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Major Artefacts > HIS ATI RADEON X1950 PRO ICEQ3 Turbo 256MB GDDR3 (AGP)

NocomplyUK said:
My friend just had his HIS X1950 Pro RMA answered and a new card sent out.

No information as to the actual fault with the card, just a "yes thats broken have a new one".

Testing continues but it's looking good so far.
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Hope he received one of the good ones. He should make sure to really stress test that card. Thought my replacement card was working fine too until I tested it for a longer period of time. The first bum card I received would crash after 1-2 min of testing under load. The second one crashed after about 30-40 min.
 
I stress tested my card overnight using ATI Tray Tool with the cards original setting, and it was still running this morning with no artifacts. Plus I played Oblivion yesterday for 2 hours. Looks like the artifact problem has gone away which is a bit odd. Not sure now if I should send it back as I've been given a RMA number and I don't want to be waste money sending the card back for OcUK to find nothing wrong. The problem I had must be due to the settings on Catalyst control, I'll have to play around with it this weekend. Anyone else experienced this.
 
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wibble1 said:
well, I've just installed a x1950 pro....

spec: aMD3500/1gb ram/420PSU Eneremax....

Loaded up Supreme Commander.... 5mins into the game and i get artifacts...


./cry
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Which X1950 Pro? AGP or PCI-E? Did you test it with anything else?
 
ok had my sapphire 1950 pro agp 512 in bits today to see whats happening or whats not happening in my case with the cooling.

had a look from the side through thew card and half of the heat pads wernt even in contact with the memory chip's. seems the studs on the heat sink/fan where to long by about 1 mm (its all it takes guys to screw up contact).

i then removed the hsf to file them down but on removal tha amount of thermal grease on the gpu was a little ott as well.

so between these two issues i can see why so many of the sapphires have had issues.

anyways filed down the studs and replaced the stock grease with some zalman stuff i had and the card seems a lot more stable now. just tested it in wow for 1 hour 20 mins. using the temp gauge in the ati overdrive tab of the control center i was getting max temps of 65C before i was hitting 71C + then id get the artifacts and crash there after.

cats are 7.2's for vista. and im running wow at 1600 maxed out and its happy as larry. now to go find something a bit more meaty to test :D
 
How is the card now GAC, have you done any more testing?

I've got the same card as you and looking through the side you can see that hardly any of the pads are contacting the chips, exactly as you describe.

I've put in an RMA request but am just wondering if I should have a go at sorting it myself or whether to just send it off and see what they say.

 
well had a play in lotr beta and at 1280/1024 i wacked all the settings up to the max in game and it ran fine. no crashes or artifacts what so ever.

as for fixing it yourself its up to you, you may get a brand new card back thats 100% or you may get back one thats iffy again. if you do fix it yourself there goes your warrenty dont forget. so if you crack something you goosed.

the cards still up and running fine.
 
Touch wood...

...but I have a HIS AGP 512MB X1950 at 620 mhz (bought when OCUK got them in)...The only problem I have is a rattling fan, which can be 'cured' by lowering the fan speed to around 28. I know it's not an ideal soloution, but it seems to work, and playing games I get no problems at all
 
GAC said:
well had a play in lotr beta and at 1280/1024 i wacked all the settings up to the max in game and it ran fine. no crashes or artifacts what so ever.

as for fixing it yourself its up to you, you may get a brand new card back thats 100% or you may get back one thats iffy again. if you do fix it yourself there goes your warrenty dont forget. so if you crack something you goosed.

the cards still up and running fine.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think I'll go ahead with the RMA and hope that I get a new card without any issues, fingers crossed.

Glad to hear your card seems fine now :)

 
funky problems with my HIS as well

I got my card around the end of january and i noticed two things:

1) the fan ALWAYS rotated at 40% no matter what the load was so as soon as i started playing a #D game, temperatures started climbing like crazy and a few minutes later the screen "blinked" then froze for 3 seconds and then went black. Only way out of it was to do acold reset.

2) i had a funny squaeking- sputtering noise coming out of my headspeakers-megaphones ( no matter which i used..) but only on my "main system", as i tested this card on 4 diferent AGP systems ( yes i have 6 PCs in my house and no i dont live in an internet cafe :p)

i fixed the first probem by runing ATT or AT or Riva, and setting by hand the fan to go faster and faster as temperatures rose... this seemed to fix the crashing problem but not the sound problem. Add to that that i didnt really use a "heavy weight " game to stress the system, i mostly run Eve-online ( best MMORG out there for the hardcore gamer..), also ATT artifact tester for like 15 minutes or so.. and a few cycles of the PCmark 2005. i got a couple of crashes in like 100 tests so i didnt bother too much.
theni had to leave for work aborad for 25 or so, .....the CPc didnt work at all during this time )

so i came back , installed oblivion...and problems started....

the squeaking noise was back, changing in pitch as the ssytem load changed or following a similar rhythm to the spiingn o fa hard disk or the reviing of the CPU fan. WEIRD OR WHAT???

add to that. ....3 days ago i started having crashes playing oblivion... say after.. playing for 15-20 minutes or so.

checked with ATT renderer.. the same thing, as soon as the temperature went to around 50-51c BINGO,,,, the screen "blinked" then froze then i had a black monitor to look at.

i put the card back in my secondary system..it crashed there as well, but after 25-30 minutes... ANd there was no squeaking noise.. or to be exact it was but just audible i had to raise the volume to 100% to take notice of it.

this is strange as my main PC has a better PSU and better airflow and temperatures in the main PC were a bit lower as well. ( by 1-2C.)

