Flickering problem with new i7/gtx260...i'm guessing bad vid card. what do you think?

[frank828]

hey guys so i just put together a new i7 860 system on tuesday and last night while watching a tv show on fox.com i noticed the screen to start flickering.

it seems to be that the screen flickers to black when there is hard drive activity. this is to the point where i pretty much cant use the system.

This only is happening while drivers for the video card are loaded in windows.

If i go into the system in safe mode or with drivers uninstalled, the flicker goes away.

I've tried the latest(started with these) drivers and the last one before that.


my system spec:
i7 860
msi p55-g65
4GB Kingston HyperX PC2000
BFG GTX 260
OCZ 700watt modxtream
1TB Seagate
Windows XP Pro

i'm not on the system right now but when i get back i plan on trying some older drivers to see if that helps. Otherwise i'm thinking it's a bad video card. I wonder if this is something that developed in the last two days. I'm concerned that there may be more than one bad part. bleh

any input is appreciated.

thanks.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Do you have a spare video card you can use to test?

 

[frank828]

nope, no test parts.

last system i had was 7 years old.

 

[frank828]

i have no problem getting the video card exchanged but i'm concerned if the motherboard or powersupply may have had to do with the card going bad.

i didnt see any of these problems until last night(computer was 2 days old at that point).

also when i tested things this morning, i unplugged everything but the keyboard/mouse. including all the fans in the system. none of that helped. so yeah pretty much i've isolated it to motherboard, video card, powersupply, hard drive, memory and processor to be the culprits.

i think it's fair to assume that the processor and memory isnt causing this issue as the system works fine but i just cant see whats going on on the screen reliably. so i'm at mobo, vid card, psu and hard drive being potential culprits.

was hoping someone had a similar problem...google search didnt get me much.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Are you overclocked on the CPU front? If so, have you tried stock settings?

 

[alcoholbob]

Go to best buy and pick up the cheapest video card you can find, then return it if it's not the culprit.

 

[frank828]

well i tried a bunch of older drivers and at first i thought the issue went away but after a few minutes, the flickering came right back.

right now i'm stuck using the card without nvidia drivers loaded and just using whatever windows uses to get the display up.

i'm kinda sick of this issue so i just went ahead and ordered a radeon 5770 and i'm gonna return this gtx260 back to frys on monday.