Phatalerror

Recently, my GeForce4 Ti4600 graphics card randomly began to have artifacts everywhere on the screen. These appear as blue or yellow lines slightly offset all over the screen during Windows XP normal use. These problems also occur during startup (and POST, actually) but randomly fade in and out. Specifically, when attempt to run World of Warcraft, the lines appear almost immediately and the computer freezes. In normal XP use, the lines cause my monitor to constantly refresh (clicking) and the screen does not really refresh. The windows distort extremely when moved, and generally get worse as things go along. Suddenly again, they will be gone. Heres what I've done: Reseated the graphics card, resinstalled new drivers, made sure no OC'ing was going on, and i planned in the near future to get some canned air and clean out the slot and the surrounding motherboard. I seem to have an inkering that its some sort of overheating problem, but this seems odd to me as i ran the card on the stock heatsink and fan for a couple of years, and recently (several months ago) removed the stock fan because it was failing and replaced it with one I purchased from newegg (yes, I applied thermal compound and the install went smoothly). It seemed like it wouldn't have failed suddenly one day, but I wanted to get some opinions. The card doesn't -fell- excessively hot (AFAIK), and the heatsink isn't very hot either. PNY -claims- to hold a lifetime warranty on my card, and seeing how I haven't done anything I know of to void that, I am considering my options. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Sarkast

Of course i dont the details in the PNY warranty but usually removing the fan/ heatsink off a card can void the warranty. (At least the cards i had in the past) Like i said - maybe PNY is diffrent (never had a PNY) so read their warranty policy - i'd assume they have it on their homepage.

The fact that you have artifacts everywhere (BIOS, BOOT etc) means it cant really be a driver issue.

If you have the feeling it might be overheating then have a big house fan blow in the case and see if it makes any diffrence.
If not i'd say the card probably got damaged.

When you replaced the heatsink - how is it attached to the card ? Because it seems that more often than not the clips or other ways that heatsinks are attached with dont work too well and its easy to have a little gap between memory chip and HS - and over time the heat damages the chip.

elf

Like sarkast said removing the heatsink is generally a violation of the warranty. Are you able to check the card in another system? It may not be the card at all, but rather the motherboard, or PSU (kind of a big may). It's worth testing at least...

waffleweed

i dont mean to burst your bubble but there is a chance that the graphics card is dying. i had this same symptoms on a client computer and it turned out to be her computer videocard just bite the dust.

i dont think its really a driver issue either since you get these artifacts everywhere. what you can do is buy a videocard at your locl best buys or computer store. keep the receipt just in case the problem persist.

download driver cleaner from www.majorgeeks.com and follow the instructions how to properly uninstall your videocard drivers. uninstall the videocard drivers for your current graphics card following the instructions from driver cleaner and then take the card off the motherboard slot.

then with the card you recently bought, install that in the computer, install the drivers, and then run the computer and see if you still get the same artifacts.

elf

Or if you have a friend with a computer that lives near by you can try putting your card in his system and see if the same artifacts appear...before you go spend another $100 on a new one.

Phatalerror

Update: Ok folks, considering Im unwilling to accept my card randomly died for no reason, I removed both sides of my case, reseated the card, felt the heatsink to see if the problem was there, and tried again. The artifacts were definitely apprent. I willl attach some images I captured of the effects. Using Nvidia's proprietary OC'ing software I manually clocked the card as low as it would go. After a quick reboot, I left the computer on all day playing World of Warcraft, and moving around (on gryphons and stuff) to keep the video card working. Aboslutely no artifacting at all since I downclocked the card. This seems like a dead giveaway that this is an overheating problem to me. The game ran exactly as expected (albeit much slower, even after I reduced the resolution, as expected). Wondering what people's comments are now. Should I try and reseat the heatsink as well? Does this indeed sound like overheating to anyone else? Considering my -extremely- low budget and the fact I don't really have access to a large fan to blow air constantly into my box, would pulling off the heatsink, cleaning both it and the die and reapplying paste + the fan produce any results? The new heatsink I got snapped onto the card with white plastic pins, which appear to be monodirectional, any idea how i remove them without destroying the card (or the pins, because i don't have any more)? Thanks for any comments or answers....





: that yellow smearing is also part of the problem..

Sarkast

Well the thing is - i really believe your card shows some signs of being damaged - more than likely its the memory. I had a card exactly like it (9600XT) - and had to downclock it from 300/500 to somewhere around 230/400 to make the artifacts disappear because the memory chips were damaged.
Its hard to say if applying new thermal paste would make a diffrence - but probably not.
I dont know what to tell you about the pins - usually you can press them together with small pliers and then push them through.
I think that this kind of mechanism might've created the original problem (not your fault). That way of attaching heatsinks is known to be flawed and often leaves a tiny gap between heatsink and memory chips because these clips just arent strong enough to create a really tight fit - and over time that little gap causes damage.

EDIT: If having a big fan blow directly on the card creates any improvement - they are available for 10$ or less at walmart.