Troubleshooting 8800 gts

[flipflopjim]

I'm having trouble with my new evga 8800 gts 640. I installed the card and the newest driver from NVidia and I'm getting system freezes every once in a while. It seems unusual because it will happen whether or not I am doing anything graphic-intensive. I have been monitoring temps carefully and they are fine - around 60 at idle and between 75-80 at load.

What are the possible problems that might cause this behavior?

 

[Mucker]

Believe it or not, it may have nothing to do with the video card. You may want to try bumping up the voltage a notch on your cpu and/or memory to gain stability.

 

[flipflopjim]

Thanks for the input. I switched the card out for my old one (an ati x800xl) and the system was stable just fine. Does this mean that is is definitely the video card, or could the power draw from the 8800 be causing something else to go wrong?

 

[Mucker]

what psu are you using? definitely could be the culprit....

I went from an x1900xt to a 8800gts 320 and system power consumption at idle went from 180 to 250 watts without changing anything else.

My APC ups monitors power consumption.

 

[flipflopjim]

I'm using a Seasonic S12 430 watt PSU. My guess is if it's not the card, it is my PSU, but the only power supply recommendations I've seen for this card just say >400 watts. My other components are not power hungry - x2 3800+, Foxconn Geforce 6150 micro-atx mobo, 2x512 OCZ ram, and two HDD's.

I'm reinstalling the 8800 gts cleanly as I write this, redoing the driver and everything. If it does the same again, I'll get in touch with evga to ask about the PSU.

I should note that as I have posted elsewhere, the card that I ordered was the non-overclocked version of the 8800 GTS, which should be set at 500/800. The card that I received, though, has as factory defaults 576/850, corresponding to the evga "superclocked" version. While this sounds like a great deal, the problems I'm having lead me to believe that the problem is with the card.