Signs of video card failure

[filmore crashcart]

About a month ago, I got a Sapphire 9700 Pro fron the NewEgg refurb dept. Fully realizing that I was taking a chance, I put the card in and was relieved to find that it worked just fine and has worked fine for the last couple of weeks. My system stats are as stated in the link at the bottom.... I only have the fsb pushed to 140 and the card is not overclocked now (I had it only at 335/330 before - enough to push 3d marks another 500 pts). Lately, signs of what I think is the card failing have appeared. I first noticed it when the machine has been on for awhile and the screen saver with the Moebius Strip is running. The image would completely fragment until it looked like you were looking through a kalidoscope. After going back to desktop from the screensaver and playing an opengl game, the image would again degenerate into artifacts and corruption. When I rebooted, everything was fine and it seemed as long as I didn't run the moebius strip screensaver, all was cool.
Last night I was playing a friend on the west coast in a game of MOHAA. It wasn't an hour in the game before the corruption started up again. I had to quit playing and I rebooted and as before, everything was fine. After rebooting I did an hour session with Spearhead with all eye candy on and had no problem.

I've never had a graphics card fail on me before but, from what I've read, this is what I think it is.... My question is: how long do I have before it becomes unusable? I have some unexpected money in and if I have to get another card, I'd rather wait to see what plays out with ATI's 350 or Nvidia's FX (if they fix the hairdryer thing). I won't mess with refurbs anymore. I assume the card I have (if this isn't just some sort of driver glitch) was probably highly overclocked by someone until it became unstable and then it was returned. I pulled it out and gave it a physical inspection and the fan/heatsink looks fine and the fan does still work.

Any feedback would be appreciated..... and please, you don't have to remind me I was taking a risk with a refurb - I know, but I really love the 9700 pro and would be willing to get another, brand new, one if this one is really on its way out.

Thanks

 

[chizow]

Return your video card to stock speeds and your FSB to normal specs and see if you get the same artifacting/tearing. There may not be anything wrong with the card, it just may have a low fault tolerance when it comes to OCing and or running with the AGP bus out of spec.

Also, heat can cause artifacting. Considering you said it runs fine after X amount of time, and then artifacting becomes apparent, tells me heat can be an issue. Those who knock the FX for its heat dissipation either fail to acknowledge (or simply dont know b/c they don't own one) the R9700pro generates extreme amounts of heat as well. Try blowing a fan directly onto the R9700pro or leaving your side panel off and see what happens. Temps around the AGP card can spike incredibly when running 3d apps and games.

Chiz

 

[filmore crashcart]

Thanks for the suggestions chizow, I'll open the side up this evening when I get home and see if it acts up. The weird thing is that there is no pattern to this.... I could have only booted up 30 minutes before and it will act up after it has run that screen saver I mentioned. I can play Spearhead for hours and it runs just fine. I had only been in MOHAA for an hour before it started acting up. I have a full tower case with 2 fans and my case temp is never over 74 degrees with the room ambient temp of 68 degrees. I felt for air movement around the fan and it seemed to be working but I'll check again.

 

[chizow]

Case temps are very misleading, particulary if your thermal diode is located down by PCI 5 or 6 (where most are). When you run with your side panel off, run 3dmark or UT2k3 demo looped (so you don't have to actively do anything) and see how hot it gets around the AGP slot. The 9700pro has that heat spreader for a reason around the capacitors. It feels like a radiator (no pun intended ) In that area, and you might never notice the temp differential unless you had a thermal sensor there or if you put your hand to it. I have a thermal sensor on my 9700pro's core, and it gets toasty hot, hotter than my T-bred B, but thats probably b/c the fan is pretty weak.

Thats really kinda weird about the Ssaver...I'm not familiar with it? Its not the matrix code saver is it? Tearing is usually the result of an unstable g-card OC or as I mentioned heat. I first noticed the intense heat spikes beginning with my GF3 Ti200 OC'd beyond Ti500 specs. Its been something I've had to address ever since.

Chiz

 

[filmore crashcart]

Well, it beats me.... I came home looped 3dmark21k for a couple of hours, played Spearhead online for another hour, and not one sign of problems. For all intent and purpose, this card seems to not have a heat problem, and I didn't change the fsb from the 140. For if it did have a heat problem, it would have shown up with all that.
Maybe the act of reseating the card did the trick, or maybe I'm fooling myself and as soon as I get done typing this and go into another game, it will act up again. the only other thing I can think of, and it is a long shot, is the fact that I changed output from the dvi with adapter to my analog crt monitor and put it back to the regular analog crt output . The arrangement with the adapter was pulling down from the weight and mabe it was disrupting the signal.... I don't know.