How to differ hardware from software problems...

Skybird · 12-02-08, 07:04 PM

... with a grafics board?

My nVidia 7800Gs (AGP, 256), is two years old, and in some 3D-games produces corrupted lines that have their origin in close bundles of pixels that in a beam-like fashion spread over the screen, and eventually can be seen only when having a given camera angle. I had just tested three different driver versions within short time, and deinstalled them via the windows console, cleaned the registry via tool, rebooted, and installed the new driver.

Is there any way or a tool that helps me to decide wether I have a hardware problem with the board that indicates it is dying, or just a software problem with either the driver, or the general system constellation? I ran dxdiag, but it found no problems when testing directdraw and direct3D. But that dxdiag does not look like a thorough hardware test anyway.

Board is not overclocked, dust gets cleaned inside the tower every 3-4 months. So while I find dust in there, of course, it is not in masses, and the tower gets cooled with 3 ventilators (2 small in, 1 bigger out). Temps are always normal here.

12-02-08, 07:04 PM	#1
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,748 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	How to differ hardware from software problems... ... with a grafics board? My nVidia 7800Gs (AGP, 256), is two years old, and in some 3D-games produces corrupted lines that have their origin in close bundles of pixels that in a beam-like fashion spread over the screen, and eventually can be seen only when having a given camera angle. I had just tested three different driver versions within short time, and deinstalled them via the windows console, cleaned the registry via tool, rebooted, and installed the new driver. Is there any way or a tool that helps me to decide wether I have a hardware problem with the board that indicates it is dying, or just a software problem with either the driver, or the general system constellation? I ran dxdiag, but it found no problems when testing directdraw and direct3D. But that dxdiag does not look like a thorough hardware test anyway. Board is not overclocked, dust gets cleaned inside the tower every 3-4 months. So while I find dust in there, of course, it is not in masses, and the tower gets cooled with 3 ventilators (2 small in, 1 bigger out). Temps are always normal here. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 12-02-08 at 07:08 PM.