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Graphics corruption causes?

Efour

Efour

Efour

Caporegime
Joined
8 Sep 2005
Posts
30,507
Location
Norrbotten, Sweden.
The symptoms are a red checker board effect on the screen in windows 7 always pops up within 30 mins, often much faster during gaming.
Vertical or horizontal Pink or black and white lines during post.

What can be "all" the issues here?

Ive in the past broken it down to hardware fault or Over heating.

Could PSU be at fault ? Could drivers be at fault ?

It is a Radeon 4870x2

Why would this card suddenly cause problems after 10 months in 1 never changed machine, but apparently when RMAd be tested faultless?


2 bad quality phone pictures

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/456/img0127io.jpg
and
http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/318/img6807n.jpg
 
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Well I would have said overheating or lack of power, but most likely heat. Have you run furmark and seen what temperature it get's up to? If it's over the recomended max temp then you have your problem.

My 8800GT had the same symptoms but was still usable, and then if you left it a bit longer it locked up. This was during game play, it never actually did it in Furmark, however the extreme temps were enough for BFG (rest in peace) to RMA it.

Anything else associated with the displaying of graphics on the screen (screen, cable, game, drivers etc) could be at fault...it just sounds like heat.
 
Ah not the same as me then because after mine had chance to cool down (stop running whatever game it was, ie a lockup and reboot) it was fine.

I would try a PSU swap (see if you can borrow one for a test) because it looks like a GPU issue, but they say it's not.
 
Have you ever overclocked the card?

Though I would more likely think it is the memory chips through heat that have given you the images you see.
 
Ok this is what happened (Efour posting on my behalf)

Just playing Warhammer as usual, then a lot of pixelated red squares appeared everywhere and a few seconds later the system locked up, followed by black and white vertical lines about 10 seconds later. Forced reboot, same again when logging into Warhammer. Next time I got to the desktop I forced the graphics card fan to 100%, loaded up Warhammer, fine, all fine, gradually reduced the fan speed to 40% and kept it there and could play for hours. Only 40% as it was quiet enough adn didn't want to push my luck too much. However the next day the red squares came back just not as intense, increased fan speed, they went away, dropped fan speed, they started to flash back. After this they started to appear quicker and more pixels per red square, at fan speed of about 70% Also got the odd texture stretching to a pixel point randomly on the screen. Now I've had graphics cards die on me in the past very shortly after the pixel squares and texture stretching effect... Also upon rebooting numerous times the POST and BIOS screens would look FUBARd too, sometimes not even loding into windows. After half hour or so a fresh reboot would work 99% of the time.

Anyhow, plugged on for a couple more days as I had some coursework to do and the red squares started flooding my desktop too. Would attach pics but theyre on my other PC and OcUK currently have my graphics card. RMAd the card, report back sayign there's nothign wrong with the card at all, passed all tests under heavy 3D load etc etc. Now if that's true that's all good, but it begs the question what the heck is wrong with my system? Built it ten months ago and this is the first sign of any trouble at all. Havent tried modern warfare 2 (more intensive than warhammer i would think) and haven't reinstalled the drivers - but thats just clutching at straws right?

Just smells to me like its all graphics related, but the card has been given the all clear...
 
Guess my pc specs may help someone throw advice my way..
XFX radeon 4870 x2 2048mb
intel quad Q9550
OCZ 700w PSU
gigabyte x48 mobo
kingston hyperx 2gb memory (x4)

running win7

and also, never overclocked any components as i lack the bottle to even try!
 
ok got a 19" to try with when the card gets back, anythign is worth a shot right now. using a 24" benQ whihc has been perfect (save for one dead pixel) all the while. others have mentioned memory failure too, thats what happened to my old card with similar symptoms. but the card got the o.k...
 
In the past I've had RAM failure and PSU failure show these symptoms, but they were never sustained (a reboot/crash would happen soon after), and these issues were much more rare with those symptoms. When there's consistent corruption with no crash, I've never seen it be anything but gfx failure, usually memory.

Good call on the monitor, I have seen things like this because of that too, though it's usually fairly obvious as it happens on other inputs and machines etc. I guess you have to narrow it down.
 
