Nvidia Geforce 6600GT causes computer to hang on boot.

[BiG K]

I have a N-force 2 motherboard, and i have been using the onboard graphics for the last 3 or 4 years! Well, i thought i would upgrade as i enjoy playing games with a bit of eye candy! So i purchased a new 600W power supply and a Xpert Vision GeForce 6600GT.
I installed the card into the computer, following the neccasary precautions such as static and plugging in the molex connector.
The computer was fine, i was playing Need For Speed Most wanted at full detail for 15 minutes, which is where i remembered i didnt update the drivers!

*shock*
*horror*

So i updated the drivers, the application came with a nifty tool, Nvidia nTune, which i have used previously to tune the system. I restarted the computer, all was working fine, but i made a error.......
I used Nvidia nTune to "automatically detect the best settings".......
I didnt know it would start messing around with the settings too much. It made the AGP Bus go above 77mhz, which the computer crashed when i tried to stop nTune tuning my system.
Foolishly, i didnt go into the bios, and set the AGP Bus to default.
I booted the computer up, everything was fine, logged into windows, started playing COD2. I was playing for around 45 minutes, when the picture artifacts, and consequently, 2 seconds later the computer crashed.

I rebooted the computer, but the computer will not boot.
I dont hear any beeps of such, the monitor remains blank.

I reset the motherboard BIOS through disconnecting the battery, tried to boot the computer, but the computer still refuses to boot.

I left the computer turned off, and went to bed, in the morning i tried it again, and it worked!!
I tested everything with 3dmark2001se which gave me no problems and a nice score of 14810.
45ish minutes later whilst surfing the web, the screen artifacts and a few seconds the computer hangs with the monitor going blank.
The computer wont boot.........

Now the graphics card works probably once every 50 attempts of trying to boot, but the computer crashes after a few minutes.

Apparently its a heat problem, but the card barely gets warm, nevermind hot!

My question is, do you think its the Graphics card thats faulty, or the Motherboard?

The onboard Graphics still work without ANY problems.

I dont have another computer available to test the graphics card out in

But i should have a MSI nbox 5900 Ultra in a few weeks.

System Specs:
XG (MGE) Vortec 600w PSU
Xpert Vision 6600GT AGP
MSI K7N2G-ILSR (MS-6570) Motherboard
AMD XP 2200+
Thermaltake Volcano 12+ CPU cooling HSF
2*256mb Ram (333Mhz)
Seagate Barracuda 80Gb IDE HDD
DVD Rom Drive
DVD-RW Drive
Floppy drive
2 80mm Case fans (Rear=Exhaust Front=Intake)

Any help will be greatly appreciated!!

Khalid

[vikeor]

well if u get artifacts then check if the gfx card speeds are at stock or still OCed

[BiG K]

Everything is back to stock speeds, the core and memory was never touched, only the AGP bus speed, which is now back at 66mhz, the original speed.

Thanks

Khalid

[vikeor]

wierd... if u did the Auto N-Tune it may have OCed the GFX card...
if u use the on board gfx card does the computer still crash?

[BiG K]

nTune set the AGP Bus at 77mhz, which i know is waaaaay too high.

The onboard gfx card, is just fine, plays all the games, the system doesnt crash at all with the onboard gfx card.

thanks

Khalid

[vikeor]

well i guess something happened to the 6600GT... maybe it got damaged by the high AGP speed...

get it replaced, if the on board plays fine the its the gfx card

[BiG K]

Thanks, i intend to get it replaced, 2 year warranty ;-) lol

Khalid

[vikeor]

no problem hope get it working cuz its a great card

[BiG K]

Hmmmm, tried the graphics card out this morning.......and its working!

I havent attempted to play any games yet, but its been going strong for 45 minutes on just well web surfing.

Installed rivatuner, not to overclock it obviously, just to check the settings and more importantly the temperature.

The core temperature is 49c at a memory clock of 900mhz and core clock of 270mhz. This is at idle by the way.

Well its been an hour of solid 2d performance. Im going to attempt playing a game!!

BiG K

[BiG K]

well, games are working :S not the FPS i used to get tho