Nvidia 8800 GTX problem?
Whenever i play a steam game, the game either crashes or has a major graphical error where everything on the screen will basically just die. the game still plays but the display crashes. I have updated the drivers to the newest ones and the problem still persists. i have come to the conclusion that i may have to buy a new graphics card, which is the best one up from the one i have? or if you have a solution to my present problem that would be great as well. thanks
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I'm not positive that this is singular to your specific graphics card. As, a simple search of the internet reveals many models of the 8xxx series reporting the same issues. It seems that it might have something to do with the Newer Drivers. You might want to roll-back your drivers to something maybe a year or so ago - that doesn't have support for new shaders apparently. This might fix your issue.
What it sounds like to me, is 3 plausible reasons for this occurance;
#1 - Drivers out of date / too new. Some games can't keep up with the physical releases and lag on support for new features.
#2 - You have a heating issues. What is the error message you're receiving? Usually, you'll get a string such as 0x000CFDE8G - this string can help me to diagnose your issue. When the crash occurs, does it go to like, say, 256 Colors? Where, if you went to right click desktop > properties > settings> it would beset at "256 Colors", or perhaps even only "16 colors"(Note: that's 16 colors, not 16 bit).
#3 - There's a more erronious issue which suggests corruption within the computer its self. Quite often you can find that you're sharing an "IRQ" or "Interrupt Request" line with another proprietary object, such as your sound card, or network card. These can cause conflicts in the interest of 'which object should be processed first' and can end up resulting in just these circumstances. Quite often this option will reveal its self over time, as interruptions become more frequent. Steam, being a high-demand system for gaming software, offers an array of games you can play. Does this occur in all games?
IF you turn your sound off, does it still occur?
If you disconnect your network cable and play in offline mode, do you see the problem persisting?
If either of these options works for you, then you'll need to change your IRQ Line.
The inherent problem is that IRQ lines cannot be changed unless you installed your computer as an "ATAPI". Most people run plug & play, so they cannot manually select this. If this is the case for you, try changing your Sound Card / Network Card into different slots on your motherboard. This will change the IRQ # that they attempt to utilize.
#4 - Anything beyond what I mentioned what be far too specific to even begin to theorize about.
I think it's a good excuse to upgrade your card... the 8800 GTX is old anyways.
How much are you prepared to spend? Basically anything in the $120 range is already considered a big leap from your current card.
The Radeon 6000 series (6850 for example) or the the Geforce GTX460 is a good choice.
GTX 460 (special price)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Failing that, even a Radeon 5770 is a good budget choice. This one is on special price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
The GTX 470 and 480 are not worth getting though, because refreshes of these 2 cards are coming out next year.
Find out if your graphics card is overheating, if it is clean out the heatsink/turn up the fan RPM or it may be malfunctioning and you can get a new heatsink for it.