Unlocking a 6800NU AGP, artifacts in windows media player?

[PingSpike]

I unlocked both the PPs and the extra vertex shader on this card when I was messing around with it awhile back. Games seemed fine, if I really looked I saw some small things I thought may have been artifacts occasionally...but I couldn't really say if they weren't normally there.

However, when I'd run windows media player videos many of them had black specs, like dead pixels almost all over the output.

I'm not familiar with overclocking/unlocking video cards really...so I just set it back to default and sort of forgot about it for awhile. I have a few questions though:

What was likely causing the artifacting? The pixel pipelines or the vertex shader? I wouldn't think the vertex shader would be used in video playback...but then again I figured I'd only be seeing artifacts when the card was in games too so I guess I just don't know.

Didn't nvidia have some trouble with a decoder or something in this series of cards? Could that be related? I don't seem to have any trouble while the PPs and VS are disabled.

My machine is prime stable and even made it overnight while priming and running 3dmark01 in a loop, but I do only have a 350w fortron PSU...do you think the PSU just doesn't have enough juice for the extra jump?

 

[2Xtreme21]

Those are artifacts and your pipes are probably the culprit. Try locking up just the pipes, leaving the vertex shader open, and see if you still have artifacts. The artifacts have absolutely nothing to do with anything but the defective pipes. So, unfortunately, anything else you do won't help the cause.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, I didn't think so. I think I read the vertex shader doesn't really offer much of a peformance increase compared to the pipes. Its a shame I got a turd, but thats they way it is.