Hardware Is my graphics card dying?

[Nujui]

Recently, all of the games I've been playing either have messed up textures or just missing chucks. Example:

Spoiler

And that happens to every game I play on here, I've tried reinstalling my drivers, that didn't work, then I tried taking out the card and cleaning it, making sure that it was all ok, and it seemed to be, still isn't working.

I really want too try and fix this if I can, as I really don't have the money to buy a new one.

It's a ATI XT 2600 HD.

Thank you in advance.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Odd, might be missing textures.

Head over to your Steam program, right click TF2 and "Verify Game Integrity".

If that doesn't work, reinstall the game

 

[Nujui]

Odd, might be missing textures.

Head over to your Steam program, right click TF2 and "Verify Game Integrity".

If that doesn't work, reinstall the game

I have, and it does this to every game I play.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Sorry mate, might be a GPU fault.

How's the air circulation in your PC? Have you checked the temperatures of your GPU on idle and on load?

 

[Nujui]

Sorry mate, might be a GPU fault.

How's the air circulation in your PC? Have you checked the temperatures of your GPU on idle and on load?

Yeah, and all of them seem to be in good condition..

 

[gloweyjoey]

I think it might be worth confirming which version of the driver and catalyst control center you are installing.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

If your graphic card is old, then it may indeed be dying.

Sorry mate, but I'm all out of ideas. It's time to start saving up

 

[FAST6191]

Well there are some nice DX10.1 and 11 cards that run most games stunningly for next to nothing these days if it comes to it (I got a Radeon HD 5450 for a little over £20 or about half the price of a chart game a couple of weeks back and as we are stuck with DX9 vintage gear thanks to the consoles it does not take a hulking beast of a card to get stuff done like it did in years past).

However you might be able to pull it back from the brink. The two most common errors I see in graphics cards beyond fan not working/clogged with dust is blown capacitors ( http://www.auroracom...ges/bad_cap.jpg ) and BGA on the graphics chip not working (aka the error that causes many phones to fail, the 360 RRoD most of the time, most of the PS3 YLOD and a good chunk of other errors in electronics these days).

Capacitors amount to find an equivalent or better and resolder them (the bad ones are usually through hole so doable with basic soldering skills) and BGA reflow can be done with a hot air gun (search up for BGA reflow on your chosen video site for loads of guides, I do not suggest an oven though as that will tend to pop capacitors). After this we do get into actual errors with either the GPU or the ram on the card and ram at least I guess is end user replaceable if you know what you are doing but diagnosing that and actually replacing it is not something I would go in for unless you had opened this post with can someone help me find this ram chip or a drop in equivalent or otherwise own/have access to hot air or IR soldering gear.