seeing weird things with video card

scottsda · 11-27-2005, 11:02 PM

recently i bought an Intel D865PERL motherboard and installed my all in wonder 9800 pro and began seeing weird things. I felt my video card and it felt very hot to the touch. i dont know if it is overheating or it could be a bad agp port or what. the attachments are screen shots from source and lost coast, any thoughts.....

**UncleMacro** · 11-28-2005, 06:29 PM

The artifacts in those images are usually bad video RAM although sometimes they can be caused by an unstable AGP port or overheating. The yellow parts of the sky is a color shift usually caused by a bad bit in RAM holding the display image. The spikes indicate that some geometry (the positions of points) in RAM has been corrupted.

The first thing I'd do is make sure your AGP port isn't contributing to the problem by slowing down to AGP 4X and disabling fastwrites with SMARTGART (instructions here).

The next thing I'd do is make sure the inside of the machine isn't overheating because raising the temperature slows down the RAM. If your RAM is marginal then you can start seeing RAM artifacts. You can cool it down a lot by running the machine with the case open and aim a desk fan at the video card.

If cooling doesn't help then you can try using ATITool to underclock the video RAM (instructions here). You can also try underclocking the GPU although it's more likely that the RAM is the problem judging from those images. Sometimes it doesn't take much underclocking before the RAM can work properly.

By the way, I'm building a webpage to help people figure out their video card problems from corrupted images. Is it okay if I use yours?

scottsda · 11-28-2005, 08:42 PM

i tried cooling even though i have 3 fans; 2 60mm fans in front with 1 80mm fan in the back. the temperature normally is 33-40degrees celcius throughout the case even during gaming. i underclocked my video card to 250 for both the RAM and the GPU as well as switched the AGP from 8x to 4x and turned off fastwrites. no luck. there are tiny blue streak lines appear even on the desktop before and after i changed all the settings which you can kind of see in the lostcoast screen shot. the card still feels a little hot so im going to try a new heat sink, hopefully the GPU isnt toasted already.... any other thoughts. thanks for the tips and it's fine if you want to use this for the website

**UncleMacro** · 11-29-2005, 12:29 AM

The only other things to try that I can think of are longshots like reseating the video card or trying a different power supply. But images like yours normally turn out to be bad video RAM. The spikes and color shifts in the lost coast image and the little arrays of dots in the other image are all standard symptoms of bad video RAM. And if you're getting color shifts, lines, or dots on the Windows desktop then it's unlikely to be overheating. A 9800 pro should be pretty cool if it's been sitting at the desktop for a while. If you boot the machine after it's been off long enough to be stone cold and you immediately get a messed up desktop while running with a deskfan blowing on the video card, then overheating shouldn't have anything to do with it. If it's really the video RAM, then the only solution is underclocking (I've seen that work more than a few times on 9800 pros) or getting a new video card.

11-28-2005, 06:29 PM	#2 (permalink)
UncleMacro TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: San Diego Posts: 2,133 OS: Vista SP1 My System	The artifacts in those images are usually bad video RAM although sometimes they can be caused by an unstable AGP port or overheating. The yellow parts of the sky is a color shift usually caused by a bad bit in RAM holding the display image. The spikes indicate that some geometry (the positions of points) in RAM has been corrupted. The first thing I'd do is make sure your AGP port isn't contributing to the problem by slowing down to AGP 4X and disabling fastwrites with SMARTGART (instructions here). The next thing I'd do is make sure the inside of the machine isn't overheating because raising the temperature slows down the RAM. If your RAM is marginal then you can start seeing RAM artifacts. You can cool it down a lot by running the machine with the case open and aim a desk fan at the video card. If cooling doesn't help then you can try using ATITool to underclock the video RAM (instructions here). You can also try underclocking the GPU although it's more likely that the RAM is the problem judging from those images. Sometimes it doesn't take much underclocking before the RAM can work properly. By the way, I'm building a webpage to help people figure out their video card problems from corrupted images. Is it okay if I use yours?

11-28-2005, 08:42 PM	#3 (permalink)
scottsda Registered User Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lawrence ,KS Posts: 27 OS: Windows XP	i tried cooling even though i have 3 fans; 2 60mm fans in front with 1 80mm fan in the back. the temperature normally is 33-40degrees celcius throughout the case even during gaming. i underclocked my video card to 250 for both the RAM and the GPU as well as switched the AGP from 8x to 4x and turned off fastwrites. no luck. there are tiny blue streak lines appear even on the desktop before and after i changed all the settings which you can kind of see in the lostcoast screen shot. the card still feels a little hot so im going to try a new heat sink, hopefully the GPU isnt toasted already.... any other thoughts. thanks for the tips and it's fine if you want to use this for the website

11-29-2005, 12:29 AM	#4 (permalink)
UncleMacro TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: San Diego Posts: 2,133 OS: Vista SP1 My System	The only other things to try that I can think of are longshots like reseating the video card or trying a different power supply. But images like yours normally turn out to be bad video RAM. The spikes and color shifts in the lost coast image and the little arrays of dots in the other image are all standard symptoms of bad video RAM. And if you're getting color shifts, lines, or dots on the Windows desktop then it's unlikely to be overheating. A 9800 pro should be pretty cool if it's been sitting at the desktop for a while. If you boot the machine after it's been off long enough to be stone cold and you immediately get a messed up desktop while running with a deskfan blowing on the video card, then overheating shouldn't have anything to do with it. If it's really the video RAM, then the only solution is underclocking (I've seen that work more than a few times on 9800 pros) or getting a new video card.