Looking for Second Opinion on GFX issues

BKtje

As the title says im just looking to confirm what i already suspect.

Basically, as of this morning my gfx card is giving major artifacts/distortions in games (Highly noticeable in wow and not so noticeable in Oblivion). Last night it was working fine. I booted into my other OS which has different drivers and the problem was the same so im pretty sure its not a drivers problem.

About 4 or so months ago my gfx fan stopped working and tended to overheat quite a bit before i noticed/replaced (reason it took so long to notice was that it worked about half of the time but i wont get into that). What i figure is that the memory in the gfx card has finally given out.
To test this i halved the gfx cards memory and core speed and scanned for artifacts. It took a little longer (4-5secs) but they still appeared.

I have also noticed some very slight distortions in web browser text however which disappear when i highlight it. Could this be caused by a faulty gfx card or is something else possibly the cause?

Im going to do a memcheck now to rule out my mainboard mem but any opinions that anyone can give would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance
(card is a 9800xt)

Kiith

if you notice the distortions before windows loads (i.e in the bootup/dos screen) then your card is ****ed. my 9800pro died, got a replacement, then a year later, died again. its unfixable as well, so its **** in a big way.

if its only with games, and sometimes in web browsing, it could be a driver issue, but i would have to say its probably the above. maybe try post a screenie of the distortions, and i can tell you if its the same as what i got.

does it look anything like this?
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054970307

BKtje

Nah doesnt look at all like that.

http://www.rapidsharing.com/download.php?id=8AE5E3D2 350kb file of what it looks like and a snap shot of a web page (was hard to do it justice in a still frame as it was constantly moving).

Main memory passed 6 memtest passes so i think thats clear which really just leaves the agp port (mobo is a month old) or the gfx card which was 2nd hand when i got it and ive had it for over a year.

I really do imagine that its the gfx card and have already ordered a 6800 gs replacement. Costly

djmarkus

did you try taking the card out and putting it back in again?

BKtje

Second thing i tried

Guess ill find out if the gfx card was indeed the cause when the replacement arrives. Thanks for your time folks.

the_syco

How close is the next card? Mate had a problem with his Dell, only to find out that the card next to his GFX was about 5mm away:eek: and thus feck all airflow.

Khannie

That's either bollixed ram or overheating core. Try removing the graphics card fan and replacing the thermal paste with some arctic. Sometimes those themal pads just become dried out.

edit: iirc, the 9800xt ran very hot anyway, so the above advice stands.

BKtje

by bollixed ram i assume u mean gfx card ram?

the only other pci card i got in is my sound card and its as far from it as can be.

I replaced the old gfx fan with an articsilencer and as i said its heatsink is cool to the touch. I'd reapply some artic silver paste to the memory but after fiddling the very delicate artic silver fan connector (had to mod it to attach it to a molex connector as the supplied fan connector didnt fit to the fan ports on the board) it overheated again and crashed my pc. Now the computer seems to boot up but no picture.

Just hope the mobo's ok. Guess ill find out on Friday or whenever new gfx card arrives.

gamer

YOU cud put in bootable disk like winxp,or win98 floppy into to your pc ,look at drive lights ,if mobo okay ,it,ll try to load up cdrom,or floppy,switch off pc after 5minutes,to stop overheating.Or just wait for the new graphics card.

Khannie

B-K-DzR wrote:

by bollixed ram i assume u mean gfx card ram?

Yup.

B-K-DzR wrote:

I replaced the old gfx fan with an articsilencer and as i said its heatsink is cool to the touch.

This is a bad sign. Heatsinks shouldn't be cold. They should be (at the very least) warm. I f*cked a 9800 pro I had with the crappy thermal paste that comes with those arctic silencers (it's conductive....grrrr). Anyway, it sounds like things have taken a turn for the worse, so I'm not sure this blabbering of mine is any use to you.

BKtje

lol nope. Ah ive gotten over the fact that its fooked and looking forward to trying new gfx card when it arrives