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So I think my graphics card might have just fried... My computer apparently boots up normally (from the sounds it makes, and the keyboard response - I can use Alt - F4 + Enter to shut it down ok) but my monitor remains blank. Very annoying!

I hooked up my 360 to my monitor, and it's working fine, so it's not that.

What's weird is that the graphics card fan still turns and my motherboard isn't kicking up a fuss (as I say, Windows is apparently booting fine, I just can't see it!). I would have assumed my motherboard could detect a broken graphics card... I guess not.

I've tried giving the card a clean (it was very very dusty as it turns out) but no change.

Has my graphics card died? (I'm guessing yes.) And if so, what card would be a comparable replacement? It was a GTS 8800 with 320 MB of RAM. It also used a PCI-E slot.

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  • Here's a longshot. If you have a laptop and a null modem cable you can boot your computer from a USB linux distro with serial redirection and see if you can connect through the serial interface. cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-serial-console-howto
    – flashnode
    Jul 29, 2011 at 16:52

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Do you have on-board graphics on your motherboard, in that case either change your display option in the bios to use your motherboard's graphics controller or physically remove the card and then you don't have to bother changing it in your BIOS. (Also plug the cable into your motherboards display controller, this is to test if your graphics is really the problem.)

How many RAM sticks do you have ? I would suggest booting up with a single stick of ram (alternate your sticks and try starting your PC), just to check if your RAM is fine. But since you say that you can shut your computer down using a keyboard shortcut that seems highly unlikely.

As for a new graphics card, you could try the Nvidia GeForce 8 or ATI Radeon HD 5000 series cards series graphics cards, depending on your budget.

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