ATI 9800 Pro and Texture tearing all over the place

I've been playing GW since it was released and worked great on my 9800 pro, overclocked. About a week ago, I click on GW and during the login screen, the right half of the screen is going nuts with textures tearing, like the card was overclocked too high. I didn't change anything from before and I play the game and there is artifacting and texture tearing everywhere. I clocked my video card back to default and didn't change anything.

The game is running at 1024x768 and I have tried all different refresh rates and quality settings, reinstalled the CAT 5.4 drivers, installed the Omega drivers and played around with all sorts of settings and nothing helps.

I've read posts about GPU overheating, but I have a hefty cooling setup on my GPU with RAM sinks and also a 120mm and a 92mm fans blowing in from the sides of my case. I've tried running the CPU and memory at default speeds and nothing seems to make a difference. I play Tiger Woods 2005, BF1942 and with all settings maxed, even GPU overclocked, it works fine. But as soon as I start Guild Wars, it only takes like 2 seconds to get to the login screen, I get the graphics errors so I don't think it's overheating.

I'm out of ideas here...

grab one of your old video cards and see if that fixes it

it could be simply that you overclocked to agressively and something gave which means time to do an RMA on it

unless you voided the warranty on it by overclocking it

that is why i only buy a brand that permits overclocking

on the other hand that card is plenty fast so i dont understand the need to OC in the first place

well if you did burn it up I would go with a geforce 6600gt or 6800 they blow the radeons out of the water. just a thought.

Thanx for the suggestion and I will try it with another video card. But why would this only happen on this game, I have played many other games without issues. That is what's puzzling me.

this game puts more stress on my pc than any other so far

it is making it work at full throttle but than it was sold to work at full capacity (OC is full capacity + so who knows)

screenshot? Can you post one? I was seeing something really strange after being logged into GW for quite a while the other day (7 hours). It looked like the colors were bleeding across my screen horizontally. I thought it was just the monitor. When I went back to my desktop it was fine, and then back to GW it was fine. I'll keep an eye on this issue, but if you could show me what you are talking about that would be great. I also have the 9800 pro.

Matt

I'll post some screenshots tonight so everyone can see it.

the nvidiots are everywhere, you'd think with a GITG title there wouldn't be so many of them

Rellok - I don't think the game dumps its memory enough personally. I find when I slow down or experience any type of weird graphic problem, an alt tab seems to fix it.

I'd like to find out if theres a dump cashe command for the game to test out it out.

Remorhaz - Theres some nice little posts around the forums about graphic cards. So before bashing a video card and calling people who perfer it over another, do I need to find these posts to save myself time of reposting...?

Right now yes, the top of the line ATI cards are better then the GeForce cards, but (for the hundredth time) the 6600GT is the best value card out there if you don't plan on upgrading for another year or so and wish to save yourself some cash.

Personally, I'd rather do that, save myself a couple hundred and put it towards a new card in another year thats top of the line since I saved myself that money.

Calling someone an idiot for buying that card like myself has done, I take personally since your using it in a generalization when the obvious facts are posted all over the place.

You know, trolling isn't a good way to either increase post count OR gain favor. We've had the discussion before, you've proven that you are nothing but a fanboy, so I say get off it. We all got the card with the X800 marketing on it. We all know it's a GITG title. Some of us ARE nVidia fans, but continuing to use that derogatory term with less than zero evidence to support it is denigrating to the entire boards.

I would refrain from using it in the future. If you have no advice to anyone, I would suggest doing what my mother told me about what I should do if I couldn't say something nice.

And I think Ensign is right, there seems to be a problem on some systems...

Mine runs fine, but I see that other people without this kind of hardcore tweaking can see issues very easily. So could I, if I change anything I'm running...

Thanks for all the answers so far, but just to clear it up for SK, I have done NO modding or overclocking to my system at all.

I do have a small amount of Ram (512K stick), and maybe adding another would solve the problem. But other than this issue which I have only noticed twice after playing a long time, the game runs smoothly for me. (well, since this last weekend Gwen and monsters shake when moving past me, I think that might have something to do with collision detection)

Just FYI,
Athalon 64 3000+
Radeon 9800 Pro
512K Corsair VS cs2.5
DSL 1.5Mb

I'll take pics of mine next time I get a chance. But if it is a memory dump issue, than that is something that I imagine would be easy enough to fix in an update. And it wouldn't require me taking my monitor back

Matt

That's cool.

