Did W7 Kill my card?

[ctorin]

I upgraded from XP 32 to Windows 7 64. Everything went great, but within a week, my 8800GT died. After installing W7, I just used whatever driver the OS installed on its own. All my games work as they should, but I found it odd that the card that worked perfectly for nearly 2 years died coincidently with installing a new OS. Did I do something wrong?

 

[mohsentux]

well i can help you bury it you like
but a windows can't just kill a 8800GT because the only it can do that is by changing it's voltages but they are saved in gpu's bios and win can't change that
maybe you wanna check your power supply that's more relevant

 

[aford10]

Explain the symptoms. Does the PC still boot with the card?

The only way an OS could kill your card, is if the driver it picked was faulty, and your video card was running at peak or close to it, constantly. Then it could overheat, or just give out. But it's just not that likely.

 

[ctorin]

The pc did not boot with the card, I had to put another one in. Empire Total War crashed, I got a message about drivers failing, but the system was able to recover, then a BSOD that said the display adapter might not be installed correctly.

I was wondering if the OS did pick the wrong drivers, or maybe the fan died, I am not really sure.

 

[Kewlx25]

it's nearly impossible to cause physical damage to a card via software.

Two main things to kill a card

Heat - via dead fan, dust, or bad air flow
faulty hardware - blows caps, bad resistors, etc

 

[mohsentux]

yes i agree
an OS is like a bridge that connects hardware to software.it can't just burn your gpu unless you've done something.
maybe your gpu's fan was fried and that's why your card just burned

 

[ctorin]

Thank you for the help, everyone.