Persistent Graphical Problem

[Glazius]

My graphics card's no spring chicken - an ATI X800XT, PCIe, with 256 MB onboard RAM. DxDiag doesn't seem to cough up anything odd about it, but when I try to play a fullscreen game, sooner or later this happens:



(Distorted by the game's screengrabber.)

It also occasionally happens to an individual lighting element, resulting in the world looking like it's under the glare of a vast gridded fluorescent fixture.

Any idea what's going on, or if there are utilities other than dxdiag that can pin down the problem?

My dxdiag output.

--GF

[schild]

Last time that sort of thing happened to me, my card died. It was an ATI Rage 128.

[Grand Design]

Have you ruled out heat?

[schild]

Heat was what I was pretty much getting at :P

[Grand Design]

The fact that you say sooner or later would make me check for heat problems first.

My system used to go wonky - sooner or later, usually after about 15 minutes of playing - until I went ballistic on its heat problems.

[Glazius]

Yeah, I figured it might be nearing the end of its lifespan. The weird thing is, it plays CoH with nary a hiccup, though that uses OpenGL, and it's been doing this for months.

Better not to tempt fate, I guess. Anybody have any suggestions for an inexpensive replacement?

Currently leading is this little number at under $70, with shipping, after rebate. The reviews are good, but the price seems awfully low. I'm running XP with no plans to upgrade, so the whole DX9 part of it is a non-issue.

[Trippy]

Which driver version does your machine think it's running when you look at the ATI control panel?

[schild]

If you can run a PCI 16x card, why wouldn't you get an NVidia? 8600GT or something.

[Trippy]

Currently leading is this little number at under $70, with shipping, after rebate. The reviews are good, but the price seems awfully low. I'm running XP with no plans to upgrade, so the whole DX9 part of it is a non-issue.

That's roughly a lateral move. Also ATI's OpenGL drivers are crap so it's odd you want to stick with them give how much you play CoH.

[Krakrok]

I had an nVidia card that did that (a Ti 4**0 something). I think the ram was bad and therefore heat would cause it to do that. If I underclocked it then it would run fine.

[Glazius]

Running Catalyst 7.12. Just popped 'em in this morning, and the control panel agrees with me.

And, yeah, it's definitely temperature. The card runs about 70 baseline, which is alright, but when the game starts to get glitchy it spikes up to 120, and I saw it hit 130 before my system died.

The fan's definitely working, I can feel a good stream of air.

But the cause of spiking about 130 in the above game's case is rendering the game's static menus with their fancy transparent overlaps. In contrast the typical particle storm in CoH doesn't even put me above 100.

Soooo I'm going with the "ATI's drivers are written by retarded monkeys" explanation. Either that or the integral cooling on the card has degraded, which would probably be as expensive to fix as buying a new one.

Looking at this now - like I said, not planning on upgrading to Vista for a while yet.

[Grand Design]

If you do think that its heat, clean the case first.  If you have dust in the cpu fan, get all of it out with tweezers.  Dust in the case fans can be tackled with q-tips, alcohol and tweezers.  Enclose the case as much as possible to encourage airflow through the fans.  Make sure you have adequate input and output fans.  When I did these things, my problems went away.  I took it a step further and placed copper fans on the cpu and gpu, voiding the warranties that I did not have.  Custom fans are cheaper than core component upgrades, do not collect dust nearly as much and increase performance.  I run a decent ATI card and the performance increase with the Zalman fan is what keeps me from buying a new rig, frankly.

That is, if heat is your problem.

[Trippy]

Looking at this now - like I said, not planning on upgrading to Vista for a while yet.

That would be better than the X1650. If you want to try a cheap solution first you could try adding a slot fan next to your video card and also clean out the GPU fan like Grand Design suggested.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999704

[Margalis]

Almost certainly a heat problem if it consistently kicks in after playing for a while. Might be fixable, card might be fuxxored.

[Glazius]

Almost certainly a heat problem if it consistently kicks in after playing for a while. Might be fixable, card might be fuxxored.

I have a temperature monitor on the card. Well, ATI Tray Tools. And the value it reports for card temperature has so far been a perfect predictor of graphical disaster. Part of it is the card's bad job of cooling itself, but part of it is, well, ATI, because I can consistently get card temperature to spike with nothing but a 2d interface.

[spiralyguy]

The last time my video card looked like that, it was overheating horribly and died shortly thereafter.

[Yegolev]

Same.  Death by overheating is imminent.

[Morat20]

Have you ruled out heat?

Happened to my wife's PC -- turns out it was the most graphically demanding game she'd run (not a huge gamer). Her case didn't vent heat well, and she had it set up poorly. I cleaned out all the dust from the case and the fan, moved the case so heat would dissipate better, and just for overkill took a portable fan and set it so that it blasted the hot air out from around the case out into the room at large.

No problems since.

[Grand Design]

Amusingly, the 'box fan treatment' is something Sony recommended years ago for EQ players who had random glitches.  I had a horrible time staying stable and the box fan was the only thing that could cool my machine well enough to play.  Loud, but effective.  In my catassery, I got over the noise.

But the box fan is also a good way to test if it is a heat problem.  If you can play with the case open and a fan pressed into it, then heat is your problem.

[Morat20]

Amusingly, the 'box fan treatment' is something Sony recommended years ago for EQ players who had random glitches.  I had a horrible time staying stable and the box fan was the only thing that could cool my machine well enough to play.  Loud, but effective.  In my catassery, I got over the noise.

But the box fan is also a good way to test if it is a heat problem.  If you can play with the case open and a fan pressed into it, then heat is your problem.

She's just got a shallow desk that traps heat pretty well, and a case that doesn't vent it well. The two together were too much. We repositioned the box sideways (heat has a wider area to go) and stuck the fan on top of the case to blow the air out and get more circulation going.

Was a pain in the ass figuring it out though! I'd never had a heat problem before -- am not and never have been huge on games that ran the bleeding edge. I seem to be about a year behind, and when I'm not -- minimal settings are generally fine by me.

[Grand Design]

Here was my graphics card with the absolute crap factory fan.  And here it is with the fan removed and heat sinks applied to the memory.  This is the Zalman copper fan that goes for about $20.  This one just shows that I am anal when it comes to bundling cables - but it does reduce heat.  And the final shot shows the copper cpu fan, also about $20.  That case was also a dust bunny breeding ground before I started.  It was about a $50 endeavor and took a few hours - but the framerates have been solid since.

[Engels]

Grats man! I woulda bet the thing was fried for good.

[Dtrain]

There's a good chance it is something with the cooling solution on your RAM.

Your video is high technology in comparison to mine - a 9800 XT that I flashed and modded from a 9800 Pro a few years ago. One of the heatsinks I added to the RAM must have had some bad thermal glue because it lost it's seal a few months ago. I can play every other game I have for hours and hours, but when I play TF2 the shadowed areas slowly get tiny spots that eventually (after 5 or 6 hours of play,) become grid shaped designs like you have.

The other real possibility is that you have a bad VRAM module. As a stress test you can download the latest 3Dmark from www.futuremark.com and run it. If you see artifacting or glitching it's most likely a bad VRAM module.