Ok, I have a custom build PC that is around 2 years old with the following specs. Asus mobo, 2GB of Corsair ram, AMD 3500 CPU, and GeForce 6800GT AGP card. Note: The graphics card has been overclocked since I’ve owned it, but hasn’t given me any problems until now.
Today, I turned on the computer and everything seemed to be working fine. I went off to do something else and came back later and noticed something was wrong. I glanced at the screen saver which is a picture slide show and noticed that the same picture had been on the screen from quite some time. I then got up to see what was going on and noticed that the monitor was flickering with little pixel shards all over the place. I tried to wake up the monitor but nothing happened when I hit the mouse button or keyboard.
I then restarted the computer. Since then, every time I try to restart, nothing appears on the monitor. The computer will turn on, but nothing shows up on the monitor.
I’ve spent over an hour trying to figure out what was causing the problem. I tested the monitor on another computed and it worked fine, so I know it the problem is with the PC hardware.
I tried connecting the monitor to the PC with an analog cable instead of a DVI. When I did this, I actually got the monitor to display the boot sequence, but it was very garbled and full of pixel shards to the point I couldn’t make out any of the boot text. I looked at the card’s fan and it is spinning. I took the card out and inspected it but there wasn’t any visible damage. Reinstalling it didn’t do anything.
So, now I am pretty sure I’m going to have to go buy a new card. I just want to make sure that it will fix the problem. What do you guys think?
hmm… I have a PCI-E 6800GT and get pixel shards covering the screen every so often on boot (I used to OC it from 350/1000 to 412/1150 as it was just so much quicker). I just restart the machine and all is well (although it probably won’t remain that way forever).
If the fan is spinning on the GC and it was only a screen saver, and there is no obvious damage (did you check all the capacitors for swelling?) then I’d try the GC in another machine first, as it really shouldn’t have failed, I’d expect failure under stress (ie. gaming)
It could be you’ve fried your motherboard. Possible the AGP slot.
I had a similar problem. I managed to get a pc on the cheap and whenever I used any 3D everything went crazy, turned out to be a faulty AGP slot and not the card.
