Could it be the power supply?

[Rizzon]

My computer is about 1½ years old. It has always been trouble starting with me not being able to run my 4 1066Mhz memory sticks at above 800MHz without getting constant BSOD. Contacted gigabyte, they said it was a common, unfixable problem.

 

Even with the DIMs at 800MHz I still got BSOD every once in a while; However recently I started getting a lot of them and now I some days can't even get into windows (Just a black screen) (yet some rare days I don't have a single BSOD at all).

The BSOD always show the nvidia driver as the problem. After a lot of troubleshooting I am now using my friends ATI HD4890 while he is using my 9800GX2. And here is the kicker:

Neither of us are blue screening.

And it gets better:

He is sitting on a core i7 with DDR3 and a noname 650W PSU.

I'm using a Q9450 with DDR2 and a Corsair 750W.

 

The ATI HD4890 uses 2x 6-pins power cables while the 9800GX2 uses 1 6-pin and 1 8-pin.

Could it be that my power supply is faulty? What would be a good way to test that?

 

Thank you for any response

[Yellowbeard]

It sounds like either a driver issue with your combination of hardware or a hardware conflict relating to the 9800GX2. If your PSU is running the HD4890, I don't think it is a bad PSU.

 

Did Gigabyte elaborate on their answer?

[Rizzon]

Ok, new turn of events:

My friend who was using the 9800GX2 suddenly got a lot of artefacts(brightly coloured pixels spotted the screen) while in the main menu of a game and they remained after exiting the game.

Note that we had stress tested the card with 3DMark06 in his machine without any problems.

 

Guess it was the card after all. Oh well, better that then having to change the mainboard.

 

I will post if anything new occurs.

[RAM GUY]

Thanks for the update, let us know if the problems come back!