Is this game breaking my video cards?

[LeonkRAV]

I honestly cant think of anything else that could be causing the issue. when i got this game back in decp i had a pretty decent video card. a gtx 460. BUT within a month my whole computer was fried. I was having issue where the game would literally shut down my whole computer mid play and cause a reset. I came the the conclusion it may be heating issues and such. I turned the graphics to low which seemed to help but eventualy it fried the card and my computer.

 

I was in the mood for a new computer anyhow so i purchased one. did some testing and in fact the card was dead, Literally would start burning upon powering up.

 

then i bought a new card as well a GTX 560. and a tr2 600w power supply. this was a pretty top gear card and ran the game great, everything was going good. until like usual, i powered my computer down like usual and upon returning home i load up the computer.

 

the bios text was flashy and garbaled in some places, there were red dots or pixels scattered everywhere and the computer was in a very low resolution. It would however start up. til it got past the loading screen where you would choose your user. Which was simply a black screen. i went through everything i could imagine to try to resolve this, but nothing worked and seemingly out of nowehere everything was working again.

 

I load back into swtor andstart playing, upon my 3 pvp match during loading screen the game completely freezes everything. Im forced to power down and upon powering back up again, im back at the same issue.

 

Has anyone else had this problem? Anyone know what the issue is if the card hasnt been fried(which i find hard to believe a 1 month card would crap out so quick). I like the game, but if its going to contuously fry my video cards, i may have to drop it.

[Rabenschwinge]

Hm. While I sense a connection to another thread here, I'll try a serious response:

 

Games cannot break video cards. The game doesn't even directly interact with the video card, but with a so called API (Advanced Programming Interface). That would be DirectX in this case, it belongs to Microsoft, but is only in part implemented by Microsoft itself and in part by the graphics card manufacturer. The code of the game runs exclusively on the main processor but it calls the API do specific jobs for it, and that code does use the GPU. The worst thing that a normal program (but not necessarily a virus designed to damage your computer) can do is operate it under full load. A computer should be capable working under full load though.

 

If your card breaks it's likely a result of overclocking. If not that it might be a too weak power supply unit (PSU) - 600 Watts should be sufficient for such a card but no more than that - or voltage spikes on the net which your computer can compensate if it just consumes minimal energy, but not under full load. Another possible cause may be insuficient air circulation in the case, or graphics card is out of the air stream.

 

The problem you describe may have other reasons, though. Memory failure. A chip on the mainboard. Incompatible clock speeds. Too high or too low voltage on the memory banks the specification voltage is not always ideal on all memory / motherboard combinations.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Rabenschwinge