Hi, i have a question for all the hardware experts here...

I am running Windows XP Pro with:
XFX Nvidia Gefore 8600 GT XXX
2 Gb of DDR2 Ram
AMD Athlon 64 4400+ Duel Core processor (2.30 Ghz)
Not exactly sure what Motherboard i have...

about a week and a half ago my computer started to play games (ex. Left 4 Dead, TeamFortress 2...) a little laggy from time to time. Then last Saturday, i left my house for about 4 or 5 hours, came into my room and noticed it strongly smelled like plastic burning (the kind of smell you get when you use a solder iron). From then on i couldn't play more than minute, and even then it was if i restarted my computer, on any game without it going very slowly. It didn't matter if i was running Team Fortress 2, or that 5mb game that mercuryus put up...

Anyway, i was wondering if my graphics card over-heated and i would need to buy a new one, or if it is something else entirely.

Edit: forgot to mention that i can still have a high resolution - 1680 by 1050

Any help would be greatly appreciated

ask a friend to borrow his GPU, if you can play long with his card, you knmow that your GPU is gone over the river.

Maybe use this tool to monitor your card, first I would look at the temperature before playing a game, then monitor as your playing, then see if the temp is the same everytime the crash happens.
Good luck

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner

XFX? haha..

@Micheal_Schwarz - thanks for the advice, i will try putting in my old Geforce 7300

@TriNitroToluene - I'll try that, the games don't really crash though...they just go really slow

@Broozar - Whats wrong with XFX? lol

I was thinking, if it was the video card over-heating, would it stop displaying on the monitor?

Thanks, Doof

@broozar I too want to know whats wrong with xfx, they have always been great, not one issue. In my mind, they are a fairly respected brand.

It all depends on what is going on with the card. I had a card that got shorted out in one area. It would run Windows perfectly well. However, when DirectX kicked in, then the system would crash. So I was not able to run most games. That particular system was water cooled and a small leak had developed. The leak dripped on the video card and, until this day, that card will not run properly with games. So, it all depends on what on the card got fried (if anything).

i don't know how it's in the US, but in germany, xfx cards normally rank in the lower price segments, are reported to burn down and have a considerably shorter life time then e.g. asus cards. and scream (->louder fans than the average) plus, they have cards in their program that do not base on a nvidia reference design, such as the 7900 series for agp, which no other manufacturer ever built - for good reason, i suppose. however, i only read about this in a magazine, i never owned one of their cards, so if you are happy with this brand, good for you, i hope it stays that way.

check your craphic card's heat with gpu-z

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1207k/GPU-Z.0.2.8.exe

my 9600gt is like 43 C in idle and 53-54C in l4d (1280x1024,all settings max.)

check if your gpu cooler/fan is ok and in it's place.

[another possibility]also there is a possbility that there is something wrong with mainboard.

[another possibility]power is not enough.(when you see shaders, or when directx runs GPU needs power.)

If power supply problem is the case, high possbly, your card is dead at the first not-enough-power problem(that smell).

@broozar wow... really? that'd be an interesting article to read. I have had dual xfx 8500's for a while, i had one of there sli mobos, all the ratings I read were great, and i never had a hitch. I wonder if it might have just been that they recently (nvidia 8xxx series and newer) have been doing better, or as you have mentioned, maybe they just have a little higher quality factory in the US, or the shipping from the US might also affect the quality of the product as well.