My screen goes black when playing WoW

[20Skippy20]

Hi guys I hope you can help me when playing wow my screen goes black sometime with in a few mins of play to maybe hrs will go by and then happen. And it only happens when playing wow. I did check to see if I had the latest driver up to date for my graphic card and i did. I also did opened my PC to see if all the fans were working and they are. The last time this happen I when to restart the PC now the PC is running good but the monitor said no signal. So I'm lost would be great if you guys have any ideas that I can try next. Thxs for the help.

 

[g3rsiu]

tip

if only your screen goes blank but the game is running (eg hear sounds form game - pc is responsive to shutdown button) its either a monitor problem or a vga card problem -sadly without swaping with other parts its hard to pinpoint - try reseating your vga card into the slot - check for dust at the slot lvl and remove with apropriate brush (plastic but soft or painting brush)

remeber to also try to borrow a monitor if you don;t have another one to test with and make sure you use a diffident vga cable.

 

[20Skippy20]

Yea I thought it was the monitor to but I had a spare one here and it did the same as well. So you think it may be the card? The last time it happen I restart the pc but the monitor did not come on so I let the computer cool down thinking the card was overheating and after letting it sit for an hour it did come back on. I also downloaded GPU-Z to check on my temp with out the game running it stays around 58 C last night I got on the game and the temp was around 71 C I also have MSI Afterburner to check the clock speed and they are at the default setting. But last night I could not do anything because my FPS never when above 1. So I don't know if that temp test was any good because I couldn't move my FPS was to low.
Any suggestions?

 

[g3rsiu]

conclusion

i'm sorry to say but i think its a faulty vga card

temperature isnt always relevant - i had nvidia cards burning in tests all day long steady at 70+ degrees without problems but prolonged stress at this temperature will often reveal some manufacturing defects or weaknesses

58 is a preety high temp for idle tho - if you want to test your vga card, a very good tool is this one

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

has a nice graph of the temperature as well and the stress is good - burnin mode also climbs the temperature up fast so you should be able to see if it crashes due to temperature

a bad news is that once you card has give in like this its most likely due to the temperature and stress it was put to - not your fault but most likely the gpu has developed loose contacts

i suggest sending it in for warranty if its the case or replacing it - once this happen u cant really do too much to fix it and for future look for a card with good cooling and check the fan for eventual dust clogs

sometimes the heatpipes can fail - they no longer transfer the temperature along their length - its hard to test without some sort of thermal probe

 

[20Skippy20]

Thxs for the Help g3rsiu can you suggest a card I was looking at GTX 460 but should I try a ATi Radeon Card? and stay a way from a Geforce card

 

[20Skippy20]

Hey g3rsiu I just ran the Furmark the Max GPU Temp got to 86 C and it went through the whole test the screen never went black.

 

[g3rsiu]

not taking sides in amd/nvidia - they both have their strongs - also note that the chip maker isnt responsible for how the board is being produced - it just licenses some manufacturers to produce cards with their chipset - instead look for a "veteran" card building brand with good stock cooling or cards praised for good overclocking performances - using thosw with standard clocks would be fine - more info at relevant forums for vga tweakers and overclockers and dont forget to factor in power usage and compare the power requirements to your current power supply.

now

furmark stresses the card using opengl to draw - maybe your card is crashing when Direct 3D is using it (and wow is a D3D game). your problem might not be heat related.

the vga card actually "talks" to the monitor and asks for a specific sets of resolutions and refresh rates it can use to send information to the display - that part could be failing in certain conditions while using D3D games

do you run WOW in windowed mode or full screen ? try switching modes and see what happens

 

[20Skippy20]

Yea in window or full screen mode still doesn't work but now the game doesn't go to the black screen I cant play long because the FPS just sucks so bad you cant play

 

[g3rsiu]

why didnt i think of this first...

does your card use external power connector ?

maybe its underpowerd due to bad or missing power cable or your PSU is failing

check the vsync setting in wow and try setting it to disable and also the vga driver settings tho i doubt its that,

if you have a low power rating psu (lower than 620w) i suggest upgrading anyway if the card is faulty or not . you will need it when you buy a new videocard anyway

 

[20Skippy20]

why didnt i think of this first...

does your card use external power connector ?

maybe its underpowerd due to bad or missing power cable or your PSU is failing

check the vsync setting in wow and try setting it to disable and also the vga driver settings tho i doubt its that,

if you have a low power rating psu (lower than 620w) i suggest upgrading anyway if the card is faulty or not . you will need it when you buy a new videocard anyway

I'm not sure what a external power connector is?

But I will check the vsync setting in wow and disable if it needs to be.
and the vga driver setting ill disable it there if i can find it is this in the control panel

 

[20Skippy20]

Ok I pull all the fans and the PSU out of my computer Blow all them out and found that 1 of my Memory Modules are bad so would that maybe what the problem is?

 

[g3rsiu]

could be but it is a bit strange that the problem would manifest itself like this only (low framerate)

but ive seen all sort of strange things.