I was playing CO (really enjoying it) and my game crashed, the screen got covered with artifacts then it went black and the screen went to standby. Theres no problem with the monitor, ive tried another VGA/DVI cable and have put the GPU (8800GTX) into the other PCI-e slot and still no response. The GPU starts up as I can see the fan spin but no response. I have ordered a new Graphics card (BFG GTX 285 OCX 1gb) so I am hoping the GPU is the problem. Anyone else agree with me, give me any advice or know what else it could be? Thanks in advsnce :)

PS. Missing CO already :(

Hate to bump but any ideas?

Check the power connection to the card. Check to make sure the heat sink didn't pop off. Try re-seating the card, perhaps something else when haywire. It's rare that a GPU would just die like that, but not unheard of.

Ive tried reseating it and all the connections are fine. I was thinknig maybe CPU or PSU but there was artifacting which can only be caused my a problem with the GPU. I have no display at all from the second I start the PC up so I can't access the BIOS. All the fans seem to start up fine but I cant tell if it gets to the desktop or not as I obviously can't see anything. My motherboard has no built in video card so I can't get it to display through that :(. I think it is between the PSU and GPU personally. Guess ill find out when I get my new GPU ina few days.

Crap, I went and grabbed a 8800GTX and you can't get the heat sink to check it. That'd be my first guess about what went wrong. The fans are controlled by a secondard controller on the PCB, the GPU itself doesn't operate them. If it's dead, the fan will still spin. I'm sorry for your loss, if you get it working again let us know. :(

There were coloured lines across my screen and it would only run in safe mode, i tried new drivers and restared and it totally died. It must be the GPU as I cant see anything else giving coloured lines across the screen. It is really weird because I was looking at new GPUs literally before I went onto CO, guess the 8800 GTX got jealous and decided to self destruct. :) Got this thread bookmarked so will rreport back when I get the new GPU.

Colored lines huh..? Have you look to make sure you didn't just knock the DVI/VGA connector lose from the back of your monitor? If the system POSTs then the CPU thinks the GPU is alive.

Checked the monitor connection, the VGA and DVI slots. What do you mean by POSTs?

Is POST when it makes a beep? Mine doesn't beep but I can't remember if it did before or not. I would of tried another GFX card but my mobo doesn't have an AGP slot. So annoying I can't play CO :S

I have a 8800 gt and I was getting severe heat problems before. My GPU would shut down after like an hour and when I checked the temperature, it was running at about 105 degrees. It seems the issue was that I was playing in full desktop window mode (forget what the actual name is, something like that though). In the Video section of Options check to make sure you're playing on Fullscreen mode and not full desktop window mode. Again I forget if this is the actual name as I'm not on my gaming computer so I can't log in and check. But there are 3 options, one is windowed, one is like full windowed mode, and one is fullscreen. When I was in full windowed mode, my gpu was running at 100+ degrees when in game. In fullscreen mode it runs tops out at 80 degrees.

I'd recommend you not rule out the monitor until you either hook it up to a different system, or try out your graphics card hooked up to a different monitor.