What I meant was that I actively sat down and did hardcore work to my OS and some programs. It has little to do with hardware at this point. Because I have disables a lot of services and made tose the new default, I don't run the same risk as most do, and I see how if I didn't do that or even changed my setup I could have issues. Made me think some.

Ah, I think I had a case of reading what was not really there, I read hardcore, and somehow hardware was what I thought, due to the cooling and overclocking discussions to that point.

Matt

No problem, it normally is overclocking with me...

I also had similiar problems with the 9800 Pro vid card. Try uninstalling the CAT 5.4 drivers and install the CAT 5.2 drivers. The older drivers seem to work better.

No they do not.
I myself have both the 6800GT and X800XTPE and each has its strengths. To come here claiming Nvidia is superior just displays your fanboism.



Please can we refrain from continued Nvidia vs. ATI thread hijacks? Thanks.
~ Principa Discordia.

I upgraded to the new CAT 5.5's that were released yesterday and still no luck. I took some screenshots but it's very hard to see the artifacting. My next step is to see if the card is bad somehow, but I doubt that. I can't find a copy of CAT 5.2's that Narrow suggested.

of course the x800x is going to be better than a plain jane 6800
I should hve been more specific.
If you go to tom's hardware you can see the bench tests where the 6600gts
and 68000s actually did wipe the floor with the 9800's

Of course the x800x is better is you have a small fortune to spend but if you don't the 6600gt or 6800 are the best for the money.

And i can say this objectively cause i had a 9800 pro and got rid of it for the geforce cause i just wasn't satisfied

Am I being ignored? I said enough with this thread-hijacking drivel.

If you want to make an ATI vs. Nvidia thread, do so, but for your sakes keep it flame-free.

Try www.guru3d.com

I have attached a screen at www.ati.com website.
They are under Previous drivers for Radeon video cards.

do a google search for ATI Tool

this will allow you to test your video card outside of the game for artifacts. If you run this, it should run for several minutes without any errors (likely was stressed due to the overclock, and sounds like it's been damaged)

Test this and let us know if it runs without artifacts (the timer will reset each time it detects one)

Good advice. I have a 6800 vanilla now, but my previous card was a 9800 pro. It overclocked very well. I always liked to use the ATI tool because it really tested out the system to get the best OC without any artifacting. I use RIVA Tuner now, but the ATI Tool, while taking a while to tweak your card, does so very well, and safely. I always would find my max safe OC and then back it down a bit so I wouldn't have to deal with heat issues.

please stop bickering over video cards, i have a ati 9800 pro with this same problem and i would like to find out how to fix it. I didn't always have this problem but about a week ago the game started doing exactly what captinsano was describing. Immediately after i start GW before i can even type anything to log in my whole screen goes to crap with strands of color running vertically and what not, then after i manage to find the [X] to leave Guild Wars everything is still messed up, i have to restart my computer to get it back to normal. I can play WoW and Doom3 with no problems, only Guild Wars

I had a similar problem with my rad 9800 pro, I traced the problem to alt-tabbing, doing something to the refresh rates, when all the textures was messed up, I switched to windowed mode and it immediately fixed the problem, but would periodly come back, so I checked the settings more closely, this is what I saw and it fixed it completely for me.

My desktop is running 1280x1024 but GW was only running in 1024x768 res, so I changed the resolution to 1280x1024 and i've not had these problems since.

I have had my ATI 9800pro in my little game box for a couple of years now. I never overclocked it or anything. I personally do not see the need to overclock on todays computers. Plus with a kid in college one still in grade school and a wife with expensive tastes then I can not afford to fry my systems. I have to make them last.

With Guild Wars the 9800pro seems to be doing just fine. I have AA off of course. I went into the game options and force all the graphics to thier highest quality and it didn't affect my game. I do get that I "swinging on a monster thing" and all of a sudden he is 50 feet away. But I believe that is net lag not anything I can do about it. (I have a 4mbs cable connection that has never dropped below 2.5mbs) I honestly think that more and more people join up and play this game that Areanet's servers get overloaded.

I have been "toying" with computers since the early 1980's and even then there were people that would say: "Mine is bigger/better then your's..." So don't fret about that stuff. It is an old old aurgument. Me and my friends DREAMED of this day and age where you could play online and have decent looking graphics to boot. I am just happy that I can afford a decent game box to play some of these cool games. Mine is nothing too fancy but it gets the job done well.

