Small Problem with my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

[mitchafi]

For some reason recently in 3D games (city of heroes, asheron's call 2) my 9800 Pro has been doing this weird thing. When I start moving my character left or right, or in circles, the video seems to ripple horizontally. It is hard to explain but it is kind of like the image becomes unstable and little squares and lines start to move all around, like the card is trying to render the screen. It does not happen at all when I move forwards or backwards, just when I turn my avatar. Any suggestions? It's probably not worth RMA'ing and I'm not even sure if it's an acceptable reason to, but it is very bothersome and definitely graphically unattractive.

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: mitchafi

and little squares and lines start to move all around

RMA the card. It will get worse.

 

[stncttr908]

Originally posted by: Brian48

Originally posted by: mitchafi

and little squares and lines start to move all around

RMA the card. It will get worse.

I'm afraid so. It's on its last leg it appears.

 

[mitchafi]

Well I may have described it incorrectly. Nothing on the screen looks unusual as far as what I should be seeing, the card is showing what I should be seeing, just rendering it poorly I guess. There aren't weird colored objects or anything like that. I've had a card die on me before, and when it was dead I definitely knew it was dead. This seems like it might just be some type of setting, but I don't know which.

 

[killer8]

Like this?

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1535/mess1a.png
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7973/mess1b1.png
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/4980/mess1c1.png

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=31&threadid=1317086&enterthread=y

I have to underclock the memory to make the artifacts go away.

 

[mitchafi]

no, nothing like that. I would take screenshots but it won't even pick up what I'm talking about I don't think. There are no extra visual artifacts or errors of any type on the screen.

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, you can always mess around with some settings. Maybe turn fastwrites off?

 

[tomstevens26]

I'm just throwing this out there....but you don't mean vertical tearing, do you? Like a VSYNC issue?

Tom

 

[mitchafi]

I heard vsync somewhere and thought that might be it, unfortunately I don't know what the hell vsync is, so I couldn't tell you. I saw it in the ATI control panel though, and toyed around with it. Didn't seem to help. Got anymore information on that?

 

[ForceCalibur]

When your Frames per second goes beyond your Refresh rate, you may ahve issues with tearing. What kind of frames are you getting and is the ingame setting on or off?

 

[mitchafi]

I haven't been monitoring what kind of frames I get in game (I'm assuming you mean FPS). Actually I don't know how. I don't remember seeing an ingame setting for vsync in city of heroes but I'll check. The problem also occurs in Asheron's Call 2 so I'm assuming it's going to happen in pretty much any 3D game I play. I'm 99% sure there is no in-game vsync option for AC2.

 

[mitchafi]

Ok well CoH definitely doesn't have a vsync option. But here's another interesting snippet I just remembered. Occasionally, before this situation arose, I used to play AC2 in window mode, when I windowed mode, I would get the kind of behavior I am getting now, but as soon as I switched out of windowed mode it was gone. I figured that was just a natural side effect of playing in windowed mode. Well somewhere in between then it must have carried over to full-screen mode. I don't know if that helps, but just thought I'd mention it. The whole screen looks unstable, like a huge jigsaw puzzle with tiny pieces, when you turn left or right, they start getting jittery. Running forward causes nothing of the sort however. If I were to RMA this card, how long does it usually take, and what would I tell them for my reason, or would I not need one...