nvidia driver problem, or is my card dying?

StonedZealot

I've got a well-used Geforce 6600 AGP plugged into this machine and it's been causing me problems. Basically, it will randomly draw artifacts on the screen and then kill the operating system.

It does this in Linux as well as Windows (so I'm pretty sure it's not that I'm running a new kernel or anything). In Linux, it does this under the nvidia and the nv drivers (which is worrisome). I'm running under the vesa driver as we speak and so far so good (but I've only been up for a few minutes yet). I can't determine if this is just my card dying, if I need to reseat it, or if there's some other "unspeakable force" behind the whole thing.

Side Note: I just got done playing Quake 4 in Linux and the problems never really showed up before then, but I'm pretty sure that's coincidental.

Any ideas? Any hardware tweaks or software changes I can make or am I officially in the video card market again?
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alienjon · Veteran Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1726

Since it happens in both Windows and Gentoo, I agree. I think it is a hardware issue. But I can't imagine that a bad video card would just not allow you to display anything on the monitor (for obvious reasons) but I have had issues with video cards in the past that did not allow the computer to even turn on so I suppose anything is possible. I guess I'm asking if there is any other hardware you have that could be causing this, before we conclude that it is the video card itself.

StonedZealot · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:48 pm Post subject:

Well, I don't really have any other notable hardware except an AMD64 3000+ (which isn't even that notable nowadays).

It occurs to me that I forgot to mention the timeframe too. It happens about every 10-20 minutes, so I do get *some* use out of it before it kicks the bucket. Also note: I haven't crashed yet under vesa.

Maybe there's something screwed up with the 2D acceleration that both the nvidia and nv drivers do in both operating systems?
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Ma3oxuct · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 523

Have you attempted to re-seat your card yet?

I remember having a network card that all of a sudden stopped tranmitting packets for random intervals of time. As soon as I reseated it, it worked for over a year without a single glitch.

StonedZealot · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:09 pm Post subject:

No, actually, I assumed that wouldn't do anything

Reseating, now. (BTW: *Still good under vesa*)
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StonedZealot · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 9:40 pm Post subject:

Well, after reseating the card and loading nvidia/GLX it seems to be okay.

Strange... I guess it came loose or something?

If the problem shows up again, then I'll be back :roll:

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alienjon · Veteran Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1726

If you have plugged anything into (or out of, for that matter) your video card recently, that could have bumped it in just the wrong ways. Hope it works well though

StonedZealot · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:53 am Post subject:

I think it's gonna be ok... I've been running since my last post under full glx, dri and nvidia drivers so I think I'm good now.
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hairyfeet · Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject:

Had the same problems with the nv driver and it seems to have done the trick.

Thx for the tip