What's causing this?
Author
Discussion

FunkyNige

Original Poster:

9,692 posts

297 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
When playing a variety of games including both Rome and Medieval Total War, every so often this suddenly happens to my screen -




Imagine that dancing all around the screen.

This won't stop until I reset the computer, as you can see it's not possible to play games when this happens.
A similar thing used to happen evrey now and again at startup but that changed when I fiddled around with some grahpics settings.

UncleDave

7,155 posts

253 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
Looks like very bad artifacts to me...
If so could mean a knackered Graphics Card.. is it overclocked at all?
and it's just when game-playing but it's ok messing around in Windows and the like..?

Dave.

FunkyNige

Original Poster:

9,692 posts

297 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
UncleDave said:
Looks like very bad artifacts to me...
If so could mean a knackered Graphics Card.. is it overclocked at all?
and it's just when game-playing but it's ok messing around in Windows and the like..?

Dave.



Graphics card isn't overclocked AFAIK (found out my CPU was overclocked and I didn't know a while back ), it's a Radeon 9600 pro.
As Windows boots up it sometimes does that, but not after a reset and only at startup.

D_Mike

5,301 posts

262 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
are you taking any drugs at the moment?

UncleDave

7,155 posts

253 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
Hmm..
First call would be to check and update Drivers for the card.. if you didn't overclock yourself it's likely fine.

Also see if there are any temperature monitors within your card drivers. Don't know about you but mine is in the menu you get to by Right clicking on Desktop, properties, click the settings tab, then 'Advanced'. Could be that it's overheating for some reason..

You could also turn off Anti Aliasing on Anisotropic Filtering which sometimes causes some strange things

Also, how old is the card now, any ideas?



But yeah, more than likely it's overheating! Can sometimes be drivers and things though..


Edited by UncleDave on Tuesday 8th August 21:53

xiphias

5,889 posts

249 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
Tis overheating. Check the heatsink mounting.

Jinx

11,872 posts

282 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
xiphias said:
Tis overheating. Check the heatsink mounting.


I agree - my Radeon 9600 produces some funky effects in the hot weather - unfortunately as its in my latop, tis a little difficult to cool conventionally - hence a big fan blowing cross my desk.

d-man

1,019 posts

267 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
Agree with the overheating theory

Easiest fix is if the heatsink and fan are just choked full of dust. Beyond that you're looking at whether the fan on the graphics card actually works at all (I think the 9600Pros have fans?) and checking that the heatsink is properly attached.

AJLintern

4,338 posts

285 months

Tuesday 8th August 2006
quotequote all
Looks like the problem I had with my 9800Pro...



A new graphics card cured the problem

FunkyNige

Original Poster:

9,692 posts

297 months

Wednesday 9th August 2006
quotequote all
Cheers for the replies guys, looks like I'll be dismantling the card to see how well the fan is set on.

I remember when the only thing we had to worry about cooling was the processor.
They were simpler times.
:sigh:

edit - after blowing out more dust than I thought could possibly fit in such a small space my graphics card's fan is now dust free (which inspired to take a hoover to the other fans in my computer too) and it's now running brilliantly*! Played a few Rome battles with no adverse effects at all

* apart from the loud buzzing noise it made for 5 minutes after first turning it back on.

Edited by FunkyNige on Wednesday 9th August 22:14

chris watton

22,545 posts

282 months

Thursday 10th August 2006
quotequote all
I had the same with a Radeon 9800 Pro, turned out to be bad memory on the card, there was, apparently a bad batch of memory fitted to quite a few ATI cards a few years back..

scorp

8,783 posts

251 months

Thursday 10th August 2006
quotequote all
FunkyNige said:
Cheers for the replies guys, looks like I'll be dismantling the card to see how well the fan is set on.

I remember when the only thing we had to worry about cooling was the processor.
They were simpler times.
:sigh:

edit - after blowing out more dust than I thought could possibly fit in such a small space my graphics card's fan is now dust free (which inspired to take a hoover to the other fans in my computer too) and it's now running brilliantly*! Played a few Rome battles with no adverse effects at all

* apart from the loud buzzing noise it made for 5 minutes after first turning it back on.

Edited by FunkyNige on Wednesday 9th August 22:14


Switch to water cooling, that way you won't get your PC full of dust

malman

2,258 posts

281 months

Thursday 10th August 2006
quotequote all
loud buzzing noise is probably a fan bearing about to fail. Find out which one by starting with the side off and get one now before it stops and takes out something expensive. £10 fan now makes more sense than waiting for it to fail.

Mr E

22,686 posts

281 months

Thursday 10th August 2006
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My Xbox 360 did something similar. Twas the gfx card/chip.

D_Mike

5,301 posts

262 months

Thursday 10th August 2006
quotequote all
so its not drugs then?

medicineman

1,813 posts

259 months

Friday 11th August 2006
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Just melted a X700 cards myself. Caused Half life II and SiN emergencance to crash quite well! New 7900 XT installed and everythings ok!

FunkyNige

Original Poster:

9,692 posts

297 months

Saturday 12th August 2006
quotequote all
It did it again! Maybe I'll just leave the side off to play games, that seemed to work. I reallly don't want to spend any money on this problem as I'm upgrading in October (when the latest Total War game comes out) so any money I spend now will be completely wasted!
Looks like cooling the graphicss card will be a consideration when making the case though.

bez_uk

172 posts

234 months

Sunday 20th August 2006
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I sometimes get similar effect on the loading screen on BF2... even with cold comp. Game runs fine at all other times. Probably drivers if it's not the heat.