problem with video card?

[Danny_501]

Hi peoples,
Does anyone know whether this is a problem with the video card?
please see attachment. (2 pics of my desktop)
notice the vertical lines on the screen?

specs:

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Video card driver: vga, ver: 5.01.2600.0000

Mother board: M2N - SLI Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+
RAM: 2 GB

[Danny_501]

Also i'd like to add that i can only start my computer in safe mode. when i start it normally the screen just flashes blinding light.

[Rik from RCE]

Look like your card has had it!

[Danny_501]

Lol thats what I thourght, time for an upgrade i guess. I was just asking incase it might be the motherboard or something else, so i don't go and waste my money fixing it :P.

[Rik from RCE]

%99.9 it's the graphics card! I have seen symptoms like that before and it was always a failing graphics card, usually caused by overheating.
If it had been your monitor then it wouldn't have shown up in the screenshots.

Just a thought, I take it you have a decent PSU?

One other thing. PC World would have blamed just about every component in your PC and charged hundreds to fix it. ;)

[Danny_501]

Yeah i have a pretty decent PSU, can't remember what the specs are though. I'll check on that before i upgrade.

[Rik from RCE]

Cool. :) It's the 1 component that gets overlooked the most but is very very important.

Get this, a friend of a friend is running a dual core system with 3gig of ram and a high end graphics card and it crashes every time a game is started.
Turns out it has a 130watt PSU in it. I am surprised it's able to start at all!!

[Ali.Ayam]

Try that vga card in other PC, is it still showing that lines? If it is, prepare to dump your card if it's guarantee time is over.