8800gts problems, what does this sound like?

Ok so I'm annoyed as all hell and now I'm asking for some opinions.

I recently built a new machine:

Core2 E6400 currently at stock, was oc'd to 2.7 for a bit.
1Gig Samsung DDR2 667
650Watt Antec Triopower
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 MB
BFG 8800 GTS OC 640
Maxtor 80g Sata HD


I built this probably a month ago. I had my first WD 250g Sata drive fail within two weeks so I've had consistent problems, but this is regarding the video card.

I have a fresh windows XP install and have 97.94 dets and DX 9 C etc... Newest chipset drivers etc...

Everything seems stable enough in windows, I ran prime for several hours with no errors and ran memtest and got no errors.

Ok here is my problem, upon running 3dmark 06 sometimes It will complete. Usually I can run it a couple times on bootup but eventually it will lockup. When this happens I have to reboot (once I got a BSOD). Now upon rebooting I get bad artifacts and snow once the xp loading screen starts loading. Usually I could reboot a few times and eventually the graphical glitches will go away. The machine during this time will sometimes crash if it doesn't boot without the glitches.Now I'm curious as to what you guys think this might be.

I'm assuming it's the video card, but not sure of other possibilities. Can driver conflicts cause artifacting and snow in windows? If I was to take a guess it seems like maybe i'm hitting a bad piece of video memory on the 8800 and that's causing the lockups and artifacting upon reboot. Either way I'm returning the card and probably getting a 7900 or something untill alot of these problems are squared away.

This is the first machine i've built that I've had so many damn problems.

that sounds like an overheating video card.

Is the 650 watt power supply enough? It might be right on the edge for that
configuration.

Is the 650 watt power supply enough? It might be right on the edge for that
configuration.


The 8800GTS require 26A on the 12V rails. Minimum is probably around a 450-500watt PSU. The Trio 650 has 3 Rails with a combained amperage of like 54A. So I'm pretty sure it's not a power issue. The cpu is running stock atm anyway.

Did you try running the card at non-OC spec speed?

I’m somewhat leery of these OC boards, sure the benchmarks look good (when they work) but are they really using top quality components or just tweaking the clock speeds and calling it good enough?

Did you try running the card at non-OC spec speed?

I’m somewhat leery of these OC boards, sure the benchmarks look good (when they work) but are they really using top quality components or just tweaking the clock speeds and calling it good enough?


I brought the card back and got the 320meg version of the 8800gts OC. So far i've had no problems with it running a few 3dmarks. I thought about that also, maybe it was overheating with the stock overclock. Either way the 320meg has less physical memory so it runs cooler. Another weird thing is I can actually hear the fan somewhat on this 320meg version, and on the 640 it was barely audible, so maybe the fan wasn't functioning right on the 640. Either way it seems like it was indeed the card.

i noticed in the new vista drivers, it says it fixed a problem with 3dmark that caused it to hang

maybe it is an xp thing too? updated drivers should be out shortly for xp