Blown my second graphics card in one week.

Unity Engine
1

Hi everyone!
Sorry this is such a long post, but i havent found this problem anywere else.
If i miss any detail that may help, please let me know and i will try to find out.

Short Story:
I blew out my nVidia 8800 GTX and my eVGA 450 after running and working on my game for more then 2 hours on each occasion. The 8800 was 3 years old, and the 450 was brand new. I should also mention that it was the SuperClocked (SC) edition.

Long Story:
As the title says, I just blew my second nVidia Graphics card, the first was three days ago.
This is how it started. I have a

Dell Dimension
3 GB of RAM
Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz.
Windows Vista Home Premium
Unity 3.0

I was working on a fairly simple game, a twist on pacman, that i am posting on my website as I update it. Low model poly rates, a small map… You can see what i mean on my site at http://mediahogsstudios.webs.com/pm3000.htm
Imagine this with the ghosts moving, a short 20-30 line health script and a 40-60 line AI Script running on 3 of the ghosts.

Anyway, I had a 3 year old nVidia 8800 gtx. I was working on my game for about two hours, then i logged off and put my computer to sleep mode. When i went to wake it up, there was a black screen, and no video. Windows was running, because i could hear windows sounds from my headphones. I got no video i concluded after screwing around with it for a couple of hours, that it had overheated, and so i bought a new nVidia eVGA GTS450 Super Clocked Edition (SC).

Everything worked, for a day. After working on and building my game for 2 hours, i played my built game, and 2 minutes after starting it, the graphics card crapped out again. Now i have no video, and i have to buy yet another graphics card. :rage:

Does anyone have any ideas on what could have caused this? I read something about a setting with vertical framerate synchronization or something that could cause the GPU to render too fast if set at the default setting, disabled.

Anyway, there is my long post. If you read this whole thing, thanks.
Any ideas are appreciated.
-Alias

2

I found what i had read before.

" Activate “Sync To VBL”, from “Edit → Project Settings → Quality” (inside each one of the quality presets). With this option the images per second will match the vertical refresh rate of your monitor, so if it is, for example, 75 hz, the GPU will be limited to drawing 75 images each second (that’s the maximum, will be much lower if the graphics are too complex)." - Quoted from DED Games from fourm post http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/65923-Strange-noise-coming-from-pc-tower!?highlight=overheat

3

Anyone have any ideas?

4

Return the graphics card for a non-faulty one? If it’s new it should still be under warranty.

–Eric

5

wait sorry did the screen just go black while you were working on it? Did you try a different monitor? I had a monitor once that when i turned it off and walked away for several hours and came back and turned it on it stayed black. but it was the monitor’s fault. not the card.

Also is this a home built rig? what Power supply are you using and is the graphics card on a power rail that can handle the power consumption needs of the card? I assume the card has a single 6 pin connector? I think a 6pin pulls about 75W-100W. I know the problem I have at work is that I don’t have a single rail that can power two 480GTX cards. I have to spread the power consumption over 3 rails.

So it could be that you didn’t have enough power going to your card is what I am getting at or maybe your PSU has a bad rail or something like that.

Hope this kind of info helps. One of my many talents is building very powerful game rigs and knowing the intricacies of how to build out the components.

IF it is a home made rig could you post a picture of the sticker on the PSU that shows the voltage and wattage of the rails on the PSU? Maybe show which rail it is hooked into (if you can)

EDIT: what kind of cooling do you have? 120mm fans? 80mm? 4 fans or more? is the air coming out hot or is it room temp?

6

Thanks for your answer,
The computer would not show any video after it awoke from sleep mode 20 mins later on the 8800.
Then the other card crapped out and did not display video after i had built and played it.
It was not the moniter because in both cases the card fan revs up fast.

This is not a home build rig and i checked the ratings of the PSU and the video card and they both matched. The PSU is not the issue, becuase the 8800 was 4 years old and came with the comp.

The air coming out is normal room temp.

Also, is there a control in BIOS that disables the video card from speeding the fan up depending on GPU load?

7

I might do that if i cant find what happened, thanks for your answer.