Subtle image imperfections in brand new Geforce?

[Samsonid]

*This message was also posted in the Technical Forum, but it is also relevant here I believe.

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This is a brand new Video Card (2days ago).

The card is NOT overclocked. As a matter of fact nothing is overclocked on my system.

The latest drivers for the card have been installed (as they are offered by the manufacturer's Website)

Yet, although everything seems quite normal, there are certain occasional imperfections here and there, usuallywithin the toolbar areas, dialogue boxes and drop down lists in some applications (see picture example) These white bars in this example are not normal !

The old card didn't have those problems. What gives? How should I go about to troubleshoot this?

Does anyone have similar problem? Any ideas?
Thanks in advance

P.S. This is a Visiontech Geforce GTS-V and the system is on a 300W (brand new) power supply.

 

[richleader]

You might want to try the reference drivers from nvidia.com. This might sound stupid, but have you tried rebooting your system? (sometimes people post before they check the obvious.) Are you sure you have the drivers appropriate for your operating system? Barring that, several other posters have had to return their GTS-Vs, so you won't be the only one, though I'm not sure they're any more flakey than other cards on average.

 

[Tomek]

as was suggested above, downloading and reinstalling the most recent nvidia drivers might help, but you might also want to check if the video card is seated properly in the AGP slot...

 

[Samsonid]

The latest drivers posted by Visiontek are Detonator4 21.85.
These drivers have been installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, uninstalled in safe mode, reinstalled etc etc a few times and in all cobinations just to make there was no stone unturned in regards to drivers.
BTW I am only going for officialy supported drivers; all proceedures within specs and by the book.

Already have the latest VIA 4in1 installed as well as DirectX8.0a

Yes the system has been rebooted several times. Yes, the reference drivers from Nvidia.com (DetonatorXP 21.83) had been installed at one point.

The only thing that yet remains to do is to physically remove and reseat the card in the AGP slot (thanks for reminding me of this)

Also something else, the imperfections that I mentioned don't apear every time. They occure unexpectedly about 50% of the time.

Could it also be that my PSU, although brand, new doesn't supply clean power?
Could it also be the memory chips? They are old PC100 SDRAM.

Taking it one step at a time, reseating the card will be the next bet...
I'll let you know.

Thanks for your suggestions so far.

aa... one more thing: The card is sharing an IRQ11 with "ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering". Do you think this is normal? No conflicts (exclamation points etc) are reported by windows though. Even if there was a conflict, I wouldn't dare touch the "ACPI holder" (its a system device).

 

[merlocka]

The card is sharing an IRQ11 with "ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering".

This is normal.

You are not the only person to have problems with GTS-V. Try "underclocking" the card, specifically the memory.

Visiontek seems to have implimented a lifetime warrantee. I'd take them up on it if you can't resolve it.

 

[rogue1979]

Windows doesn't always detect all hardware conflicts. I would suggest removing your sound card and all of it's drivers completely, then see what happens. Also you could try a Detonator 3 instead of the 4.

 

[Samsonid]

Sound card?

This machine is mostly used for work, which means the on-board sound of the MoBo is all there is (no need to get too fancy there)

About Detonators3, I'll give it a try.

Hopefully, there will be some free time for me tomorrow to open the case and reseat the card first.

 

[Tomek]

did you re-download the drivers? although unlikely, the download might have been corrupted... it's also possible that this might be a windows problem (i.e. download the latest patches from their website)

 

[Samsonid]

This machine has Win98SE.
Ok, there are some more developments:

I discovered that while running Internet Explorer the visual artifacts are NOT present. However, when IE is closed the artifacts are back.

Olala... now I am realy confused!
At first this may be good news, meaning that the card itself may actualy not be defective and it is probably a software issue.

So, there it is, something about IE that when it loads seems to sooth the problem.... but what is it, what is it?
(This machine has IE6.0)

 

[Samsonid]

-After removing and then re-seating the Card on its slot, did not improve the situation.

-Installing Detonator3 did not help either. (Detonator4 are now reinstalled)

One more example of bad display: The "Toy soldiers" Nvidia demo that came with the card (example of problem at 800X600 and 32bit color)