Video card problems? Or time for a new machine?

Ianator

On Friday night I left my computer on overnight to finish some downloads. When I woke up, I turned my monitor on to find it had Stop Error'd at some point. I spaced on getting the full story, only for it to happen while playing Scarlet Weather Rhapsody about half an hour ago. The bluescreen blamed nv4_disp.dll for the trouble. I have since told Windows to deposit a Complete Dump somewhere easier to find.

I only updated my drivers about two months ago - before then it was sometimes stopping without showing me a blue screen at all. I've had problems for years with video cards in this computer. My first card burned a capacitor or something off, my second one just wasn't showing textures in GalCiv or KotOR, and now this one's giving me a hard time. I think it has something to do with the fact that my case doesn't use screws to hold cards tight - and the bracket used for that disappeared when I got it put together.

I am using:
Windows XP Home SP2
AMD Athlon XP2500+ 1.83GHz
1.5GB of RAM (one 1GB, two 256MB
NVidia GeForce 6600

I got both this card and my second from a local computer workshop's thrift store so it should've tested good, but I don't think it got put through a rigorous enough examination. Should I just search for a newer video card, or it it time to donate my six-year-old machine to a better cause?

Falken

Your computer is eating cards. Ditch it.

Elimination

That computer is ancient anyhow. Thats coming on...what, 7-8 years old now? It's also eating cards because something is probably wrong in the motherboard. And honestly, that whole set up as i said, is ancient, you could get a massively superior system to that for probably $300.