Video Card or Sound Card?

downer

My computer started doing the following today:

Completely black screen when I got home. I attempted hard reset, same thing. Powered it off, waited 10 minutes, tried again and it booted right up. It has done this before.

I then went to play a round of MW2. In all of the menu's and the load screen, everything was perfectly fine. When I get in game however, I experience a LOT of video lag (feels like rubber banding/latency) and my audio sounds like the Decepticons (a lot of static/echo). If I quickly exit the game, my audio will return to normal. If not, I lose all audio.


I am running:

Windows 7 Ultimate 32 Bit
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS with latest drivers
Creative SB Audigy Gamer with latest drivers


I don't have any spare parts available to troubleshoot with. My video card is about 2 years old, while my sound card is about 7 years old. It feels like a video problem (black screen, video lag with a perfect ping), but with the audio issues also I'm torn..

Any expert input, PA?

Jasconius

If you are getting video lag as well then it could be possible a motherboard circuit going bad perhaps?

Check your settings and make sure you are using the Sound Blaster and not their software sound driver.

But the power-up problems make it sound like a motherboard issue to me... open it up, see if you see anything charred, see if you can smell anything burning, make sure all the components are fixed in position.

downer

The Soundblaster is set up as my default, and all of my audio cables go into it. Nothing glaringly obviously on the motherboard. I've re-seated everything since my first post, with no change.

MechMantis

Well, remove the sound card, see if that changes anything for the better.

If it does, you have found your problem.

If it DOESN'T, then your problem is still around.

Jasconius

To me it sounds like something along the lines of temperature.

If you are leaving it off during the day, you come home and it is dead, and you give it a boot, then reboot it after 10 minutes, and it's back to "normal", then to me that speaks to some sort of heat damage.

Try just removing your sound card outright and booting, though I doubt that will do anything, it's worth a shot to see if sound card gremlins could be causing other issues.

downer

MechMantis wrote: »

Well, remove the sound card, see if that changes anything for the better.

If it does, you have found your problem.

If it DOESN'T, then your problem is still around.

I did this and it seems to have worked. I'll have to test it with a lengthy Mw2 session.