graphics corruption. HELP. Thanks

What do you mean by "corrupt", are you getting error messages or blue screen of death? If so please post details (screenshots of the problems too if you can).

Also, you may just want to ask this on a forum dedicated to help with technology, such as http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/, as you may get faster responses from there.

Josh

[Ramierez]

I bought the copy of steam and after a couple of uses it crashed my computer and made the graphics all distorted. I then tried to play a game of call of duty black ops and found that all my graphics were corrupt. I tried some other games and found the same problem. So i installed the latest drivers from nvidia but still the same problem. So i switched over to windows 7 ( was on windows xp) and still graphics corruption. HELP. Thanks

What do you mean by "corrupt", are you getting error messages or blue screen of death? If so please post details (screenshots of the problems too if you can).

Also, you may just want to ask this on a forum dedicated to help with technology, such as http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/, as you may get faster responses from there.

Josh

Also, did you uninstall the previous driver before installing the new one?  If you're getting a consistent problem like you describe you need to make sure to completely remove everything related to the card (drivers and any utility software) and reinstall from scratch.

[ChemicalBR0]

lol i was just typing that.
the installer for the drivers will give you the option to do a clean install where it will remove everything for you and install the new drivers.

by default it is set to simply update existing drivers, so if you already had the latest drivers it won't overwrite them, it will just do a check that everything is there and the version numbers are correct.

[LimitlessAeon]

I was going to give my 2 cents, but everyone else beat me to it. Search online for guides on how to do CLEAN installs. I don't know exactly how Nvidia works, but I have a few driver/registry cleaner programs to completely rid my system of ATi graphics driver files before I update to a new drivers. You cannot just install over the old ones, that's a guaranteed disaster.

[bojo]

Also don't overlook the fact that your card may have just died. They do that every once in a while, i've had it happen more than a couple of times. Even with new cards fresh out of the box. Doesn't mean its US doing it.

[ChemicalBR0]

agreed.
US isn't putting much of a strain on the GPU at all, I don't see how it could cause hardware failure
(if you were running crysis 2 on an overclocked card then just maybe)
it could just be coincidence that your card gave up when you were running US.

at the moment I have US running and gpu temperature is 32c gpu usage is hovering around 35%
and ram usage (1gb ddr5) is using 416Mb.


when I'm playing a game temperatures are usually between 55-60c.
gpu usage 100% and usually 100% of the ram too. (if not more with memory sharing)

[timscscs]

Hi, thanks for all the replies. First of all just want to clarify i didn't mean to imply that US was the cause, just happened while using the program and coincided with the crash of the program. The gfx card is still under warranty so am not concerned. As i have tried the gfx card under 2 different operating systems i'm pretty sure its broken. I tried to lower the core frequency and memory frequency which allowed it to run without any artifacts. But have noticed the card is unusable for gaming or directx apps now. I thought that it might have overheated but it is running at only 38C. Thanks again

[ChemicalBR0]

you say you tried lowering the core clocks.

did you have the card overclocked when the crash happened and it "broke" your card?

[timscscs]

No, the card has been at factory settings all the time i have had it, i only lowered the frequency as a last resort.

[ChemicalBR0]

good.
so your warranty is still ok at least.

if you had overclocked your warranty would no doubt have been void