Weird system crashing problem

[Rory Buszka]

The thing you're encountering where the system crashes, the sound loops, and then the system restarts sounds similar to what used to happen when my dying Radeon X1650XT would overheat. Do you have another video card you could swap in?

 

[James Crysis]

Yeah at work we tried and XFX 7300gts or something like that (just something we found lying around). Also tried a Radeon X300. Game seemed to run fine on both. I'll see how i got with claiming warranty on the card. How does the warranty normally work? Will they give me back the cash i spent on it (~$220) or the current price ($168) or will they just give me another of the same card (which I don't really want to do). I guess it depends on the shop doesnt it?

 

[James Crysis]

Ok I just found out for sure that my card is the problem and has to be faulty.
I posted all this info up on an Australian magazine forums site and it just so happened that a guy on there who used to have the exact same card was getting the exact same problems as I am.

I'll probably ring the site that I bought it from today and with any luck I'll be able to get my money back and buy a better card.

 

[Kougar]

Best of luck with your RMA... I didn't realize it was happening with that many games.

 

[VictoryService]

ROFL Gotta love EU's

Well something I didn't mention earlier was that I had a Belkin G wireless network card in there as well, and haven't been using it since a couple of weeks ago when I got a 15 metre network cable

So even though this turned out to not be the problem, let this be a lesson to all!
When asking for help, let us know ALL the hardware installed. It saves lots of time and helps you get the answers you want.

ROFL

 

[James Crysis]

Uhh yeah...

The thing that is really pissing me off atm is that the guy that I talked to on the phone told me to send it back, and they will find a replacement. This is most likely going to take ages because they have to go straight back to MSI with the case for the card. Which means that I'll have to use a crappy card I have lying around here somewhere, and by the time I finally get the new card, I'll have a resonably out-of-date card which have haven't hardly gotten any good use out of.
I'm sure there's still not real guarantee that the card that I get back won't be faulty, seeing as it's a widespread problem with 9600GT's.
I have heard that if you underclock it with rivatuner to nvidias stock settings it should fix the problem, but it doesn't seem to fix the problem for everyone, just some. I really don't want to go through the trouble of RMA so maybe if this works ill just have to settle to leaving it underclocked most of the time =S

 

[Kougar]

It is a regular occurrence for factory overclocked stuff to not actually work at the overclocks, only the default launch clocks. It may or may not help you, and if the card can't handle a small factory overclock then it may not last very long before it starts giving errors at stock speeds. You should download the beta for ATI Tool, the beta version will run on NVIDIA cards and search for artifacts, but do not use it to mess with clock settings.

This is unfortunately a big reason I never bought MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, or some cheap brand of GPU cards... they don't have the infrastructure in place for a quick RMA if/when those are needed, and GPUs have to be one of the most RMA'd parts of a computer!

 

[James Crysis]

I'm thinking about getting an EVGA card, RMAing my MSI card, and selling it to someone when it comes. I just don't want to be stuck with this crap if anything goes wrong with it later.

 

[b1lk1]

I almost never overclock my video cards just because of stuff like this. Hope the RMA goes well.