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HELP, wierd graphics problem

BlowitupBazza

BlowitupBazza

BlowitupBazza

Associate
Joined
6 Mar 2006
Posts
39
Hi there,

Recently when playing games or even sometimes surfing the net my machine gets wacky coloured lines all over the screen obscuring everything, if you are in a game and you press the windows keys you can still see the desktop but it is heavily distorted but the machine does not freeze/lock you just can't see whats going on.

Now I have a 9700pro card with an arctic cooler on it, but I can't help thinking that it's my card on the way out.

Trouble is it's the 3rd card that this has happened to in this mobo in the last 3 yrs. It's an asus A7N8 board with 2 gig of ram.

Could it be the mobo? Or is it the card?

I really don't want to upgrade this side of christmas so If I could get another card to see me through 6 months I'd be happy, but if it's the mobo then there does not seem to be much point in doing that.

Any ideas?
 
have u tryed reseating the car ? taking it out and putting it back in.

Use to happen to a few of my g'cards, found out it was a few house mights having a party in the connection slot ! :confused:
 
Well if you put another card in & that runs fine, then its probably the card. The 3 cards dying sometime after just seems like bad luck.
 
ACESHIGH said:
Well if you put another card in & that runs fine, then its probably the card. The 3 cards dying sometime after just seems like bad luck.
Click to expand...

Trouble is I don't have a spare to test it on so I'd have to buy one, so i'm trying to weigh the risks of throwing good money after bad on a new card only to find my system is bust or buy a new card that will last 6/12mnths.

It's a ****** nightmare

Please star out any swearing or disguised swearing
 
it *could* be the mobo - I had a mobo (DFI NF4 sli-dr) that went they way of the pear, and the pci-e stopped working - it looked like the graphics card was naffed, but the same effect happened with two pci cards I tried.

Do the artifacts appear when the machine is POSTing? If not, it could just be a driver problem..
 
I had a similar problem on my old laptop. Was the graphics card in that instance and after being replaced the system was fine. The card was a Mobile Radeon 9600 Pro.
 
uvmain said:
it *could* be the mobo - I had a mobo (DFI NF4 sli-dr) that went they way of the pear, and the pci-e stopped working - it looked like the graphics card was naffed, but the same effect happened with two pci cards I tried.

Do the artifacts appear when the machine is POSTing? If not, it could just be a driver problem..
Click to expand...


Ok really silly queston, what does posting mean?
 
ACESHIGH said:
Power On Self Test - when the pc has just been turned on & you can hear it booting up.
Click to expand...

In that case then, no, it only ever happens when windows has started, it could be 10 secs after but windows has always started, more often than not it happens in a game, and usually when there is a lot going on on the screen.
 
Check the seating between your cooler and the GPU. i'd suggest making sure the base of the heatsink is nice and smooth/flat too. Also make sure you have decent thermal paste on it - I've just fitted an arctic cooler but didnt use the included paste, i used arctic silver 5.

I'd suggest also trying to see how hot the ram chips on your card get. It may be that they are overheating under load. old arctic coolers do kinda restrict the airflow to memory chips, so consider ramsinks.. or get an old dead mobo or 2, and chop the northbridge heatsinks up - I've got a couple of chopped up ones on my ram, this is an oldskool ghetto mod that if you do a class job, it'll help temps a lot. keeps my (overclocked) GF4 ram nice and cool - increased my stable oc too :D

Dunno how hot old raddy's run but it's possible yours is overheating.
 
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