so i grabbed a friends 7800GS AGP card ( most powerfull AGP card i could find..) , put it in my main PC and it worked like a charm. bah...

my main PC has an ASUS P4C-800E-Deluxe mobo, with a 3 GHz P4, 1.5 Gb ram, 4 disks and an enermax 465W PSU, that has a 36A 12V rail that should be more than enough to feed this card. The 12V line is stable at 11.96 at idle and get down to 11.88 at full load ( i think that is acceptable??? )

my secondary PC has a crappy mobo , a 3200+ Athlon XP, 768MB of memmory, 2 disks, and a mediocre 400 W chieftec PSU....and the card seesm to run better in that one... FUNKY or what?

so what are my findings:
the HIs card is borked and wont work at stock speeds.
The manufacturing seems ok, i can see no gaps between memmory chips and thermal pads connecting them to the heat sinks.
The fan get a bit loud for my taste unlike the various testing sites that praised the card for a "silent factory overclock".
The card crashes under heavy load, more now than when i bought it... anytime it goes over 51C it hardlocks, usuallyy the moment it locks conicdes with a change in the fan speed ( dont ask my why, but it alwasy locks as the fan revs up from 73 to 82 or from 82 to 91%)

if i put the fan at 100% all the time ( VEEEERY LOUD) it takes a bit longer to crash but eventually it does so.


aftermath.
After reading a post above ...i lowered the GPU clock to 600 and the card has been runiing the ATT renderer for 2 hours now, temperature is at 59c and the card seems to be rock steady.. i'll post this and try to run oblivion to see what happens


EDIT
ok, after 4 hours with my card slightly underclocked oblivion didnt crash not even once....
I'll see how this goes.. the only problem is the squeaky noise is sort of back!! if i can fix that I'll keep the card as the stories about RMA i'm reading here are horendous .....
 
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I'm amazed at how much this thread has grown since I last posted here. Looks like there are many more with the same problems. To keep you up to date with my own situation, I went out and got my self a new 700 Watt PSU and still had the artefacts after fitting so that obviously wasn't the problem.

As I had my old PSU spare, I fitted it to my sons PC (Socket 939 Athlon 64 3400 on ECS Elite Group K8 NForce3 250 Mobo fitted with 1 x 1 GB Crucial DDR 400) and tested the GC in that machine, using a freshly installed ArmedAssault demo set on Very High and resolution at 1280x1024. It was fine to start with but low and behold, after a while the artefacts appeared again!

As you may recall from my earlier posts, I have already RMA'd this card once and after OCuk tested it, the card was returned to me with the bill. To the contrary the card is clearly faulty so I have RMA'd it a second time and requested a full refund.

I'll keep you advised.
 
ChemHazMat said:
I'm amazed at how much this thread has grown since I last posted here. Looks like there are many more with the same problems. To keep you up to date with my own situation, I went out and got my self a new 700 Watt PSU and still had the artefacts after fitting so that obviously wasn't the problem.

As I had my old PSU spare, I fitted it to my sons PC (Socket 939 Athlon 64 3400 on ECS Elite Group K8 NForce3 250 Mobo fitted with 1 x 1 GB Crucial DDR 400) and tested the GC in that machine, using a freshly installed ArmedAssault demo set on Very High and resolution at 1280x1024. It was fine to start with but low and behold, after a while the artefacts appeared again!

As you may recall from my earlier posts, I have already RMA'd this card once and after OCuk tested it, the card was returned to me with the bill. To the contrary the card is clearly faulty so I have RMA'd it a second time and requested a full refund.

I'll keep you advised.
Click to expand...

Stick with it. If it is faulty which it definitely appears to be, you have a right to a full refund!!
 
After reading ALL of this thread, I too am horrified by the thought of having a rather expensive HIS 1950 pro AGP card returned to me as NOT faulty.. I purchased the card on thursday last week and within 1 hour of use I was getting the pixelated patterns across the screen... Couldnt even run Aquamark 3 without it freaking out..I had just a few months before, bought an xpro 400watt psu which was (I thought ) sufficient for my system.On saturday I purchased a colourSI 550watt psu and discovered I still had the artifacts. I have been in this business of building and repairing systems for quite a few years and felt myself that the card was showing signs of overheating.Although it was only showing low 50's c and high 40's c. Nevertheless Should I return the card with the RMA which was given to me after a phone call to the Tech guys.They did seem very certain that the card was faulty.Even though I wasn't looking for it to be returned.

I too have screenshots of the pixel patterns, what use are they if OC's say the card is not faulty.?

Another very concerned customer.

M1CRO.
 
M1CRO said:
After reading ALL of this thread, I too am horrified by the thought of having a rather expensive HIS 1950 pro AGP card returned to me as NOT faulty.. I purchased the card on thursday last week and within 1 hour of use I was getting the pixelated patterns across the screen... Couldnt even run Aquamark 3 without it freaking out..I had just a few months before, bought an xpro 400watt psu which was (I thought ) sufficient for my system.On saturday I purchased a colourSI 550watt psu and discovered I still had the artifacts. I have been in this business of building and repairing systems for quite a few years and felt myself that the card was showing signs of overheating.Although it was only showing low 50's c and high 40's c. Nevertheless Should I return the card with the RMA which was given to me after a phone call to the Tech guys.They did seem very certain that the card was faulty.Even though I wasn't looking for it to be returned.

I too have screenshots of the pixel patterns, what use are they if OC's say the card is not faulty.?

Another very concerned customer.

M1CRO.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forums, id RMA it and get another brand tbh as these HIS cards are crap, if you get a replacement your probably looking at another duffer, best to steer clear, been getting RMA'd in droves for about 5 months now. :)
 
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