Soldato
- Joined
- 3 Oct 2006
- Posts
- 8,537
bought an x1900xt 256mb card from overclockers last year.
fine, was a massive upgrade from my x300 intergrated, and played everything i wanted to.
however before long it bagan to play up (after a few weeks of owning it)
during games (and only during games) occasionally red squares would appear all over the screen, running diagonally across the screen, i'd drop to desk top, maximise the game and all would be fine. this first began on battlefield 2.
this continued to occur, randomly for a few months, until i bought BF2142, where, even at the same settings as BF2 ((med-high) the settings the game reckoned my card would run it at) it would occur much more frequently (which combined with the all to frequent CTD's, and failed attempts at loading titan mode put me off the game eventually) i decided: fine, mst just be me trying to run it on too-high settings, so i lowered those, and hey presto, it continued.
i then thought my drivers could be 'out of date' and downloaded the latest drivers from ATi, which did not solve the problem.
at this point the errors were still not frequent enough for me to be that bothered and so it continued.
recently downloaded steam (2/3 months ago), as i wanted to give counter strike and HL2 a go, this was when the errors re-surfaced (had not be doing much gaming, just surfing/music). red squares, all down the screen again, drop to desktop/maximise the game, works fine, but now a lot more frequent than before.
a week ago i built an almost completely (all bar the GFX card) new computer, nothing bar the 1900 is from my old PC, yet the problems continued.
i have also just bought a few new games:
medieval II total war
CoD2
GRAW 2
company of heros
and downloaded insurgency and the world in conflict beta
these graphical errors persist in every single game i have got recently, even at below recommended settings for the graphics card. world in conflict being the worst (yes, i have the latest drivers still)
this time however, world in conflict game me some information, just before this happens it pops up a small message on the left saying vram overload, and then a number, from about 1 to 6.
is this telling my my problem? the Vram is being overloaded/faulty?
whats your impressions?
p.s. i would have RMA'd it already, but the problem is totally spontanous, and can happen anything from 10 minutes into a game to 3 hours, or, in some cases not at all, and i wouldn't want to pay to send it to OcUK (or Connect3D) just for them to run a ten minute test, find no problems, and send it back to me, at my cost for the problem to then re-occur.
thanks for your time to read and reply
edit:
old spec:
ATi sapphire pure element skt 939 mobo
1GB kingston DDR1 valure RAM
antec 430w PSU (from the sonata II...maybe 450w) which later became a hiper 430w type-r
current spec:
ASUS P5W DH Duluxe wifi
C2D E4300 (overclocked to 2.8ghz on stock voltage) -stable in orthos for 8 hours
2GB Crucial DDR2 RAM
corsair HX 520w PSU
fine, was a massive upgrade from my x300 intergrated, and played everything i wanted to.
however before long it bagan to play up (after a few weeks of owning it)
during games (and only during games) occasionally red squares would appear all over the screen, running diagonally across the screen, i'd drop to desk top, maximise the game and all would be fine. this first began on battlefield 2.
this continued to occur, randomly for a few months, until i bought BF2142, where, even at the same settings as BF2 ((med-high) the settings the game reckoned my card would run it at) it would occur much more frequently (which combined with the all to frequent CTD's, and failed attempts at loading titan mode put me off the game eventually) i decided: fine, mst just be me trying to run it on too-high settings, so i lowered those, and hey presto, it continued.
i then thought my drivers could be 'out of date' and downloaded the latest drivers from ATi, which did not solve the problem.
at this point the errors were still not frequent enough for me to be that bothered and so it continued.
recently downloaded steam (2/3 months ago), as i wanted to give counter strike and HL2 a go, this was when the errors re-surfaced (had not be doing much gaming, just surfing/music). red squares, all down the screen again, drop to desktop/maximise the game, works fine, but now a lot more frequent than before.
a week ago i built an almost completely (all bar the GFX card) new computer, nothing bar the 1900 is from my old PC, yet the problems continued.
i have also just bought a few new games:
medieval II total war
CoD2
GRAW 2
company of heros
and downloaded insurgency and the world in conflict beta
these graphical errors persist in every single game i have got recently, even at below recommended settings for the graphics card. world in conflict being the worst (yes, i have the latest drivers still)
this time however, world in conflict game me some information, just before this happens it pops up a small message on the left saying vram overload, and then a number, from about 1 to 6.
is this telling my my problem? the Vram is being overloaded/faulty?
whats your impressions?
p.s. i would have RMA'd it already, but the problem is totally spontanous, and can happen anything from 10 minutes into a game to 3 hours, or, in some cases not at all, and i wouldn't want to pay to send it to OcUK (or Connect3D) just for them to run a ten minute test, find no problems, and send it back to me, at my cost for the problem to then re-occur.
thanks for your time to read and reply
edit:
old spec:
ATi sapphire pure element skt 939 mobo
1GB kingston DDR1 valure RAM
antec 430w PSU (from the sonata II...maybe 450w) which later became a hiper 430w type-r
current spec:
ASUS P5W DH Duluxe wifi
C2D E4300 (overclocked to 2.8ghz on stock voltage) -stable in orthos for 8 hours
2GB Crucial DDR2 RAM
corsair HX 520w PSU
Last edited:
I always look at additional cooling as I normally consider the cooling solution to be only just 'adequate'. For example, I run my 6800LE fan at 25% which I can't hear now, because I have strapped a 92mm SILENT fan to it, it allowed me to get another 50mhz clock and another 50mhz on the memory all at 15 degrees cooler (prolonging life of the card), and prolonging my sanity with a quieter system. (And the sanity of my wife who hates noisy PC's).
)