Need advice about video cards

[deathmore]

Hi i have a problem with my video card every once and a while the screen will freeze and cause line to go across it and the is bsod's im pretty sure the card is going, this is I'm my sisters comp i built her now i could give my gtx 285 and upgrade but would her 500 watt power supply with 28 amps on it handle it? if not can i have a suggestion as to what kind of card would be suitable? she currently has a 3870 and if it goes wants something better.

 

[wolf]

sorry but to clarify is it the HD3870 machine or the GTX285 machine that is having the issue?

if its the 3870 machine can you list full specs plz

straight off the bat I'd point at the video card or the PSU, what brand is the PSU?

 

[deathmore]

the power supply is a Ultra connect 500 watt the system in question is:
asus m3a32-mvp
amd phenom x4 9850
ati 3870
4gb ddr2 corsair 1066
500gb western digital hdd
vista 32bit

 

[human_error]

I've had crashes on my machine before which have the same symptoms as you describe - the screen distorts (i see horizontal distortion across the screen) then BAM! BSOD. They weren't anything to do with my graphics card at all and were just symptoms of the computer going completely mental as it crashed. I think my issue was a dodgey hard drive but it could be different in your sisters' machine.

More info on what you were doing when it happened would be great - playing games/web browsing (flash content in a webpage)/idle/watching videos/copying files etc.

As for replacement cards a 3870's graphics power is roughly equivalent to that of a 4770 - a 5770 would be a decent step-up and has a pretty low power requirement.

 

[deathmore]

mostly just internet or nothing sometimes recently today it was opening a adobe file but anything seems to cause it but she mostly goes on the internet

 

[human_error]

mostly just internet or nothing sometimes recently today it was opening a adobe file but anything seems to cause it but she mostly goes on the internet

hmm - does it die if you really stress the gpu - run a benchmark and see if it crashes.

 

[deathmore]

nope ran several programs for stressing various parts, did memtest, occt, everest, futuremark and nothing no crash

 

[wolf]

tried rebuilding windows? lol thats something i do 4-10 times a year anyway, so it doesnt hurt too try it when i have problems.

 

[deathmore]

i think if it gets more frequent ill try that

 

[wolf]

I'm scraching my head over this one hey... seems incredibly random, you've put the PC through a lot of stresstests, eliminating many components really....

how often is this occurring? ball-park figure.

 

[deathmore]

maybe every couple days, like 2-3

 

[human_error]

i think if it gets more frequent ill try that

I'm leaning towards hard drive issues (maybe because my PC has been playing up for ~1 month with random lock-ups and then a 500gb maxtor refuses to boot up with the rest of my hard drives).

Have you run a Chkdsk on the hard drives in the machine?

 

[deathmore]

no ill run chkdsk and see

 

[deathmore]

ok done chkdsk and it came back with no errors of any kind
anyone got any ideas, what about the gtx 285 working on that power supply?