Display deterioration, can you help?

O

olbol

Geek Trainee
Hello. I first got problems with random green and purple dots, appearing in patches 10-15px wide and 2pix tall last year. I've re-seated the video card (Radeon 9100), updated the drivers and increased the voltage on AGP slot, as advised by Radeon folks. I don't remember what exactly helped, but the problem was gone pretty much, only cropping up in DVD playback. Then it was back, all of a sudden - the patches continued to increase, eventually taking over the entire screen until it's forced to redraw. I tried to do all the stuff with drivers, re-seating, voltage - to no avail.

Radeon have now replaced the card (on a side note - the sticker on the card says 9100, but the system says 8500 - was I duped?), but the problem is still there - although the dots are now different - not in patches, but individual or vertical streaks of 1px wide. The problems start at load-up stage: BIOS logo, Windows logo etc come with blocks of dots missing or replaced with different colour - garbled. I've tried rolling back and installing back drivers, BIOS update, chipset update (Gigabyte 7VAX) voltage tweaks, etc - nothing helps. I wish I could post a screenshot here, but I can;t. Hopefully, my description of the problem was sufficient for a diagnose. Many thanks to those who can help.
 
The Radeon 9100 is more or less a rebadged 8500. When ATi came out with the 9500/9700 cards they rebadged their former top card, the 8500, as the 9100 and did a few things to it that make it a little less powerful than the original 8500, so no, you're not being duped. If they sent you an actually Radeon 8500, you got a little bit of a bump from what you had. The driver would be the same for both, as they are more or less the same chip.

Personally, it sounds like you have some cooling issues and/or the RAM is overclocked on the video card itself. Make sure you've got good airflow in your case, because if you don't, that's the problem right there.
 
The case is actually opened right now. Is there any way I can check the temperature on the card's chips? As far as overclocking goes - unless it was done by someone else, it shouldn't be. Again, how would I check this? Does overclocking equals increased voltage? At any rate, the problem occurs with or without increase in voltage.
 
You can get a few different utilties that allow you to overclock, or even underclock the video card. For ATi cards, check for Rage3D tweak or ATi tool, both work great, and should allow you to detect and set the clock speeds back to the default if they aren't. If it doesn't let you do that, you can manually change the speed to see if that's in deed the problem. You should also be able to put your finger on the RAM and not burn it. If you can't hold it there, then it's too hot. Don't do this while stressing the card, i.e. gaming.

I know Gigabyte has a temp monitoring program for their motherboards, but Motherboard Monitor is a better program.

All the programs I listed can be found easily by searching Google.
 
The Radeon 8500/9100 is actually a much better card than the 9000/9200's, so you're OK there. But I've never seen a quality heatsync on a 9100, so that may be your problem. Is the fan spinning properly? Is the heatsync making good contact with the GPU?

If the heatsync is kosher, and feeling the it under load does not result in a burnt finger, the problem could very well be the northbridge of your botherboard.
 
Erm, can you put it into plainer language? Where do I take the bus to the northbridge from? I'll try to hug the card with my fingers, although with the way PC is put together it's hard and I am not sure where the RAM blocks are on the card.
 
olbol said:
Erm, can you put it into plainer language? Where do I take the bus to the northbridge from? I'll try to hug the card with my fingers, although with the way PC is put together it's hard and I am not sure where the RAM blocks are on the card.
Click to expand...
The nortbridge is the controller on your motherboard which handles the memory and video busses. It should have a heatsync or heatsync-fan on it, and should be located somewhere around your processor. If your northbridge is damaged, you'll have problems with video and possibly memory access (random lockups, weird glitches, general inconsistancy).
 
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