PC monitor blacks out while gaming!

[hannya62]

Hi Guys,

Its my first time at the advice forum, hope it all goes well!

So lately while I am gaming on my pc, my monitor blacks out ( It display the message "monitor going to sleep") but the PC is still running and sounds is still playing (sometimes it hangs but normally keeps on playing normally). When I turn my monitor on and off again it displays the messag that there is no active incoming signal. So at that point I have to restart the PC (by turning power off). But if I do it shortly after the black out happened, the pc makes abnormal noises and does not boot up. If I wait a longer time, it boots up normally.

I updated my drivers to the latest version,
I cleaned the case from any dust,
I switched to the other DVI acces point on my graphics card
but it is still happening.

I was thinking my graphics card may be overheating?
any other suggestions?

the specs of my PC:

Intel core 2 duo E8400 at 3.0 GHz
windows vista professional with 32 bit
4 gigabiy RAM
Nvidea gtx 260

Do you think it is wise to change the videocard or is the pc to old and slow to put a more modern card in there?

Do you have any suggestions for new videocard to put in here ( mid-range or budget?)

thank you

 

[hannya62]

No I dont have access to another card :-(

any suggestions for a cheap but somewhat decent new card? (good performance/money card)

 

[Keoul]

First off try and play the game in window mode, then try changing the resolution, that COULD be the problem. Depending on the game, change the shortcut properties by inserting some command or other I don't recall, google it.

Does this happen to other games? or just one specific game? more details!

 

[hannya62]

Hi,

Thank you for the advice so far.

I cleared all the dust present and all the fans seem to working properly.

The games I encountered it with are:

Portal 2
Tribes: ascend
Call of Cthulu: the dark corners of the earth
and the last one is from 2006 so my PC should be able to handle it quite well.

But it also has occured being just in windows (vista) surfing the web and playing some music with itunes.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Ya your graphics card is going to hell, if you still have warranty on it then get it swapped right away, otherwise start planing for a new one.

nVidia had some cooling problems on one series of their cards so some chips would overheat to the damage point and then malfunction, my mate had the same problem but for him it came up in the first week.

 

[hannya62]

No the card is about 4 years old, so I suppose it had a good run

Do you think it is wise to put a relative new card in an older machinte (the whole PC is about 4 years old)?