Video card hangs, computer continues running

[j7n]

I finished building a new system and encountered a problem with video. The video card would occasionally hang and continue displaying the picture that was on at the moment of the hang. To get it to respond again, I must reboot. In some cases the computer will not be bootable as if it had no graphics card (will fall back to integrated video, or beep if IGP is disabled) until I remove and reattach the VGA cable to its DVI-I port. Subsequently the D-Sub works again.

After I assembled the system, I proceeded to configure the BIOS (graphical mode) and then test the system with memtest and hdat2 (text mode). In both cases, the display would sometimes hang when I just touched the PC, such as ejected and loaded the CD tray, or if I removed the video cable during a prolonged test to work on another computer. After I reattached the monitor, I could see the screen where it hang. Software could then still cause disk activity, make sounds through the PC speaker, and the computer could be soft-rebooted via Ctrl-Alt-Del.

I tried re-seating the card in its slot, and adjust the speed of the PCI-E slot in BIOS, but this didn't solve the problem.

At this point no drivers or OS are installed. I inserted another video card, an old Radeon X550, and the system appeared to be stable during installation of Windows XP, and remained so after I installed drivers and launched a game. Both cards should have comparable power consumption (<30W), with the replacement maybe slightly less.

Upon inserting the faulty card in another computer, it initially failed to boot and went into a reboot cycle. It began working again after I, with power removed, switched the video cable to the other port, without removing the card itself.

Video card: Asus GT 610, 1 GB

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H (uefi bios)

Power supply: Fortron 500W

CPU: Ivy Bridge G2030

Memory: 4 GB DDR3

What can I do to diagnose if the card or another component of the new system is faulty?

Edited September 12, 2013 by j7n

[puntoMX]

What can I do to diagnose if the card or another component of the new system is faulty?

You already diagnosed the card (GF 610) and it faulty. If you are not sure if other components are failing too, use the ports on the motherboard itself without any videocard inserted into the PCI-E sloth.

Please tell me if I missed the point.

[j7n]

I'll use your second opinion and replace the video adapter before giving the PC away as planned. The system appears to be stable when using integrated video too. I was confused when the entire computer didn't freeze or reboot upon the error as usual.

[puntoMX]

I´ve seen it many timesbefore it before; video freezes or turns to a black or grey screen, game continues playing the music and also the harddisk light continues blinking.

The GF 610 is cheap with 48 CUDA cores, but the GF 620 will give you 96 CUDA cores for just 10USD more. Sure it's not for hardcore gaming . The Radeon HD 6570 might be a better pick for the same price as a GF 620, both cards can be found for under 50USD.

[j7n]

I want it to be fanless. I could get a 620 locally, but have no way of telling if its cooling is sufficient beforehand, and if I can draw more power from this motherboard.

Do twice as many CUDA cores also approximately double gaming performance?

Edit: I replaced the 610 with another card of the same type, and the computer has so far always booted. :-)

Edited September 17, 2013 by j7n

[puntoMX]

There are few motherboards that can not deliver up to 75W to PCI-E devices, so no problem there as your mobo can do 75W without any problems. Twice as many CUDA cores will not give you twice the gaming performances as is also depends on the CPU and RAM, but it sure doesn't hurt to have twice the cores.

You could go passive but to tell you the truth, I would not use a passive cooled card for games; go for a card that has a bigger fan on it and tweak the RPM on it. Most cards don't make noise at all especially these low power consumption cards.