For this guy that is having these problems of "tearing" you all have good ideas to fix them. One is downgrading the driver. (I have an OLD one) Also I firmly believe in MORE RAM is better. I run 1.5GB 400mhz ram on a 2.8ghz 800 FSB. Once I added the extra ram about a year ago ALL my programs ran smoothly since then. WinXP will suck up almost all of 256MB of ram, so to go to 512MB is a bare min. in my book. 1GB ram should be plenty for this game. Also I have mention this before in another thread you might want to look into a free program called RegScrubXP. It is not for the faint hearted....so beware. You can totally screw up your system, but it will clean out old crap out of your registry. I personally had my Guru-Tech-Computer friend over to make sure I was not doing STOOPID things while using that program.

hope this helps...sorry for such a long post. I do like this forum. You "Youngens" really amaze this Old Dood. I am always willing to learn from others. So when I ask some questions and if they "seem" stoopid cut me some slack. I am just trying to learn. I will not flame people, however, I can defend myself quite well when they flame on me.

It's posts like this that restore my faith in the community.

Welcome dood, and we should all learn to be so helpful in the future.

i think u have to make sure ur vid card is set at highest quality in windows and in games for it to work right, correct me if i'm wrong

Evidently the game doesnt like Radeons, my ageing 9200 has texture problems despite being over the minimum system requirements, ive got 512mb on an Athlon xp 3000 Barton, Ive heard that all was ok during betas, so they must have done something really stoopid just before release.

I have a 9800Pro running WinXp SP2 with ingame graphics turned all the way up. Desktop and game run at 1280 x 1024 , AA is on. I Alt-Tab often and have not had any video problems of any kind.

Although Overclocking probably is the cause for all this you did say you have no issues with any other game. The 2 things that come to mind is try uninstalling the game completely then reinstall, if it still exists you definately need to try another card out...

Good Luck

Thank You Serafita. That was kind. I see no need to get nasty in forums. I have found in the computer profession (and other professions as well) that the Good/Smart/Experienced people are ALWAYS willing to learn and never think they know it all. To me that is a definition of Wisdom.

I keep teaching my children to appreciate the "Age" that they live in. That they have cool tech toys now that I always wanted and knew someday we would have them. When my 20 year old son was little he was on a computer when his friends parents thought it was not necessary at that time for their children to have them. Silly People Now that my daughter is in the same school these same parents ask me where/how/which computer to buy. Or why does thier computer "do this and that...and not this and that"

To me, computers and other tech toys like HD-TV is a wise choice. I buy the best for the money at that time. I never buy the latest greatest. Computer wise I will buy a couple of processors down the line. I bought my 2.8ghz when 3.2ghz prescotts were the rage. Mine is still a HT 800FSB and it was not all that much slower then the 3.2ghz. Saved major dollars that I put into the vid card and ram. I will not buy a new computer until they come out with a true 4ghz or its equal.

All in all I like this site and it's forums. I have checked out other Guild Wars sites and this one is the best in my opinion. You are all young and bright. I feel I am the OLDEST player in this game. Every group I go out with is 15-25 years old. However, I truly have had some good fun with most of the people. I keep preaching about getting TeamSpeak and setting up thier own server so it is FREE. We let people on our server as guests in our groups and they have a blast now that they do not have to type the most used lines: STOP....RUN AWAY....NEED TO HEAL.....NO AVOID THE BAD GUYS FOR NOW.

Anyways...sorry for the long post....didn't mean to hijack it either...

A few things I will suggest before you go the way of RMA (it is possible that the card is busted due to it being overclocked. no matter how careful you might have been when overclocking it, there is a slight chance that it burned):

a) Check your Display Settings for the Radeon, and set everything to Default.

b) Try going to guru3d site and look for Catalyst driver uninstaller (there are several). After completely uninstalling the drivers, install 5.5's.

c) Try running the game at refresh rate of 85Hz if you can (100 tops). I remember there was some problem with Windows XP where it wouldn't allow you to run your full screen games at same refresh rate as your desktop settings. For this I use a program called ReForce which allows me to lock in the refresh rates that I want to run my desktop and fullscreen applications at.

d) If possible try doing a clean Windows install. In general, if you find yourself installing and uninstalling many different applications and games on your computer, it's best to reformat every six months. Make sure to do backup of your important work.

e) If those solutions don't help, try calling ATI and see what they suggest, though I think if you removed their original heatsink & fan, and on top of that overclocked (if they can prove that you did this), then your warranty pretty much went out of the window.

P.S. I use Radeon 9600XT by Gigabyte, and have never experienced any tearing. The most advanced game I played on it was Doom3, and it showed no texture tearing.