New videocard, horrible artifacts, what do you think is the culprit?

[imported_shaw]

My old 9800Pro was starting to artifact horribly in and out of games so I decided it was time to get a replacement. I'm really trying to hold out for AM2 or Conroe this summer before I do a major upgrade.

To try and keep some life in my five year old PC for just a little while longer yesterday I purchased a 6800GS AGP for my motherboard (mind you it's an Asus P4S533 AGP4X). Whenever I play any game for more than 10 minutes the graphics start to really get screwy. My only fix is a reboot, but once again it's the same thing after 10 minutes of gameplay. Once it starts to get screwy it stays screwy in all games that I start up and can only be fixed temporary with a reboot. I've tried a few different Forware drivers and the problem is still there.

The videocard's temperature reads 40 degrees celcius so I don't think it's a heating issue (since the threshold is 110).

It leads me to believe that either it is a compatibilty issue of an 8X card in an old 4X motherboard or the videocard itself is bad right out of the box.

So, do any of you think it's probably the motherboard to blame or my videocard?

 

[dug777]

I had some directx errors that were similar to that (and the only reason i found that out, after several 9800 pros ironically enough, was because i alt-tabbed out of farcry, when i alt-tabbed back in the problem had gone away, although it would come back after a while, but i knew it was directx problem because my HDTV tuner wouldn't work until i uninstalled directx updates (something you do not want to try ), eventually just reinstalled windows & the problems haven't come back...

 

[Stumps]

I would probably blame Directx as well, I had horrible artifacting on my Winxp desktop awhile back when I was still using my Gigabyte 9700PRO(about 2 months ago), however if i took the card out and put it in another computer, it wouldn't experience the artifacting.
I just reformatted and lived happily ever after.

 

[imported_shaw]

I did a reformat of Windows XP last night and the problem is still there (grrr). I was talking to a friend and he suggested maybe my PSU isn't giving my videocard enough juice but to me that doesn't seem like that would cause that problem. It is a five year old 420W PSU that came with my case (Asus).

 

[Slitherythesnake]

I had the same problem you had just a week ago, however, it was the OpenGL drivers that had somehow become corrupted. For me, the solution was a quick driver reinstall.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: shaw
I did a reformat of Windows XP last night and the problem is still there (grrr). I was talking to a friend and he suggested maybe my PSU isn't giving my videocard enough juice but to me that doesn't seem like that would cause that problem. It is a five year old 420W PSU that came with my case (Asus).

A five year old 420w PSU...hmmm I doubt your PSU is even close to 420w then, it is only recently that PSU manufacturers have been actually making PSU's that have a true power out put that is close to the rated figure.

Five years ago you PSU is more likely to be around 250w-300w, which is probably way below what a 6800 requires.

I have a few old PSU's laying about that are around 4-5 years old some of them are decent brands like codgen and yet they are way off there rated out put.
one that comes to mind is a codgen that i recently attemped to put in to a 2.66ghz P4 system with a 9600XT setup.

the PSU was rated for 400w, which should have been fine, but the system would experience random reboots and the Harddrives would just stop for no reason.
I shoved my Antec 350w smartpower in and the problem went away.

I Thought hmmm, what going on here, the 400 watter runs fine in my 2000+ AMD system and crashes the P4...I then closely checked the label on the side and in really small print down the bottom it read "TOTAL POWER OUTPUT +3.3V +5V +12V max load = 210w"

so much for my 400w PSU.

I currently have in my main computer a 380w antec truepower, it runs wih out any problems at all, it's specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+@2.4ghz(241mhz FSB) stock voltages
Gigabyte GA-K8NS PRO
1024mb DDR400 (2x 512mb)
Asus V9999GT Geforce 6800GT
2 x WD1200 120gb in RAID 0
Thermaltake Aquarius water cooling kit
Pioneer A08 DVD-RW
Lite On 16x DVD-ROM
1.44mb FDD

according to my Antecs label its max output is 360w...

 

[dug777]

Hmm, what does this artifacting look like?

I'll be able to tell you if it looks like the problems i was having...

 

[JSFLY]

You need a new psu but that probably not causing the artifacts.

Heres some things you can try:

0) Set your card to run at 4x -> still artifacts?
1) download rivatuner and underclock you card ->still artifacts?
2) try DNA drivers
3) update mobo drivers
4)update system bios
5)update videocard bios

 

[Shamrock]

I agree with Stumps. I thought my vid card was dying, turned out to be a dieing PSU. It was cheapo 500w from Aspire (came w/ case), I upgraded to a 550w Antec Truepower (dual rails) RMA'ed my vid card (BFG said it probably ruined it), and now everything is gone (Yay me and my CC). I had tried like 8 different Forceware versions, I did a format, I even went as far as saying my electric company corrupted my HD (because we get alot of brownouts).