Ok got the card back today lo and behold the same issues. Attached pics to show the pixels and stretched textures (mostly pixels). Isn't the monitor, had the same thing with a spare 19" Dell monitor. Don't know what else to try, it's so odd that sometimes it works (like now as I'm using it, obviously) and sometimes it doesn't. What is weird is that, on a cold boot it fires up fine, I went into modern warfare 2, a few seconds later a flash of pixels and a lockup, and it wouldn't reboot. On resetting I would hear the fans kick in then slow down, but no beep from the mobo before the POST screen appears. Left it a while and whilst nothing, about 2 or 3 misn later the mobo beeped and the POST appeared, albeit corrupted with white pixels and lines, shortly followed by the system resettign itself.
So I left it a while again, fired it up, mobo beep almost instantly as used to happen, all is fine. Got into win7 and whacked the graphics fan speed to 60% and it's staying there, been fine now for half an hour or so.. I daren't use a graphics intensive application at the mo.
So any suggestions as to what to do next? memtest 86 someone told me? maybe somethign as simple as updating graphics drivers? The other thign that bugs me now is that when i loaded MW2 I always used to hear the graphics fans kick into action bigtime, which didn't happen earlier today. Beofre I RMAd the card I could play warhammer just fine when I whacked the fan speed up too.
Efour says its got to be the PSU? Thoughts? So lost as what to do. Everythign points to graphics cards form experience and yet thats been given the OK..

:(

http://img692.imageshack.us/i/nubins001.jpg/

http://img268.imageshack.us/i/oskarmike005.jpg/
 
Biggilus said:
Ok got the card back today lo and behold the same issues. Attached pics to show the pixels and stretched textures (mostly pixels). Isn't the monitor, had the same thing with a spare 19" Dell monitor. Don't know what else to try, it's so odd that sometimes it works (like now as I'm using it, obviously) and sometimes it doesn't. What is weird is that, on a cold boot it fires up fine, I went into modern warfare 2, a few seconds later a flash of pixels and a lockup, and it wouldn't reboot. On resetting I would hear the fans kick in then slow down, but no beep from the mobo before the POST screen appears. Left it a while and whilst nothing, about 2 or 3 misn later the mobo beeped and the POST appeared, albeit corrupted with white pixels and lines, shortly followed by the system resettign itself.
So I left it a while again, fired it up, mobo beep almost instantly as used to happen, all is fine. Got into win7 and whacked the graphics fan speed to 60% and it's staying there, been fine now for half an hour or so.. I daren't use a graphics intensive application at the mo.
So any suggestions as to what to do next? memtest 86 someone told me? maybe somethign as simple as updating graphics drivers? The other thign that bugs me now is that when i loaded MW2 I always used to hear the graphics fans kick into action bigtime, which didn't happen earlier today. Beofre I RMAd the card I could play warhammer just fine when I whacked the fan speed up too.
Efour says its got to be the PSU? Thoughts? So lost as what to do. Everythign points to graphics cards form experience and yet thats been given the OK..

:(

http://img692.imageshack.us/i/nubins001.jpg/

http://img268.imageshack.us/i/oskarmike005.jpg/
Click to expand...


Have you tried it in the secondary pcie slot..? If it isn't the problem i would go for psu too... Have you got a mate with a card you could borrow..? if his card works fine then you know it's yours. If not then you know your card isn't the fault.
 
yep sorry tried so many fiddly things forget to mention them all, tried the card in the second pcie slot and also tried both HDMI ports, nothing seemed better than the other.
 
idling away at 43 C too, 40% fan speed, no signs of any corruptions, been ok now for over an hour. will have to try a game soon, just not right having this pc working!
 
Did you try a different cable? As I said above, I've seen this with RAM and PSU failure but not exactly the same symptoms.

Was your card sent back without any work on it? It could still be the problem, just there may be a difference in the OcUK system setup/testing process that hasn't manifested the same issue.
 
ill try a different HDMI, long shot but ill try anything right now. nothing done to the card, said the testing was all ok even under extreme 3D performance, tested on an asus and gigabyte board too. wish i had a spare PSU lying about somewhere. will try the memtest 86 overnight (been told it takes hours and hours right?)
 
It takes as long as you want really. 4GB of RAM will probably take a few hours for one pass, but in your case (troubleshooting a difficult issue) I'd probably leave it overnight to really rule out the memory. I still feel there's something not right with the gfx, but it's hard to argue with OcUK's tests, and it could be another problem triggering the gfx issues.
 
The RAM on your card is dying hence the coloured squares and corrupt geometry you are seeing. Those are both classic symptoms.
 
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