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is my card faulty?

Langlest

Langlest

Langlest

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Joined
11 Jun 2006
Posts
1,512
Location
Middlesborough
im trying to find out if i have a problem with my graphics card
i have been buying a lot of games recently in the steam sales and the last 3 games have given me graphical problems

in bioshock 2 i get some artifacts, its rare and only for a few secounds at a time but after reading on some other forums it seems that a few others get this too so i ignored it

i then got force unleashed and the detail seems to pop in and out on items in the distance, i also get scenery appearing at the edges of the screen if i rotate the camera, this didnt happen on the tie factory level but on more organic levels like the vader one its really annoying

finally in gothic 3 i get small black squares in the sky that seem to flicker in and out at random, i tried the game with and without the community patch

here is my system

Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
Nvidia GTX295
Corsair Dominator 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 XMS2 PC2-8500C5 TwinX
Asus P5Q Deluxe
Corsair HX 850W Psu
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA
300gig Maxtor SATA

everything is running at stock speeds and i have the latest drivers
the weird thing is that other games are not showing problems atall, i tried just cause 2 and its fine, so is resident evil 5

i did have one problem in resident evil 5 that caused the final scene of the benchmark to run at 5fps but after updating the drivers it was fixed

do you think the new drivers could be what is causing the problems? i used ati tool to check for artifacts and it didnt report any & my temps dont go above 90 under full load
 
When a card starts to artifact then its bad news I’m afraid especially when you have a card at stock settings. Drivers rarely cure artifact issues and over time artifacts will just get worse and worse the best you can hope to do to slow down the rate of degradation.

The first thing you should do it get some compressed air and clean out the fan and heatsink of the video card, then any dust filters on you may have on your case, then the case fans. Seriously spend a good 15 minutes with a vacuum cleaner and compressed air and clear out as much dust as you can. After that you should install Rivatuner and setup custom fan profiles, when I had my 8800GT it started to artefact so I had two profiles setup 1) Desktop where the fan would run at 20% 2) Gaming where the fan run at 75%.

The bottom line is the more cooling your video card can get the better, heat kills silicon so the cooler your card the longer it will last. In the medium term you might want to invest in a 3rd party HSF but choose carefully.
 
ill give the cleaning a go but my case is always kept fairly clean and im often cleaning the filters, ill also try setting up a fan profile but i dont think the problem is heat related as its there as soon as i boot the game up and doesnt get any worse with time

i still dont understand why other games are not having any problems
 
If you've stressed the card and aren't getting any artifacts, then my guess would be a driver problem. If nothing else works, it may be worth doing a fresh install of your OS and drivers.

Is that temp of 90C normal?
 
I am probably in the wrong thread, but I have had a problem (or not so much of one since I only play WoW). This has persisted throughout Vista (back to XP) and up to Win7, but every time I try to play some game with a little bit more "3D" in it, equal or less to the WoW engine, my computer just crashes (this goes for any game BUT WoW(and yes it has been fully reinstalled a number of times)).

I am wondering if it is time to grab a new Graphics card, my current one is Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT. (I have googled it, but to no avail as none has encountered the problem/solved it)

And if you recommend me to get a new one, please let me know price range :)
 
KelticDaz said:
If you've stressed the card and aren't getting any artifacts, then my guess would be a driver problem. If nothing else works, it may be worth doing a fresh install of your OS and drivers.

Is that temp of 90C normal?
Click to expand...

apparently from what i have been reading it is ;) its one of the old 295s that ran hotter and that temp is only reached when its under full load for about 15mins but it stays there

ill be checking the card for dust later and then ill try rolling back to the last drivers and see if that will solve anything


Viperbane said:
I am probably in the wrong thread, but I have had a problem (or not so much of one since I only play WoW). This has persisted throughout Vista (back to XP) and up to Win7, but every time I try to play some game with a little bit more "3D" in it, equal or less to the WoW engine, my computer just crashes (this goes for any game BUT WoW(and yes it has been fully reinstalled a number of times)).

I am wondering if it is time to grab a new Graphics card, my current one is Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT. (I have googled it, but to no avail as none has encountered the problem/solved it)

And if you recommend me to get a new one, please let me know price range :)
Click to expand...

to be honest mate it sounds like you need a new card ;) if a problem is still there after a fresh install of windows then something is faulty with the hardware
 
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I believe so too, but I am curious as to why. WoW may be a dated game/engine, but that does not mean that every other game should crash. Well, time to start browsing for a new graphics card.
 
Viperbane said:
I believe so too, but I am curious as to why. WoW may be a dated game/engine, but that does not mean that every other game should crash. Well, time to start browsing for a new graphics card.
Click to expand...

have you checked in the event viewer to see what caused the crash?
 
As a rule of thumb artifacts are caused by overheated/failing VRAM chips, whats probably happening is your games are using differant amounts of VRAM and some may be addressing a fualty chip while other games that don't require as much VRAM don't have to use that module.
 
Event viewer (at least on Win7) is extremely "quiet" when it comes to these events (helps living in a flat with an IT Manager :D). I got the advise from another forum to set-up some monitoring program that can detect these small issues, but have not found one yet...
 
We had the same issue like in your video when we upgraded to Win7, we got an instant-flashing warning (that disappeared just as fast) telling us there was not 100% power provided to the graphics card.
 
It is like this for all the games now, failing to render certain small areas so it looks smudged when you look closely, or "boing" like in your video on others, but all games have it except the ones that does not require any real graphical power like Civ 3, Space Rangers 2 etc.
 
strange, id expect it to affect most of mine too but it doesnt

does anyone know of a good program to test a graphics card? something that would definetly let me know if there was a hardware problem?
 
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