Computer question

[NY Cavalry]

Because I'm not completely computer literate I'm posting here in trying to get some help.

The game works fine, but an issue has come up with my computer performance. I think my graphics card is failing and I'm not sure how to check if it is.

I've been playing this game for 4 or 5 months now (maybe longer) and my computers performance is really good. I have a Nividia GeForce 8800GT , it buzzes when I play the game ( I am guessing it has its own internal fan) and lately it has stopped buzzing and my performance has been greatly reduced. It comes and goes, at times graphics are great at times it is as if I have lag. I am not able to host games anymore and when I tried tonight we had some terrible lag. I can still play the game online, I just cannot host effectively.

I need to know what direction I should go in. How do I check if my graphics card is ok? ( the computer tells me that it is working properly???) Or may it be a bad ram stick? How should I trouble shoot this?

Any help would be appreciated.

my specs are:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.5 GHZ
4.00 GB Ram
Vista

If it is my card what is a good replacement????

[con20or]

i have the 8800gtx, and yes it does have its own fan. Open up your case and make sure nothing is jamming it, a bit of dust etc. Something simlar happened me recently with my cpu fan, a wire had fallen into it.

No idea what to replace it with, but im not getting great fps on this game and considering upgrading some parts myself. Heres a good forum, helped me spec up my last pc.

Link

[garyknowz]

Hi NY Cavalry!

I actually use a couple of those GPUs myself. It's kinda hard to diagnose a buzzing sound without actually hearing it, but there might have been a wire touching the fans, as con20or mentioned. But I can't see how your graphic card would prevent you from hosting in MP. Have you tried blowing out your system and reseating your RAM?

But to stress test your GPU, try using ATI Tool:

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

If the artifacts scan shows you as having hardware issues, you might have to replace the card. What to replace it with will depend on your motherboard specs and budget.

[Jim]

NVidia has a suite of monitoring tools that you can download from their website. Quite useful if you are interested in keeping an eagle eye on what's happening on your video card.

-Jim

[BillyYank1863]

I have an 8800gt as well. Those cards are known to run hot at defalut fan speed (which is 30%), and a hot card is not a happy one. It is good to crank that fan up to at least 60%, but I do 100% just to be safe (plus i wear headphones anyway so the fan sound dosnt bother me). Yes the fan can make a noise when its running at high speeds, so perhaps that is the buzzing you used to hear. If thats the case, make sure your fan is still working, cuz if its not, you very well could be suffering from GPU overheating. Do you ever get artifacts in your laggy graphics?

As Jim said, Nvidia has some mointoring tools, and I think recent drivers include the Nvidia Control panel, which can be accessed by right clicking on your desktop and selecting Nvidia Control Panel. In there you can set fan and clock speeds in the GPU section. Try to keep your card below 80c if you can, acceptable temps are between 50c and 70c I used to have to manually reset the fan speed everytime I booted the machine, until I found the tool from EVGA that will auto run those speeds on boot.

Its called EVGA Precision I believe.

Let us know if you need any more help in finding and setting your fan speed.

[NY Cavalry]

Thanks for the input.


I'm going to replace my Graphics card with the GeForce460. It requires a 450 watts and my system now is 400. I bought a 500 watt power source, but am wondering if 50 watts is enough to run the rest of my computer. If my system now is 400 watts after adding a graphics card that requires 450 watts, how many watts am I needing.

I've been looking for the specs of my present 8800 and cannot find recommended min requirements.


Got my answer. Thanks anyway.......................................................