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I have a problem that is driving me to the edge. My graphics card periodically looses power for a moment, then comes back. Once in a while it takes much longer, like 5 minutes. I have always tried rebooting during that period, since I don't know then. Black screen, with a no power message across my monitor.

All equipment is only a few months old. The Motherboard is a few months old, MSI N9A2 Platinum Revision 1 (AMD). The Video Card is a Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 1GB. The power supply is an Ultra 700w My OS is Xp Pro, sp3

Any ideas or suggestions how to solve this

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6 Answers 6

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Have you tried running a temperature monitor such as HWMonitor to see if your video card is running into thermal issues?

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If I got your card correctly, its passive cooled so fan-trouble on the card is ruled out.
But, if the air-flow in the cabinet is not smooth,
you could have trouble as heat builds up around the card (no fans, you see).
I use a nVidia 7950GT which is similarly passive-cooled and the cabinet is designed for proper air-flow.

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Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 1GB (GV-R485MC-1GH)

The same review link declares good power-management on the card (12-22W).
And, a 700W PSU is quite good (though, I have not checked your exact model).

If this card is what you have, you should consider a warranty check.
The card may be malfunctioning.

I presume that that the card seating is confirmed. Some other checks,

  1. These cards come with management software that taps sensors to show its state
    (have you checked these? does this work for your hardware?)
    • Many third-party tools look at these sensors
      (GPU-Z is on such)
    • There are also tools that do stability testing
      (FurMark is quite good at that -- they call it the GPU Burner).
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It does sound like your graphics card or the fan on the graphics card may be faulty.

This would make sense if the Windows desktop is automatically returning after those few seconds of seeing a blank screen. Can you hear the fan on the graphics card spin down and up again or does it remain on constantly? If so, that would be another indication.

Do you have a spare graphics card that you can test with to confirm this?

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I don't know the details of your PSU and graphics card, but some cards require a certain amperage on each of two 12v rails; basically, are you sure your PSU is putting out enough juice?

Beyond that, possibly check into temperature monitoring. I have an obnoxiously hot office, and periodically have heat-related problems when the graphics card is under load.

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Sorry for the long delay. It is the video card. It behaved fine for two weeks, then the graphics died completely, even though the fan on the card kept working, indicating that it had power. I re-installed my old video card in the PCI-E slot and it is working fine with no loss of graphics. Thank you for your help, ezwi, Adrien and the rest.

It looks like the Motherboard may have its own problems, so two faulty parts at once, lucky me! Life is never simple, lol!

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Try to following these interactive Diagnostic Flowsharts. They're great to identify where problems can come. You can click on the rhombuses (identifying a question) to get more information about that question.

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