Member Avatar for SkipN

When I'm playing games, my screen will periodically freeze for 5-10 seconds and then the monitor will go black, loss of signal. I can sometimes hear the game still continuing and can sometimes interact with it. I'll then power down my system and reboot after a 15 second wait and all will be fine. At first, it was happening once a day, but it's now occuring 2-3 times a day. I'm not sure if it's the cpu dying (this caused a friend's pc to power, not post & no video signal) or if it actually is my video card which is only 1 year old.

My system is about 5 years old and has:

MSI K8T-NEO FIS2R mobo
Athlon 3200+ Socket 754
1GB (2x512MB) Kingston DDR400 RAM
ASUS AH3650 AGP 512MB video card
Integrated LAN & Sound
Windows XP 32-bit

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Dani AI

Generated

As and already noted, this is an intermittent video loss that shows up under heavy 3D load. Since simple temperature checks and a dust/cleanup pass were already tried, the next steps are systematic isolation: software (drivers/OS), power delivery, and the card itself. The checklist below is ordered to find the cheapest/fastest fixes first.

  • Software/OS: check Windows Event Viewer (System and Application) for errors that match the freeze time — look for video-driver or kernel power errors. Do a clean video driver reinstall (uninstall, reboot, fresh driver from the GPU vendor). Try one older stable driver if the latest gives problems. Disable any overclocking or in-game FPS caps while testing.

  • Monitoring & stress test: use a GPU-specific monitor and stress tool to reproduce the failure while watching temps, clocks, and fan speeds. GPU-Z is useful for live monitoring (GPU‑Z). Short stress runs (10–15 minutes) with a GPU stress utility such as FurMark can reveal thermal, clock, or artifact issues — run in windowed mode and watch behavior closely (FurMark). Pause if you see artifacts or extreme temps.

  • Power and physical checks: a failing or marginal PSU often shows up under full GPU load — measure +12V under load or swap in a known-good PSU. Reseat the card, clean the AGP contacts with isopropyl alcohol, inspect for bulging capacitors or burnt VRMs, and ensure the slot latch is secure.

  • Isolation: the quickest decisive test is to try the card in another machine, or try a different card in this machine. If driver and PSU swaps don’t help and the card fails only under load, hardware failure (VRAM/VRMs/BGA solder joints) is likely and replacement is the practical fix. Reflow or advanced repairs carry risk and may void warranty — proceed only if comfortable.

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Member Avatar for Rik_

Do you have any software for monitoring temperatures? If not, get Everest Home Edition and see what your temperatures are like.

Member Avatar for SkipN

Do you have any software for monitoring temperatures? If not, get Everest Home Edition and see what your temperatures are like.

Thanks for the above link. My temps are all within normal tolerances. I have noticed that it now seems to only cut out when I'm playing Warcraft, when the video card is under it's heaviest load.

Member Avatar for Rik_

Might be worth giving your graphics cards heatsink a good dust out just in case.

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