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Graphical artifacts despite of normal temperatures

2K views 20 replies 5 participants last post by  B Rastax 
#1 ·
Hello everyone,

Just thought I should try a support forum as a last resort before I turn to the company from which I bought my PC (service is usually horrible in computer retailers in Israel, :|).

Well, my problem, is that I get graphical artifacts in every game and/or 3D application with average to high requirements (Half-Life 2, Far Cry, that HDR rendering demo, etc.). These glitches often are briefly flashing lines and shapes (which, for some reason, correspond to the player's perspective... but that's understandable I suppose). These things appear mainly in the more demanding areas in the game map, though they sometimes appear everywhere. Again, this is recurrent in every game.

I am aware that over-heating in the card may cause this sort of problems, so I checked the temperatures. On idle mode, my card tops at about 40c. In max 3D processing (Half-Life 2 - Episode One with all settings maxed and after about 30 minutes of gameplay) it tops at around 60-65c. However, performance-wise, the game(s) run perfectly - I usually get an average FPS of 60-70 and it never drops below 30. Also no sound problems, no crashing, nothing.

My drivers are, of course, up to date and I even tried downgrading them. Didn't help.

Here are my specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3500
Albatron GeForce 7800GT 256MB
1GB DDR Dual Channel RAM
WinXP Pro with SP2
Every driver imaginable up to date


I would GREATLY appreciate any help.

P.S: If screenshots of the weird glitches are needed, I will post some.

Thanks!
 
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#4 ·
Thanks for the replies.

No, I am not OC'ing the card, and not any other hardware in my system for that matter.

Tried reseating the card, and RAM, didn't help.
Also, I should mention that I have recently reformat my PC. They problem existed before AND after the reformat, so I doubt it is a software problem :(.

I am going to post a link to a short video capture of a minute or two of Episode One Gameplay (I hope that's legal, lol).

I will try to run the programs recommended here.
Any other suggestions?
Thanks again.
 
#5 ·
OK, I've got the video.



It's about 6 minutes in length.

Watch closely, you'll see the artifacts. They are most obvious near the end of the video. I've discovered that it depends on what I'm looking at in any given moment (if I were to look at the floor, etc, they would stop appearing).

Again, thanks in advance.
 
#7 ·
Absolutely NOTHING is overclocked. I double checked that.

About the PSU - Well, this is a fairly new system (bought in October 2005), so it should be OK.

This is turning out to be a hardware problem in the card itself, don't you think (no point in denial anymore, lol)?
 
#8 ·
OK, a little update.

I've tried some things. It turns out that the problem has nothing to do with the workload on the graphics card. I played Episode One on 640X480 with everything set to the lowest settings possible (also no Antialiasing or Anisotropic), and tried it with and without vertical sync.

The artifacts still showed.

Also, I've made another video, this time showing that when I move my mouse the artifacts move to, and sometimes just disappear (this isn't to say that only one viewing angle causes them to show, but.... well, I dunno :|).

Here it is.
 
#9 ·
Do you have an integrated graphics card in your PC? If you do, try removing the Nvidia card and try using the integrated graphics and see if you still see the artifacts. If you dont, then you have either a bad card, or a driver or cooling problem in the card.
If you are positive cooling and driver issues are resolved, then I would say get a new card...
 
#11 ·
I have the EXACT same problem as you. My specs are as follows:

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum w/ AMD64 3500+ Venice Core
Leadtek PX7800GT Extreme
Kingston Valuram 2 x 512MB DDR400 Dual Channel
Windows SP2

Seems like most of our parts are similar. Mind posting more detailed specs of your machine and maybe we could narrow down the problem? If we cooperate we might be able to work it out :)
 
#14 ·
Well I'm sure my parts are a bit 'generic' since I'm not a serious hardware junky (in terms of which company makes my cooling and such), but things SHOULD be ok unless it's old or cheap or something.

Then again, games also SHOULD not have graphical artifacts in them...

And about detailed specs, sure:
Um... let's see.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+, stock (box) cooling.
Epox 9NPA Ultra+ (nForce 4) motherboard
1024 (2X512) SuperTalent DDR PC3200 400 MHz (2X200)
Albatron GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 RAM
Windows XP Pro SP2
520W Power Supply (have no idea from which company)
In terms of cooling (again, no idea of the makers so this is gonna be a little amature): I got, besides the CPU and graphics card cooling, a fan on the motherboard chip, two for the Power supply, one for the hard drive, and two more for the case itself (one of which is HUGE, about 6" in diameter)

That's all for now. If you need any more information I will gladly get it.
 
#15 ·
Seems pretty unlikely that both problem systems in this thread would have bad RAM or dodgey power supplies, so it's either a driver issue or some fundamental problem with the 7800GT.
It's not the first thread on this board about artifact problems with the 7800GT.
In fact......
> Google <
 
#17 ·
Rumpo-Stiltskin said:
Seems pretty unlikely that both problem systems in this thread would have bad RAM or dodgey power supplies, so it's either a driver issue or some fundamental problem with the 7800GT.
It's not the first thread on this board about artifact problems with the 7800GT.
In fact......
> Google <
In fact...
Google

higher result count on the 6800.

You could say it's because it's older but...

Have you seen instances of this problem on 7800gt's only on google, or elsewhere?

I'm just trying to narrow it down to a solvable problem.
 
#18 ·
I have an idea, by the way.

Do you think that if i were to disconnect a bunch of stuff in my system (say the optical drives, the sound card, anything that isn't essential to the pc) that use power, it could help?

Because that should give (if the problem IS lack of sufficient power) more juice to the card and if the artifacts disappeared i'd know the problem is with the PSU.
 
#20 ·
B Rastax said:
Have you seen instances of this problem on 7800gt's only on google, or elsewhere?
I only just looked into the issue.
I've been using a 7800GS (running perfectly BTW) and assumed that the two cards would be nearly identical, however, it appears that although the 7800GT uses the same core the AGP version has been bridged back (using the HSI bridge chip) because it was designed for PCI express.
You haven't actually said whether we're talking about AGP or PCI-E in your case?

B Rastax said:
I have an idea, by the way.

Do you think that if i were to disconnect a bunch of stuff in my system (say the optical drives, the sound card, anything that isn't essential to the pc) that use power, it could help?

Because that should give (if the problem IS lack of sufficient power) more juice to the card and if the artifacts disappeared i'd know the problem is with the PSU.
Not really.
Your GeForce card will be using about a third to a half of the system's total power when running flat out.
The ancillary components you're talking about would make virtually no difference relatively, so you'd still be none the wiser.

It just doesn't sound like a power issue to me.
The type of artifacts you're getting are generally caused by RAM (either Graphic or System), rendering problems (hardware / software) or maybe a wider hardware / software conflict with something else in your system.
In other words...... virtually anything. :eek:

Certainly any doubts over the integrity of your power supply would be one of the easiest things to eliminate.
Simply buy or borrow a very well rated (forget about wattage - look for high efficiency and high ampage, particularly on the 12v circuit) power supply from somewhere, and try it.
 
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