Strange Visual Band Errors

[HooblaDan]

Hello everybody, I'm going to try to describe this problem as best as I can, please let me know if additional information on the comp would be helpful.

I'm playing games on our family's desktop. It's Vista 32 with an Intel Core Duo E7200 @ 2.53 GHz 2.53 GHz, 4 gigs of ram, and an ATI Radeon HD 3450. Now I've read that the HD 3450 is a terrible card, and I'll be upgrading it later this year, but until then I'm requesting help with a strange problem I have in games that I'm not sure about.

It's... bands, I suppose, are the best way to describe them. In most games that I play on it, they're two-dimensional, easily-visible colored or black bands that run out of characters in the games and off-screen into infinity at random angles, and they're very annoying. They're usually not there at first, but after a few minutes of playing they quickly pop up, and I notice that certain games like the Civ IV series tend to get them only very rarely where-as others like TF2 and L4D get them within a few minutes. I'll try to get a screen if nobody knows what I'm talking about.

I tried updating video drivers, a catalyst package (though now I re-visit the site it's giving me a different package for my card), and the install failed twice at around 70 %, though the date in the drivers section of video device now lists the updated drivers' date and won't let me roll back.

So... is this a driver problem? Is this video card shot (it's relatively new)? Or is it something else? Any help would be appreciated, and let me know if you need additional information!

Thanks,
Dan

[Mcninjaguy]

This sounds like a artifacting ( video memory get jumbled and displays weird crap) and a heat issue

Download Rivatuner and up the fan speed to 70%
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

Force ware driver (click button) system tools - fan (tab) change it to direct control up the fan speed to 70%.
Save a profile and make sure it starts on startup
apply!

after you up the fan speed with Rivatuner check the GPU temps with GPU-Z
http://www.filehippo.com/download_gpuz/

and check the CPU temps too with Core temp
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

When you want to insall the driver install it as a administrator.
right click on it
run as administrator.

uninstall old driver with revo uninstaller
http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Here's your driver
Under individual components only Display driver
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_ca...common-vista32


after you done all this

check with ATI and "scan for artifacts"let it run for about 1/2 an hour.
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

if no erros pop up with rivatuner than it was just a heat issue.

I want the temps from Core temp and GPU-Z after rivatuner. and the results of ATI tool and hopefully the driver installs.

[HooblaDan]

I'm not finding a forceware driver button on rivatuner?

EDIT: I successfully installed the ccc and drivers after looking up the error message I was getting, and will test for this artifact again, but, as noted above, I can't find the referenced button.

And I'm still getting the strange bands after the driver update, though apparently to a lesser extent. I'll keep trying to find the button you're talking about.

I looked up a tutorial on changing fan speed, and instead of getting forceware i'm getting catalyst detected and i'm not able to customize it. I don't see any way to change fan speed in catalyst either. Do I need to uninstall it?

[Mcninjaguy]

Yes I would uninstall Catalyst

For rivatuner it say forcware or I guess in you r case some thing like aCatalyst or some thing and a small button. I wish I could upload a imagw with a working Rivatuner bit it doesn't work very well in WIn 7 right now.

please don't mind my awesome mouse drawing skillz

[RockmasteR]

you have ATI so it's catlyst and not forceware

to increase the fan speed in RivaTuner do this :
on the "Main" Tab, under "Target Adapter" choose customize, a list should appear, select the first picture (Video Card picture)
a fan control system should appear
click on "enable low level fan control" and if prompted to reboot, do so
after you restart, run Rivatuner again and follow the above steps till you reach to the fan control page
now you can increase the fan speed to any desired amount

[HooblaDan]

I don't have the graphics card button under the target adapter customize, just a refresh-rate button and a diagnostics report button. And I know where the button SHOULD be on that second driver settings window... I just don't have one there.

Anyways, I ran the scan for artifacts in atitool for 29 minutes on the current catalyst drivers that I have and got no errors. I'll resume messing around with this tomorrow morning (gettin sleepy). Thanks for the help!

Also, should I install the driver it asks me to when I download atitool?

So, I uninstalled catalyst and installed the individual drivers, however I'm still not finding a graphics card button in either section of rivatuner. The program says that I should update rivatuner whenever I launch it, but as far as I can tell that is the most recent version (2.24). I'm not sure how I can change fan speed if I can't seem to find this handy button.

[HooblaDan]

Yeah, this in the first attached screen is all that I get, no fan or graphics card option anywhere that I can see, I even tried going to the launcher section and launching a rivatuner low-level control module, no fan option there either. In the fan section that pops up when I add a 'regular item' to launcher (second screenshot), fan says 'not supported' along with overclocking. Not sure what's wrong.

I get this message when I start the program, if it helps:

"Warning! Riva Tuner has not been tested with the currently installed display driver. It is strongly recommended to upgrade Riva Tuner to a new version, otherwise it may not work properly because the driver is not officially supported."

But, as I said earlier, I'm pretty sure this is the most up-to-date version... >_>

[Mcninjaguy]

I think you might need to download The catalyst control center and try to up the fan speed there.

The fan speed option is under driver settings. SO I'm guessing its just not their because of the ATI card you have. The warning ATI has not been properly tested with the current driver and all that well, I get that error too. I think it would be really hard for that person to properly test all the drivers that come out.

[HooblaDan]

I searched CCC for about an hour last night trying to find a fan control option because I guess some people have that... I did not. Looked where the interwebs told me to, and nothing.

[HooblaDan]

http://computershopper.com/graphics-...-graphics-card

Apparently it doesn't even have a fan... though I get better performance than what they list on CoH... So... I guess I need a new card... may as well grab a 512 for this family comp until I can build my own bugger this fall I suppose, unless there's anything else anybody would suggest...