DFI UT nf4 SLI-DR expert video card

[mrbadnback]

I have that MB with a Evga 7900GT KO video card and have been having problems. Every time I try to play a game I get lines through the screen from left to right that you can't even see anything at all. Other times it starts to play and sometimes the computer freezes and other tomes it just reboots. The games are FEAR, FEAR Extration point, HalfLife2, plus epidode 1 and 2 , Quake4 and FarCry.I have run memtest and the ram checks out ok and I have the last new video card driver too. Could the card have gone bad? What would be a good card to buy for this system now? I have a Opteron 180, 2x1GB Corsair XMS, OCZ 600 W GameXStream, 250 GB WD HD, Windows XP Home. DO I have to buy a PCI express x16 which are had to find good ones right now or can I actually go for the PCI express 2.0. :confused:

[Psyco]

sounds like its overheating if your only getting the problems in gaming, try furmark or ATitool (works for nvidia cards aswell) to test this out, afaic pci-e, pci-e 2.0 are fully backwards compatible I would recommend a gtx 275 or the ati 4890, both offer about the same performance at around the same price depending on where you live one may be cheaper than the other. both will probably be bottlenecked by your cpu/motherboard/ram though... worth thinking about.

[tiro_uspsss]

both the v.card & mobo u have are PCIE 1.1 so it has nothing to do with the PCIE slots - I'd say ur v.card is giving up

[mrbadnback]

Thanks for the replies guys but now see whats happening. I took the Zalman ZF900 off the video card and put Arctic Silver on it just to be sure its keeping cool enough since I put that cooler on it years ago when I bought the card. The system itself stays at 29C idle and goes to 38C in game play so its cool enough.
When I tested the Ram I used the memtest that is included in my BIOS and after 24 hours there were no errors. Last night I took out one of the sticks and it wouldn't boot so I took out the one that didn't boot and put the other one in its place and it booted. Now the games are better (in a way) but when the games first start or go into the next section (when it loads another section to play) I still get the lines, But if I push the start key with the windows logo on it beside the ALT key the game min to the taskbar Then when I click on it and it opens back up its fine again until it loads into another section. Any ideas what that could mean now?

[tiro_uspsss]

can u try the sys with an entirely diff v.card?

[Nightstar]

can u try the sys with an entirely diff v.card?

Do this, and if the problem persists try a different PSU.

Edit: Btw, are you OCing anything? if so restore to stock settings and retest existing hardware first. How old is your OS install? Minty fresh windows sometimes fixes mysterious problems.