Graphic Problems

[adams901]

Hi Guys,

I have an issue with my card, that started yesterday. Nothing has been installed since, and I even tried the new Cats but got the same result, here is what i get now

http://www.fsfa.org/ScreenShot1.jpg

they only appear in games, my desktop and movies look fine.

I think they appear after the computer has been on for a while, and while playing it gradually gets worse. Its not overheating and hasnt been overclocked.

Any ideas?

Cheers
Adam

 

[Danya]

I'd suggest overheating tbh.

 

[MrBlack]

Card make/type?

This looks like the problem you get when rendering pipelines fail. Instead of the relevant colour you get a white/black pixel. It causes sparklies on a Radeon card with a similar chessboard pattern, but each square is a more random mess of pixels. This is a lot more uniform.

This doesn't mean your card's fucked, just that it can't do something that's being asked of it. This could be bad drivers or perhaps a BIOS update is needed.

I couldn't say anything more without knowing which games it happens in, does it always look the same? What DX version is installed? What driver version?

 

[adams901]

Hi,

Its an Asus 9800XT, it happens in all Battlefield games /mods, and also in Far Cry, I haven't tried anything else yet.

I had the problem last month, I flashed the bios and it seemed ok, yesterday it started again. I reseated the card and power cable earlier and it seems ok again now, for how long though I dont know.

I'm using the latest DX version, and te new cats

 

[MrBlack]

The chessboard effect could be a hardware problem but, given that it's only in certain games and coupled with the lighting issue on some of the terrain in that screenshot, I'd suggest a cleanout of your drivers. Try the following:

Get a copy of the 4.4 cats if you haven't already, and have a copy of 4.3 and maybe even 3.10 to hand.

Grab hold of the latest driver cleaner: http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

Boot windows, uninstall your current drivers from the control panel.
reboot in safe mode (and cancel any windows "I've found new hardware" rubbish)
Run driver cleaner, slecet ATI from the pulldown menu and hit clean. This will remove all trace of installed ATI files from your machine. (but it won't delete the installers )

Now reboot in normal mode, (cancel any hardware dialogues, although if DC has done its job, windows will have no clue as to what your card is) and run the 4.4 installer.

You'll notice that the problem is still there and I've wasted an hour of your life! Mwuahahahha. Or not. If it persists, you might want to repeat the process with the 3.10 Cats. If it's still there, you could have dodgy video RAM.

In that case, Try using powerstrip or some such to down-clock it. If it goes away then you might have to return the card.