Trying to determine a video (?) problem - not sure what is causing it.

[Apotter]

I'll start off with the fact that I haven't updated my current system specs here. The major changes are I have upgraded RAM to 24 GB (same brand/type as before) and I have attached a smaller second screen to this configuration (Philips 190V).
Everything is working fine but recently a friend of mine has asked me to use the machine for Team Fortress 2 idling (running dozens of sandboxed TF2 instances in text mode at a time). Being in text mode (CMD), it should not affect video gpu much, right? It takes ram - that I can understand. Each instance takes about 250 MB of ram without using cleanmem or similar. My problem is that when we try to load over 35-37 instances - hell breaks loose. Screens begin to flicker between dark and white, showing various portions of whatever software/window is opened... Taskbar will appear on the top of the screen, apps from left screen with appear for a second on the secondary (extended) display then go dark... Keyboard shortcuts will freeze everything for a while (sometimes 10+ minutes) and then return to the flickering (not the flickering people complain about from dual monitor on different frequencies... I never had that problem).Skype is always the first to crash when this happens... I've tried shutting down Skype.. it'll crash something else - more important.. Print Screen or any other capture software does not work while this is happening so I can't really show what it's doing, which (again) leads me to believe it is GPU issue. But 35 text mode CMD windows? I've been opening 150-200 java-based browser tabs without a problem - with only 12 GB of RAM.
Is it really my GPU?

 

[Layback Bear]

Let me see if I understand you correctly.
You have a GTS 25O and a i7920 running Team Fortress 2 and dozens of cmd at the same time with skype plus trying to load 35 instances at the same time with two screens and you are having problems.
Do I have that correct?

 

[Apotter]

The CMDs are the TF2s connecting to a server using text mode only - no sound, no video, nothing. There's nothing else running - I even shut down skype cause nobody uses it on this machine. I load - say - 32 TF2s (that's max for a server) and everything runs fine. Plenty of ram too. CPU stays at 20-30% load. Loading few more TF2s will produce that "glitch". I just want to know what causes it so I can upgrade that component.

 

[Layback Bear]

This might help you.

Team Fortress 2

 

[Apotter]

Why would Valve help me with graphic issues on Windows, especially when I'm not actually playing TF2 but only connecting to a local server via cmd? Never mind though. It appears to be related to different types of monitors. Using my LG 27 or attaching a second identical LG 27" allowed me to load 64 instances and run Tomb Raider on high.. thanks to EVGA support.

 

[Layback Bear]

I made a bobo. Can you forgive me. I meant to post a site that gave FAQ for such problems. I'm happy your fixed the problem.