Davis Goertzen
New Member
Hello all,
If this thread is in the wrong sub-forum, please tell me where it should go. Thanks.
I'm running a 3-year-old HP Compaq 6830s, which has an ATI Mobility Radeon 3430 HD graphics card in it. Core 2 duo @ 2.26 Ghz, and 3 Gb RAM, if it matters. Anyway, in the past, I've played games on this machine some, MS Flight Simulator 2004, and Cabela's Trophy Bucks, both DirectX 9. I've also done quite a fair amount of video capture and editing, with Cyberlink PowerProducer. I never had a cooling pad under it until a few month ago, and I know that it got pretty hot, running while just sitting directly on my desk.
Now recently, I've started to see what I think are artifacts; that is, at random times and on random places in the screen, part of the screen will go all multi-colored for a few seconds, sometimes longer. This made me wonder if my graphics card had gotten overheated in all that use, and was starting to die. Then while I was in a computer store recently, a sales guy told me that unreliability of the DVD drive can be a sign of a graphics card going bad; I hadn't even told him that over the last several months, I've had that very problem, with CDs and DVDs not always loading, so I can access them.
At any rate, this is rather concerning to me, because I want a way to find out what kind of shape my graphics card is in. If everything's good, and it's just that my computer is showing its age, that's fine. But if my graphics card is on the way to dying, I'd just as soon know sooner rather than later; and if possible, I'd like to know about how much longer it would last, under gentle use.
So anyway, that's my question, and I'll be grateful if you guys can help me out at all. Thanks.
Davis Goertzen
If this thread is in the wrong sub-forum, please tell me where it should go. Thanks.
I'm running a 3-year-old HP Compaq 6830s, which has an ATI Mobility Radeon 3430 HD graphics card in it. Core 2 duo @ 2.26 Ghz, and 3 Gb RAM, if it matters. Anyway, in the past, I've played games on this machine some, MS Flight Simulator 2004, and Cabela's Trophy Bucks, both DirectX 9. I've also done quite a fair amount of video capture and editing, with Cyberlink PowerProducer. I never had a cooling pad under it until a few month ago, and I know that it got pretty hot, running while just sitting directly on my desk.
Now recently, I've started to see what I think are artifacts; that is, at random times and on random places in the screen, part of the screen will go all multi-colored for a few seconds, sometimes longer. This made me wonder if my graphics card had gotten overheated in all that use, and was starting to die. Then while I was in a computer store recently, a sales guy told me that unreliability of the DVD drive can be a sign of a graphics card going bad; I hadn't even told him that over the last several months, I've had that very problem, with CDs and DVDs not always loading, so I can access them.
At any rate, this is rather concerning to me, because I want a way to find out what kind of shape my graphics card is in. If everything's good, and it's just that my computer is showing its age, that's fine. But if my graphics card is on the way to dying, I'd just as soon know sooner rather than later; and if possible, I'd like to know about how much longer it would last, under gentle use.
So anyway, that's my question, and I'll be grateful if you guys can help me out at all. Thanks.
Davis Goertzen
Last edited:
