[JeremyH]

See signature for system specs.
The problem I am having is my video display has small black dots in my color displays. I see the dots all the time even when the motherboard screen shows up during boot up. The black dots change position all the time. They never stay in the same place. They move all over my screen. Some times I don't see them and then a next screen I see them again. I usually see them in pictures. If I set my desktop background to no picture, there is no dots. I see them in pictures on the internet as well. What might be causing this and has anyone else have been expierencing this problem too. I updated my bios to version 1010 and there is no change in the display. I also have Nvidia's 45.23 video drivers installed and have updated my inf. chipset software.

 

[Guest]

Welcome to TSF JeremyH................:winkgrin:

Dou you have the right monitor driver installed? Or is it using the P&P Driver?

What is the monitor refresh rate set at?

 

[JeremyH]

Yeah I am using the plug and play driver. I am using a refresh rate of 100Hz. I tried changing refresh rates but that didn't fix it. I've also noticed I only get the black dots only in pictures. If I set my background to none the dots are gone. I only get them in pictures, eg. pics online or on my computer. In my games the dots aren't black they are different colors eg. red, green blue. I have downloaded & installed Directx 9.0b. That hasn't fixed it either.

 

[whisperedlies]

Could be a number of things, particularly bad system memory, overheating or damaged video card, or a symptom of overclocking, amongst other things. Try eliminating variables one at a time, such as rolling back to a non-overclocked speed (even underclocking), swap in a different video card and ram, roll BIOS settings back to a failsafe setting, etc. Remember to make changes only one at a time, otherwise you'll never know which piece of the puzzle was causing the problem.

Visual artifacts can often be caused by a myriad of problems, software or hardware .

 

[JeremyH]

I am no longer using my plug and play monitor. I downloaded and installed the correct driver for my monitor. I also installed the latest chipset software for my motherboard as well. The dots are still there.

 

[JeremyH]

Well I tried using different video drivers and that hasn't fixed my problem. I tried using only one memory stick and tried both one at a time to see if just one of the memory modules were bad. That didn't fix the problem either. I underclocked my video card's core and memory frequencies and that seemed to help. Alot of the dots were gone but I still had a couple. One of my games that the screen flashed on and had missing pixels was now playing properly with the video card underclocked. I thought maybe it's the video card but the odd thing is I put the video card back in my old system I was using before and the screen was fine. There were no dots or anything. All was ok. What could be the problem here. Does it sound like my video card or something else? Could it possible be my new motherboard is bad? I'm really starting to get frustrated with this!!!:upset:

 

[clintfan]

The nVidia website says they only sell cards to OEM's, so there is no support and no manuals there, only one 2-page brouchure. So... is yours a PCI card or AGP? The P4C800-E's AGP slot supports only Pro/4X/8X, 0.8v/1.5v. If yours is PCI, the new mobo's 875P-based architecture places your PCI bus further from memory than older, more-homogeneous PCI platforms. That adds latency.

Your old PC, where you got the video card, was probably a good match for the card, speed- and architecture-wise. Since that card, like the old PC, is now a couple years old, I'm thinking incompatability. It sounds like under the stress of a game, you're either starting to drop data, or overrunning the card which in turn leads to some dropping. (I certainly hope this isn't one of those shared-memory cards, where they give a big chunk of your mobo's memory to the video-- if so, that could be a factor too.)

Btw, that website quotes a "Geforce2 GTS" as a 32MB solution, not 64MB. Since all the nVidia stuff is OEM-custom, yours may indeed be special.

But it could also be, that if indeed it's only 32, then with the horsepower of your new 2.8GHz CPU on this speedy new mobo, you're simply killing your video card. Is your mobo bad? Hardly. A video card can't simply crap-out when it gets taxed, it has to just throw stuff away and try to keep going. This is probably the exact kind of problem that those video-card reviewers look for all the time in their stress testing. I'm not saying for certain that this is it, but in my mind this might just be a normal anomaly, the kind that's to be expected when you stress a low-performing card with a high-performing machine. Otherwise they wouldn't keep designing bigger and faster video cards.

I'd get a new video card. One that's more on a par with your new PC's AGP-8X performance level. You're obviously a gamer who needs that extra level of video power. But be warned: try not to run headlong into the "BIOS Setup won't display" problems others are having with this mobo. Matrox P650/P750 has a fix [workaround] for that, they're the only ones I've heard of with any sort of fix so far.

Hope this helps,

-clintfan

 

[JeremyH]

My video card is AGP. In other forums people are telling me it sounds like a bad videocard or I am overclocking my videocard. I have never overclocked my videocard and never will. There is no point in overclocking this old card anyways. I'm going to get a new card next month. Any other suggestions? Does it sound like software or hardware conflicts or anything? Thanks for all the help I really appreciate it!!!!

 

[whisperedlies]

In your BIOS settings, what's your Graphics Aperture Size set to? Geforce cards experience problems if it is not at least 16MB. One thing this motherboard lacks is more verbose settings for AGP. You could try disabling fast writes and things like that, but without BIOS settings, you'll have to do registry hacks. If you can find a good Geforce tweaking utility, they can often do this for you. I don't know one off hand. Other than that, I would agree with the last fella above you.

 

[JeremyH]

I have my apature size set to 64mb. I don't know why I don't have other bios settings for the AGP card slot. I do have coolbits that is a registry hack where you can over clock or underclock you videocard. I can't disable fastwrites through coolbits though. I don't know of any other tweak utility's though.

 

[clintfan]

I don't know why I don't have other bios settings for the AGP card slot.

It's not just you. The mobo BIOS simply doesn't offer very many configurable video options, by design. I don't know why. Maybe has to do with things becoming more and more standardized.

-clintfan

 

[JeremyH]

Well thanks for all the info! I REALLY appreciate it! I'll let you know what happens when I get my new videocard next month. If you have any more ideas or suggestions let me know.