Argh! Is my graphics card dead?

Svartmetall

Great Unclean One
Joined
Jan 5, 2004
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2,467
For a week or two now, after a few hours of gaming, I've noticed this bug where the display (usually after alt-tabbing out to something then back into game) starts flickering and filling with weird polygons etc then locks up....what has worked up till now is to close down the game client then just log back in, which worked OK. I'd figured since it happened after a few hours' gaming the video cache was filling up, and it wouldn't be a heat issue since I was able to open the game client back up again immediately and carry on as if nothing had happened. Only happened when gaming, PC would run for ever with no issues otherwise.

Today it happened again; I closed the client and opened it back up, and the display corruption was still there. Rebooted, same. Then it started appearing on the desktop, strange patterns of little multi-coloured squares all over the screen and a few odd polygons as well, and after a minute or two while this gets worse the display goes blank and my monitor goes into power saving - the PC stays powered up though. I'm currently having to run in VGA mode to be able to do anything at all. I figure it's not CPU since that would do it in VGA mode on desktop as well if it had issues; the fact that the machine stays powered up while my monitor goes into power save makes me think the card's just stopped outputting anything at all. I tried dxdiag and it was running the early tests - concentric rectangles, bouncing ball etc - even while there was distortion on-screen then it went blank again.

The card is an AGP GeForce 4 Ti4600; if it has died, I guess I've had 4 1/2 years of good service out of it, but I need my gaming fix goddamit! Plus running a 20" widescreen TFT in VGA mode is, well, sucky.

:(

My instinct tells me the GFX card is screwed, but I'd welcome any other input. Obviously it's hard to do much on the PC in VGA mode, and hard to test in normal mode since I can't keep a display on-screen for more than about 2-3 minutes before the display corruption starts creeping in and I know it'll go blank any second. I took the side off the case, and the fan on the card still looks to be working OK.
 

Ballard

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
1,711
There are a few things you can do when your graphics card starts to appear near death;

- Heat issues can cause alot of display problems and also shorten the life of a GPU. Try removing the heatsink from the GPU, then give both the GPU die and the heatsink contact plate a good clean with a lint free cloth. After that reapply a small amount of thermal paste and reattach. Basically the same process you would do for a CPU. This is also a good step when buying a new GPU as many manufacturers use low quality thermal compound.
- If the graphics card has a additional power input try swapping it with another spare power cable. Sometimes connectors can be faulty and interfere with a regular power supply resulting in artificing/crashes.
- AGP voltage. This is an unlikely suspect in an old nvidia but was very common in older ATi cards and caused artificing and crashes like you describe. Try increasing the AGP voltage abit. Many older motherboards will have 1.5v on the AGP slot, alot of cards will be more stable with 1.6-1.7v.
- AGP contacts. On an older card the contacts can start to wear down a bit (especially if you have chopped and changed alot). Remove the graphics card, then clean the AGP slot contacts with a lint free cloth. If you have a small insulated vacumm cleaner try cleaning the actually AGP slot aswell. Then carefully refit.

Personally I think it is most likely the card is simply near death and I would look around for a cheap X850 if you can find one and then marvel at one of the fastest AGP cards ever released and the difference it makes to your games!!
 

psyco

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jun 18, 2005
Messages
3,310
when mine blew up, i couldn't even recieve a signal, could do anything, dos, nothing

it seemed like the monitor broke, so i went to get a £300 one, and found out it was the gfx card, luckly i had a spare

seems like it could be something else, a virus? maybe?
 

Ballard

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
1,711
- AGP apeture size. In short it affects how your GPU uses the mainboard RAM for storing texture memory and the GART. If your mainboard RAM is faulty a large apeture in combination with a small amount of grpahics card memory can actually result in display problems. Try reducing the apeture size to the lowest setting possible in bios. Note: this will likely reduce the performance of the GPU, but is useful in diagnosing problems. Unfortunately if alternatively the memory on the graphics card is faulty increasing the apeture size does not help as memory is allocated to the graphics card memory first and only when it is full are textures stored in the RAM.
 

Gamah

Banned
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,042
Basicly what you are seeing are called "Artifacts" they normally occer with a memory problem on the card which is quite bad as imo it rules out the "heat" issue.

Also if you have been playing for a few hours then it starts I highley doubt it is a heat issue as well. Normally when the GPU is overheating the game/desktop just crashes /bluescreens and you need to reboot you don't normaly get artifacts.

If it is as I suspect and the memory modules are the cause you can do the following things:

Hoover the card removing any dust.
Buy Graphics Card memory heat spreaders.

If the above doesn't solve your problem it appears the card is nearing the end of it's life.
 

MaCaBr3

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Oct 26, 2004
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TOL-3M-DR.jpg
 

Svartmetall

Great Unclean One
Joined
Jan 5, 2004
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2,467
Thanks for the advice guys - I just went out + bought myself a 256MB GeForce 7600GS, seems sweet so far :D
 

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