--Radeon 8500LE--

[ksherman]

as the title says, I get tons of artifacts in games etc. such as Rainbow 6 3 and many others. It is not overclock yet, but i am running the ATITool to see what it *can* do, it started dropping my memory clock and is now down around 180Mhz from Factory default 230Mhz, and still dropping. Whay do i have so many artifacts? I havent seen anyone else with the problem...

EDIT: ATITool just brought it down to 160MHz :brokenheart:

 

[Killrose]

Cheack you HS/fan, it has probably died or is barely spinning.

 

[ksherman]

no, fan is working fine and there doesnt seem to be any excess heat coming from the card...

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: ksherman
no, fan is working fine and there doesnt seem to be any excess heat coming from the card...

is the heatsink touching the surface of the GPU?
something has to be wrong with heat....

 

[Killrose]

Did the card ever work right for you?
Does it start out ok, then get worse as it heats up?
Do you have artifacts in 2d?
Try removing the card and re-installing it.

Might be time to move on and either get another one for $45 or something better for a little more.

 

[Aftermath]

I don't think it's a heat related issue. I had a Sapphire 8500LE and the fan died on it. It had already been replaced in my main rig by a Radeon 9800NP, so I just popped off the fan and left it in an older box. It ran fine clocked up to 300 core, 250 memory. The heatsink was never that hot to the touch. By any chance, did you try to flash it with regular 8500 BIOS at some point? I know my card was very flaky with BIOS. I tried a few different sets to try to get some extra performance out of that card and they all gave me artifacts or serious problems one way or another. The only ones that would work correctly again were the original BIOS I had backed up off the card in the first place.

 

[ksherman]

where can i find a new BIOS?
Does anyone know if its worth it to try and FLASH to a 9200? If it is a BIOS issue, mabye that would fix it...

 

[ksherman]

I only have consistent problems in newer games... Also in the 3dMark 2003 in the second and third video tests, there is tons of artifacts.

 

[Killrose]

Originally posted by: ksherman
where can i find a new BIOS?
Does anyone know if its worth it to try and FLASH to a 9200? If it is a BIOS issue, mabye that would fix it...

No, sorry, but it's not a bios issue. The card is probably dead. I killed an 8500 once by pressing on the edge of the PCB to make sure the card was firmly in the AGP slot. The PSU was not even plugged in, but I figure the capacitors of the video card were charged or something.

Fired the comp up, and it was artifact city. Too bad too, it volt modded, ramsink'd and rock stable @305+MHz core/mem and that was back when the cards were still worth $150 or so used.

 

[Killrose]

Originally posted by: ksherman
I only have consistent problems in newer games... Also in the 3dMark 2003 in the second and third video tests, there is tons of artifacts.

it is possible that 1 mem chip went bad. You never replied if or not this card worked at all for you at onetime.

 

[ksherman]

well, im not sure EXACTLY when it started, but as far as i can remember, there have alway been little artifacts (ie little grey boxes) around many components to a games HUD's around the life meter and such. The first time i really noticed a down turn was in playing R6 3, and there were textures everywhere they shouldn't have been... made the game unplayable at times. But those problems in R6 were consisten, meaning that there were not always artifacts in the game.

 

[GreenMonkey]

My non-LE 64MB 8500 started getting artifacts a while ago. Like strange planes popping up, FFXI had like rubber band like planar artifacts that stretched from my dude's belt off into infinity, etc.

I tried underclocking to no avail.

The card didn't used to do it - I got it used from a buddy and ran it for about 1-1.5 years before it started acting up.


A lot of googling on the internet (it was hard to find info) found some speculation about it being a power issue - some people had luck with a new PS. I knew mine wasn't power because nothing had changed (300W Antec PS).

I needed an upgrade anyway. Switched over to an MSI 9800pro refurbed for $170. Gave the 8500 to my wife. Still has the same symptoms. She can play Sims2 for about an hour before she starts to get artifacts.

Symptoms of the card:
Works fine in 2D. Works fine in 3D for a little while and then starts blipping out, or immediately has artifacts, depending on game/workload of the card. Depends on how tough the 3D is. UT2004 Demo looked fine, but C&C Generals was spazzing. Ditto for FFXI - worked fine for about an hour.

Quake 2 looked and played fine, though, even if I played hours of it



Solution: probable bad card. Get a refurbed 9800pro as a budget gaming card.


Good luck, though. If you get rid of them, tell me how, and I could save on buying the wife a new 3D card.