Odd timing for graphics card possible failure

sriesch

So it's possible my graphics card is starting to fail, although I haven't been able to verify for certain it is the card yet, and I'm still in the process of trying to narrow down the problem. What's kind of weirding me out is the timing; it happens starting at a reboot. Why might that be?
Everything will be working fine, and I'll do a restart (such as after installing Windows Updates, or whatever) and bam, exactly on startup things are bad. As the motherboard text messages are briefly displayed on startup before Windows starts, there's rows of missing pixels across the middle of every line of text, then lots of colorful lines during the Windows startup screen, then Windows starts up at a resolution of something like maybe 640x480 and 16 or 256 colors or something. First time I though it was a bad Windows update and I managed to restore back to an earlier point and the problem went away, but then I was able to do those same updates again with no problems. Later while trying to do a completely fresh install of everything I saw it again, now it's back to normal again.

Of course I'll try replacing the card (reseating it first), reinstalling software, swapping the cable, etc. as soon as I can get it to happen often enough to do decent tests. However I thought I'd throw this out here to see if anybody had any guesses as to why it would fail EXACTLY at a restart, rather than just at random or as it heated up or something.

WendyLuvsCatz

Silly question but do you have the latest driver for it?

sriesch

I do not have the most recent Nvidia driver. As those are occasionally duds, I usually only update it every so often, so if I had to guess I'd say I've probably been running on one updated perhaps vaguely around the beginning of this year. I will be trying the latest and greatest shortly now that I'm doing a fresh install though. However, I'm guessing it is not the driver, since the problem shows up on boot before Windows has started and had a chance to load the drivers?

WendyLuvsCatz

Sean Riesch said:

I do not have the most recent Nvidia driver. As those are occasionally duds, I usually only update it every so often, so if I had to guess I'd say I've probably been running on one updated perhaps vaguely around the beginning of this year. I will be trying the latest and greatest shortly now that I'm doing a fresh install though. However, I'm guessing it is not the driver, since the problem shows up on boot before Windows has started and had a chance to load the drivers?

well wouldn't it be using the onboard graphics chip at that point then?

mjc1016

It's failing at a restart because it is between the very basic mode (still usually VGA) that BIOS uses and the full functioning 3D mode that the Windows drivers use...basically it's the 'VESA' mode (framebuffer) not kicking in/functioning...and the reason Windows was messed up, it didn't recognize the card for one reason or anotherso it didn't load the drivers and wen with the basic 'fallback' generic video driver. My guess is that one of the legs of the card's 'BIOS' chip has a bad solder joint. That would account for the intermittent nature of it. If it were the RAM or the GPU problems would be much more severe and more frequent.

So the next question...what kind of card and how old?

sriesch

nvidia EVGA GeForce GTX550Ti 2GB graphics card. Can't remember when or where I got it, can't find it in my order histories. I think it's been at least a few years, although I seem to burn through them so fast it still feels new, insomuch as something that's obsolete by the time your order arrives can be considered new. :-)

mjc1016

Sean Riesch said:

nvidia EVGA GeForce GTX550Ti 2GB graphics card. Can't remember when or where I got it, can't find it in my order histories. I think it's been at least a few years, although I seem to burn through them so fast it still feels new, insomuch as something that's obsolete by the time your order arrives can be considered new. :-)

Actually, I'm pretty sure that is a common problem with EVGA cards...that's what mine started doing...exactly the same thing. That was the card before the 430 I've in now. Of course it lived quite a bit longer after I stripped it down and cooked it with a heat gun, that's how I figured it was the bad solder joint...it finally totally died after the fan went belly up. (It was a 270???...not sure).

WendyLuvsCatz

That was MY old card that we stuck in my brother's computer when I got my GTX 760
hope it lasts for him, they only play facebook games though but it certainly helped, their old Radeon card was half the size and made the horses look like skeletons as my SIL put it!