Severe Graphical Issues

I have two screens of some graphical errors in my programs.This has been going on for a while now (since, I think, June of '05). I was told that this is because ATI (I run a 9600xt) doesn't have very good support for opengl, but I really don't know what's happening. I'm planning on getting a newer Nvidia 6800GS which is the best performing agp card on the market for the money. Will getting a new card fix these problems? What's happening? Is the card going bad? It can't be because of heat 'cause I keep one side panel off for air to keep the number of fans, I need to use, down and the whole computer runs pretty much just above room temp. I've updated the drivers and whenever I do a fresh install (deleting the card complely from the system) it'll run everything fine for a few days and then resumes this problem.

Actually, computer can run HOTTER when the sides are opened, but it can as well run cooler, depends entirely on how the fans are setup up.. My case basically has a wind tunnel through the whole case, and the temperatures will jump up if the side is opened.. But doesn't seem the case here.

I'd be guessing vidcard RAM failing, tho apparently Windows is working alright so the problem is only when playing, how about Windows at different resolutions, and games that run in windowed mode?

And what you mean by "doesn't have very good support for opengl", most of the games are running on DirectX, not OpenGL. OpenGL is pretty much used by ID's games and their clones only these days. And ATi cards still work with OpenGL alright, but nVidia drivers for OpenGL are much better, and the NV cards are faster than ATi's when doing OpenGL. Apparently ATi is rewriting the whole OpenGL part of their drivers (if they didn't already) to fix some of that.

edit: murf

Definitely looks like your video card is failing. Those glitches are usually the result of video RAM going bad.

Time to get that new card.

When did you start using your video card?

Basic questions....

Have to taken your card out and cleaned it? Then re-seated it?

Have the little power wires gotten into the way of the fan? (stopping it from running)

Is the vid card right next to another card in a PCI slot? Have you tried leaving the PCI slot next to the vid card open for air?

check the fan on the graphics card.. coulda went out (in my experience had this happen but on nvidia cards)- if you remove the driver and reinstall- it's fine for a few days? that's pretty strange it could be something unrelated..

I've routed all my wiring as far away from the hardware as much as possible and the only card in my pc is the g-card. The card hasn't been removed since I installed it when I first got it, so there shouldn't be any dust or other debris in there...And the fan and temperature is fine. All my equipment has Berquist high transfer thermal pads between them and the heatsinks.

Hmm...well it "looks" like overheating somewhere on the card. The ram chips could be it. Since it "works" for awhile then screws up...that is why I believe it is somehwere along heat/fried related issues.

Couple of things.

You got a bad BGA on your card. Ram's dying, flaw becomes evident either after multiple calculations or it's getting too hot.

Throw the bloody thermal pads away. I have a stack of them, and given them or frag tape, I take frag tape. Get yourself some AS5 or Ceramique. I'd give you some of my lumiere but it's too expensive.

Last, the 6800GS is an incredible card, but a 7800 GS AGP is being released. Do your homework, count your pennies, and either way, you'll solve your problem AND be insanely happy to boot.

I'm not sure that the issue IS heat, but the RAM is bad on that card either way...

Hmm, well maybe you've had bad luck or heard bad things about thermal pads. One reason I use them is because I get nearly a 20 deg. Celsius drop in overal temp across my both my g-card and cpu. I was using some nice silver goop (like $8 a tube) and had 8 fans (2 exit and 2 intake, 2 flow control, cpu and gpu) and it still ran hotter than normal. So I switched to pads. Plus it doesn't void the varranty like goops do.

I've compared the 7800 and 6800 agps and there isnt too much of a difference. In some places, the 6800 was better than the 7800 and its like $100 less. Can't beat that. Here's the link to the card I'm going to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130264

For me (I test hardware on a REGULAR basis, and have helped develop some changes to quite a few pieces, in addition to being a custom cooling nut) the thermal pads just sucked, either they didn't phase change or they did and they sucked.

Course, I may change 8-10 times a day during a testing run-kinda rough on thermal pads...

7800 is better. It has more pipes which will pay off in the long-run better. 6800 GS does so well because it's a 6800 based on a smaller process, making it run cooler and overclock so well it can compare to a 7800 in a few games maybe. That's all well and good, but, games are beginning to rely more and more heavily on pixel shaders and the like to such an extent that many now are refusing even to run on a card without them like the gf4mx series that I hate so much (I'm still mad at nVidia for having suddenly stopped calling them geforce 2 mx and suddenly calling them geforce 4 mx just so people would buy them thinking they are better than, say a geforce 3 ti. After all, "Geforce 4 MX" sounds like it's better than "Geforce 3 TI" right?) The 7800 series is better for the long run than the 6800 I'd say.

As for thermal pads, they do often have issues transferring heat well enough. Remember, RAM is designed to be air cooled directly, not cooled indirectly even by water. It's kind of a matter of how quickly heat is transferred you see. Pads can't even compare to a good paste like Arctic Silver 5 or Shin Etsu's latest stuff. There's a reason why people choose the paste when pads are so easy and don't void some waranties (I'm not sure what waranty you're talking about since AMD at least no longer says that you may only use Shin Etsu on their chips thanks to that annoying metal thing they now use -- I haven't seen a video card that says it's alright to change the cooling regardless of what you change it to.) BTW, I had a Radeon 9600 Pro a good while back and the stock cooling used thermal pads. My video card started getting unstable and when I took a look at things, I noticed the pad had basically melted away from the cooler and was no longer making good contact at all. I replaced it with arctic silver 3 (this was a long time ago) and later the stock cooler and my video card lasted for about a year without artifacts (except once with one of the plastic things holding the cooler in place came loose) until lightning caused enough of a surge to tear up the highly overclocked core (the oc was enough to make it considerably more vulnerable to surges -- those 9600s oced like insane.) My experience with thermal pads has been that it's just not worth it just to not have to wipe your chips with alcohol and apply el-cheapo brand white paste after should you need to make a return. (Actually, I think my X850XT PE came with Arctic Silver 3, so I'd have to find some of that for it if I needed to make a claim.) And before anyone jumps down my throat, I think it's silly to go so by the book that you automatically blame a person who actually improved the effects of temperature on the card rather than the card that simply couldn't handle them despite the improvements.

Anyway, download ATITool and run it's artifact tester. Let this stress test run a while and you'll quickly find out if your card is at all unstable.

Well, see, I just don't have the money for a nice new 7800gs. I'm streching it as it is with wanting to get a 6800 gt. I guess it's because I'm going to my local college and don't have a job, lol.

Same here, but, I got an X850XT PE with a little saving up. ^_^

Well, if you can't afford a 7800, that's fine. I was just saying if you looked at both and discarded the 7800 in favor of a 6800 simply because it can overclock so well, it's not a good long-term decision. Better to have a card with maybe slightly less raw power but more pipes with the way modern games are going.

Anyway, tell us what ATITool's artifact test does. Note that you need to run it a few hours. That test is like the Prime95 of video cards, and also like Prime95, it can take a long time to catch a more subtle error.

Lol. A few hours. It took like 5 minutes of memory testing on the card for it to screw up. I've overclocked the processor on it though. Let's call it a final push before I kill it. Gonna get a 6800gt soon (like in 10 minutes) on ebay. And if that doesnt work out, then I'm just gonna buy one on newegg.