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I have nvidia 8500 GT graphics card (512 MB) in my system on gigabyte motherboard. A few days ago due to electricity fluctuation there are some vertical lines are displaying on my lcd screen and the bios text is also scrambled. Can it be the problem due to graphics card or RAM. Please help Me?

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  • It could be the motherboard, get an UPS.
    – HackToHell
    Mar 26, 2012 at 4:56
  • Any chance that this is a fanless 8500GT?
    – sawdust
    Mar 26, 2012 at 6:28
  • yes there is no fan on this graphics card Mar 26, 2012 at 8:08

4 Answers 4

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Not sure about vertical lines, but "scrambled BIOS text" typically indicates an issue with video memory. The BIOS uses VGA text mode, which, for each character position, has bits for the ASCII code for the character as well the colors of the character and the background. Video memory errors manifest as scrambled text since the proper character or attribute cannot be retained. Since the GeForce 8500GT is a discrete adapter (rather than an integrated GPU that uses main memory), then the video memory is on the GPU board itself.

A fanless GPU card is more prone to failure simply because there is no fan to ensure air flow over the board's heatsink for heat transfer. Poor air circulation around a fanless GPU card can lead to permanent heat damage to the video adapter. Even with a GPU fan, a PC case requires good intake of cool air and extraction of the heated air with minimal (or preferably no) dead or hot zones.

The "electricity fluctuation" may just be a coincidence. Or the components on the 8500GT were aged prematurely or operating at the edge of their range by excessive heat, and therefore maybe more susceptible to electrical glitches.

BTW I replaced a similar fanless GeForce 7300GT that had BSOD in Win 7 and the bad text in the BIOS. The BSOD was particularly nasty in that it made rebooting very difficult; i.e. Windows required a "repair" but that would fail. I recommend that you replace the GPU before you get a similar issue.

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The 8xxx family is notorious for such things happening - mine was in earlier stages of failure and exhibited the issues with bios scrambling. This advisory by dell might also be of interest, even if it was for laptops.

While its a sensationalist rag, the register has a plausible theory for why it happens. In short, your video card is faulty, and you may want to replace or bake it

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I've encountered and fixed such problems a number of times. A RAM chip could have been damaged. If you can, try swapping the RAM module with another one to see if that fixes the problem.

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Reseat the video card as well your memory. If it persists, do you have a spare video card you can use for testing?

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