Video Driver Failing While Playing Guild Wars

I've been gaming for the better part of 3 years now, with the same video card and everything. I really started getting into Guild wars a month ago. About 1 week ago, my video card started overheating and crashing the game, so I got the latest drivers. That didn't work, because I hopped back on Guild wars and it gave me a BSOD. I attempted restarting the computer only to have another BSOD. I reformatted, downloaded Guild wars, avast, ventrilo, firefox, and a video driver. Now, every now and then, the screen will have artifacts on it, threatening to crash, but then the screen goes black, comes back up, and resumes, except I'm about 40 fps short of what I had before.

Does anyone know what's going on?

I LOVED Guild wars at 60 fps, but 19-25 is just an eyesore.

Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
System Model: GM286AA-ABA s3122x
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+ ~2.1GHz
Hard Drive: 224 GB
RAM: 1022 MB
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium (6.0 Build 6000)
Graphics Card: Jaton's VIDEO-PX8400GS-LX 256MB DDR2

yup same problem here very angering happens about 10 times a day for me sometimes worse,and all of my components are flawless... only prob is i use an nvidia atm that seems to be the problem.

Same here. Time to get a new laptop?

This card has been loyal to me for 3 years... kinda weird it would stop now huh? :P I can only have an nvidia too because my mom SUCKS at picking computers and managed to get the most expensive, smallest, least functional one she could find. (it's a slimline)

I'm thinking about using:

these gaming drivers

Seems that your video card is on the fritz - everything you mentioned is an indication of graphics card failure- You should look into replacing your video card, for what it would cost to find that older model you would be better off upgrading it to a HD4670 or some other similar model, although you may need a PSU upgrade as well.

I don't know where to find a power supply unit for a slimline, and I'm sure the ATI you mentioned won't fit.

www.newegg.com has everything you need and the best service and prices too. XD

In any case, pop the side off the case and see what you have for a PSU in there - it may not even need an upgrade.

GPU - can't go wrong with this for $35:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102819

That is where my current "dying" card came from. :P

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201305520 548%201419531894%201069609641%204025%20106791921&n ame=GeForce%208%20series

^ all I can afford/fit into my case

Where can I find a power supply to fit this?

you'll need to look for the rated wattage of the PSU. your PSU looks to be a non-standard form factor, but it's kinda hard to tell from a picture. it looks to be flatter and longer than a standard PSU.

either way, you can buy a low powered graphic card, such as this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125251

the only difference i can find, between the 4550 and 4350, is that the 4550 is crossfire-capable, and uses GDDR3 instead of GDDR2. however, both cards have the same rated memory speed, so there shouldn't be any difference. and before you ask, yes, your PSU will be enough for it.

What's that mean?

has to do with your resolution your computer is set at right click anywhere on your desktop under display settings you want your games to play in anything under 1200 pixels im assuming

well, my screen is 1440x900 >.<

that just means you shouldnt play anything at highest marks. id think of running guild wars in a lower setting actually didnt think you could run guild wars in such a high setting id try setting it in the 1024 by 720 range see if that helps tremendously and keep ya from overheating

the 4350 is faster than what you have right now, so you don't need to worry about performance.

But I still need to worry about heat :P

heat is really not an issue. the damned thing draws around 30W maximum, which won't even heat up a cup of water even if ALL of it is converted to heat (which isn't the case for a graphic card).

Now now, the specific heat capacity of water is far higher than the metal in his laptop so saying water was cheating slightly :P:P

But leaving that aside, he's right, you won't have any problems with the heat that 30W of power can generate from a graphics card. If you're really worried download a program such as smcFanControl (I use mac, there should be a pc equivalent somewhere?) and monitor the temperature in your laptop for a while when first using the new card, as long as its at around 60 degrees without anything bulky running you should be good!

I can tell you right now if you do replace the gpu I would recommend getting a new case or adding more fans. your airflow path, to me anyway, seems to me...questionable at best. My friend has one and I would be hacking away on that thing the same day I got it. Granted I am a fan lover and love cramming more fans into any opening in the case (or any I make myself) so its totally up to you. However, once your graphics card starts going there is no, "well I added more cooling so it should be good now". It can't heal itself, the dmg is done. Cut your losses. You don't have to get the latest card you can find. you can get an older one for a very fair price that will run anything you can throw at it. My 6800 ultra is still cranking out the fps like a champ under any load I throw at it. Also, I noticed some people mentioning your power supply. Read over its outputs and make sure it has more than enough power to continue feeding a hungry system. Underpowered cards can fail prematurely under stress, and the underpowering might be just under the built-in alarms most have to prevent such a condition. Building a whole new system isn't out of reach anymore. You can build a very affordable and well-performing one these days mainly from the aforementioned newegg.com, coupled with tigerdirect.com Its all about smart shopping. best of luck to you, hope you get it straightened out. I wouldn't continue pulling my hair out over reinstalling drivers, or reformatting, ect. Its a hardware issue.

I know about the airflow, and that homemade computers are better. My problem is the budget. I'm only 15 years old, unemployed, getting $10 a week from a single mom and nearly-unemployed dad. I saw a nice computer that can run Crysis under medium settings, but $500, although small for a whole computer, is a ton of money to my family.

fair enough, but who said you had to rebuild your whole thing? btw who mussed with my post? Its all screwed up in your quote

I just realized something, my comp doesn't have pci express 2.0, so I can't use either of the cards yall recommended.

Here's what I'm limited to if I don't care about price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...rofile%20Ready

actually, PCI-e 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-e 1.1, so you're fine.

Ah, so as long as I don't SLI or Crossfire (can't anyway, only 1 usable slot) 1.1 and 2.0 don't matter?

if your card is not a: 1) radeon HD4870 X2, OR 2) geforce GTX295, then it doesn't matter. PCI-e 2.0 delivers double the bandwidth as PCI-e 1.1. however, only those two cards that i've listed will EVER use that additional bandwidth. even for those two, the difference is tiny.

for your card, it doesn't matter, because it won't be able to use all that bandwidth anyways.

btw, SLI and Crossfire are not dependent on the type of PCI-e slot you have. both will happily work on PCI-e 1.1 slots, assuming you have two of them.

Thank you soo much