On Monday I installed my new BFG 3D Fuzion Geforce 7600GT and it was working absolutely fine until this morning. Booted up, ran Windows for a minute or two and then suddenly I got a blank screen which didn't go away. So I restarted, back into Windows, and then another blank screen: however, eventually it went back to the Windows desktop. But then the blank screen returned: and then the desktop returned. So it went on flickering on and off about once every second. I thought the problem might be due to nVidia's auto-overclocking feature, which I had enabled in the nVidia display properties panel thingy, so I struggled to turn it off (not easy with the screen blanking out) and restarted. Now, Windows works fine, thankfully. But 3D games are another matter. In Star Wars: Empire at War and 3DMark05 I get dots, lines, and giant out-of-place polygons, and in Half-Life 2: Episode One I get the blank screen when I load up a game and it eventually crashes with a DirectX error. So I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. I'm using the latest nVidia beta drivers, though I've tried using the drivers on the card's driver CD instead (no luck) and uninstalling/reinstalling the beta drivers I'm using. Could it be down to nVidia's Auto-Overclocking? It's meant to be safe and presumably doesn't raise the clock to anywhere near dangerous levels, but could it mess up my card anyway? I haven't manually overclocked it at all: it's exactly these sorts of problems which put me off overclocking! My card temperature seems to be around 45-50C in a quick 3DMark05 test, but I still get artifacts. The only problem I can think there is temperature-wise is that I have my soundcard right underneath the 7600 GT with not much room between them. Should I get rid of it? (I don't have enough PCI slots to move it.) I can't think of what could have changed between now and yesterday. Last night I installed Half-Life 2: Episode One and played it for a few hours, which could have stressed the card, but it showed no signs of it until this morning. Thanks for any help or ideas.
First, move the sound card as far away from the video card as possible; not for room issues, but because conflicts occur when the sound card is right below the video card. Then download the latest ATItool beta and scan for artifacts without overclocking and see if it does artifact or not
Running ATITool before taking my soundcard out oddly didn't show up any artifacts. After taking out my soundcard I thought the problem was solved (3DMark05 was fine) and ATITool shows no artifacts again. Running Empire at War was initially fine but a minute in the screen started to freeze for a few seconds at a time before ceasing to respond and I had to reboot. According to ATITool my card's running at 57C after a few minutes of the spinning cube. Gonna try some more troubleshooting now, but thanks for the replies so far.
Agreed!!!! I have a 6600 which is normally clocked at 400/500. My card is pre-overclocked to 450/500 and the Autodetect gave me 605/715. YEAH RIGHT!!! It is VERY important to only run Auto Detect when the card is warmed up. In other words, keep that cube spinning for 30mins and then run Auto Detect RIGHT AWAY. It will give you a much safer overclock.
Ooh dear, that doesn't sound good. Well, I haven't tried ATITool properly yet, but I tried 3DMark06 for a while. It was going fine until the second test where halfway in it froze and my PC restarted. I've just spent an unenjoyable hour reinstalling the drivers for my integrated graphics. Think I'll leave my troubleshooting for tonight but I'll give it another go tomorrow: I might be crazy, but the problem could possibly be linked to my TV signal booster. Incidentally, my PSU is only 350W: could that be a major problem? Thanks for all the replies, everyone.
Well, I couldn't resist giving it another go, so I reinstalled all the drivers. ATITool shows no artifacts after ~30 minutes, 3DMark06 does both tests without failing, and Empire at War works too. I really hope I've fixed this problem somehow, otherwise I'm stuck.
The problems seem to be gone: just played a few hours of HL2 with no problems. I'm not sure what did it: taking out the sound card, messing about with drivers, or just giving it time. Either way, thanks to everyone for your help!
Ah, great. It's back. I think it might have something to do with using "Best Quality" for Image Settings in the nVidia driver settings. Has this problem come up before with using that setting?
Well, I'm having EXACTLY the same problems as you, but I've been unable to fix it I'm probably going to have to RMA it because it seems to be totally screwed. What's worse is I never even attempted any sort of overclocking on the card - not even automatic.
@Sum0 hi, i just registered to this forum, so to tell you that i had the exact same problem as you described only with an XFX 7600GT XXX Edition. My card was "dead" on arrival. Couldn't fix the prob over the weekend and returned the card to the retailer the next monday. Just so you know you're not alone.... :-| (Got an exchange card of the same model now though, which works just fine) good luck with the next one, and excuse my bad english
