Please help - video card problems

[vj8usa]

This is about a friend's video card, a Sapphire 9500 Pro. All of a sudden, after having made no changes to the card itself (no overclocking, pipeline unlocking, etc.), the output became extremely artifacted and garbled. Here's a screenshot of it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v432/vj8usa/ati.jpg

I have no clue what could have caused this, because his case is well ventilated, so overheating wouldn't have been the problem. I also tried unlocking the 4 locked pipelines on the card (after the problem started), and nothing changed. The performance of the card is no different from before - the only difference is the horrible output. I tried the card on several computers and several monitors, and all displayed the same problem (so the problem is definitely in the card). Does anyone have any suggestions on what could be wrong or on how to fix this problem? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[zagood]

Fan still spinning?

If so, time for a replacement card.

If not, get an AC Silencer to replace the existing one.

-z

 

[vj8usa]

Yeah, the fan's working fine. So there's no way to fix this problem that you know of? Oh yeah, and ATITool doesn't report any artifacting when scanning, which must mean that the problem is with the output and not the processing (I think).

 

[zagood]

Does it show like that at the BIOS post too, or only in windows?

Any artificial artifact detector probably won't show a problem if you've got massive corruption like that.

If you want, you can try a few things, but probably won't help...

- Different drivers, grab some that are about a year old.
- Try plugging the monitor into the other output.

How long has he had it? Possible to RMA?

-z