Video artifacts only after a reboot

[shurato]

Just built a brand new system and I have a troubling issue. It seems whenever I reboot my PC I get bad video artifacts on my screen, even during post. If I completely shut the system down and power up, everything is normal..

My system is brand new built today.
- E8400 non overclocked
- Biostar TP43D2-A7 Mobo (latest bios + NOT overclocked, default settings)
- 2x 1gb GSKILL 1066 Ram
- Seagate 7200.10 Sata II 750gb HD
- Sapphire 4850 (New model with aftermarket Zalman Fan, comes OC'ed)
- IDE DVD Burner
- Acer 22" LCD (Old monitor been working fine)
- Antec Earthwatts 500D (Delta brand, in a new Antec Sonata III case)
- Windows XP

Any ideas? I'm a bit lost on what to do except try to swap out parts but unfortunately this is a brand new system build upgrading from a P4 and I have nothing to swap out to test.

All looks normal when powering on from a cold boot. System is fast and about to install and test a game with it. Temperatures are normal. The only thing I can think of outright is that the power supply may be a bit weak but I've been doing my research and I thought 500 watts would be sufficient with my setup as I do not plan to really overclock or ever do crossfire.

 

[Dadofamunky]

The PS should be OK. Sounds like a driver issue.

 

[shurato]

Theres artifacting during post in boot up when you see the bios tests before Windows XP even loads.
Again this only happens when I reboot my PC.

 

[Ryl3x]

Cant be the card....ATI is perfect.

 

[Narynan]

Yeah, I would be inclined to think that it is a bad card. As much not fun as that is to think about. I dont know if the fan fix will work with the Zalman, or if it has a different Bios, but I would try that to start. Then make sure than the GPU sink is tightened on all cornors. Can you underclock it and see if it does the same thing?

I really think you have bad memory on the card, but that is pure speculation at the moment. I would like to know what the temps are when you load after a fresh power up, and after a reboot and see how those differ. You can use GPU-Z .2.7 to find those out.

Also, does your mobo have two PCI-E slots? Can you trade slots and see if this does the same thing?

So, heres my guesses.

Over heating.
Bad Memory.
Faulty card.

None are fun to deal with.

 

[Slugbait]

I'm gonna take a guess that it's a speed issue. During a reboot, I believe EIST will drop the clock speed of the CPU...on the flip side, a cold boot spins the cycles up.

I've been seeing numerous different issues with AMD 4800-series cards on Intel platforms at various forums. DVI not working, system going to sleep for no good reason, etc.

Seems the more common solution is to disable EIST in the BIOS...since everything is fine on a cold boot, EIST would be my primary suspect.

 

[shurato]

Originally posted by: Slugbait
I'm gonna take a guess that it's a speed issue. During a reboot, I believe EIST will drop the clock speed of the CPU...on the flip side, a cold boot spins the cycles up.

I've been seeing numerous different issues with AMD 4800-series cards on Intel platforms at various forums. DVI not working, system going to sleep for no good reason, etc.

Seems the more common solution is to disable EIST in the BIOS...since everything is fine on a cold boot, EIST would be my primary suspect.

I turned off Intel Speedstep in the bios and no luck. I did catch one reboot with out the artifacts.

 

[shurato]

Originally posted by: Narynan
Yeah, I would be inclined to think that it is a bad card. As much not fun as that is to think about. I dont know if the fan fix will work with the Zalman, or if it has a different Bios, but I would try that to start. Then make sure than the GPU sink is tightened on all cornors. Can you underclock it and see if it does the same thing?

I really think you have bad memory on the card, but that is pure speculation at the moment. I would like to know what the temps are when you load after a fresh power up, and after a reboot and see how those differ. You can use GPU-Z .2.7 to find those out.

Also, does your mobo have two PCI-E slots? Can you trade slots and see if this does the same thing?

So, heres my guesses.

Over heating.
Bad Memory.
Faulty card.

None are fun to deal with.

Well this is the card with the aftermarket fan so I'm guessing the fan fix might not be necessary.

The thing is, temps dont seem to matter. I can do a fresh cold boot then go into bios and reboot right after and there will be artifacts. I can play a game for several hours and I wont get any artifacts in Windows.

 

[Narynan]

Alright. So are there any overclocks on your system yet to this point? How bad is the artifacting? Can you snap a picture for us?

Can you underclock the card? I maybe for whatever reason this chip on your card cant handle the stress? How old is the PSU? Is it brand new?

The most worrying part about that is that A) I am looking at that card to match with my other 4850. That exact same on. B) everything looks normal.

So after a cold boot. Ok, so....

Can you cold boot, turn it all the way down, and back on and down again, and so forth. If you power all the way down and boot it right back up, does it make a difference? Cause there has to be something going on with either the PCI-E bus or something that is causing that. And the video card in and of itself does not card between a cold booth and a restart. It does the same processing cycles for either. It does matter the to MB though.

I am starting to think your issue is MB related. It's just to sepific to be card related. Because your having NO other issues other than during reboots.

 

[shurato]

Originally posted by: Narynan
Alright. So are there any overclocks on your system yet to this point? How bad is the artifacting? Can you snap a picture for us?

Can you underclock the card? I maybe for whatever reason this chip on your card cant handle the stress? How old is the PSU? Is it brand new?

The most worrying part about that is that A) I am looking at that card to match with my other 4850. That exact same on. B) everything looks normal.

So after a cold boot. Ok, so....

Can you cold boot, turn it all the way down, and back on and down again, and so forth. If you power all the way down and boot it right back up, does it make a difference? Cause there has to be something going on with either the PCI-E bus or something that is causing that. And the video card in and of itself does not card between a cold booth and a restart. It does the same processing cycles for either. It does matter the to MB though.

I am starting to think your issue is MB related. It's just to sepific to be card related. Because your having NO other issues other than during reboots.

Artifacting is bad, I will snap a picture tommorow when I go find my digital camera.


I think you may be right but one can never be too sure. Until I did a bios update, I could not read any temperatures on my motherboard/cpu. This is becoming a royal pain in the ass because all the parts are new. Because it can be anything from the video card, ram, motherboard, or even power supply.

Not sure how to underclock the card, I did not use the Sapphire CD, I used the latest ATI Catylst drivers from the get go. I highly doubt this is driver related since
artifacts happen before Windows even load. The PSU is new. Every single part in this computer is brand new. I just built the system a few days ago with all new parts.

Yes no artifacts if powered completely down then turned on, doesnt matter how many time's I do it. ONLY happens on a reboot.

 

[Narynan]

Yea, the more I think about it and research similar problems, the more I think it is MB related. Which sucks, because it requires a complete trear down of the system. I doubt its the card, you would be seeing SOMETHING during normal operation before the reboot. Unless the video card simpally is not dumping the memory at all. but that just seems stupid. It would seem much more likely that something on the MB itself is just not dumping during the reboot cycle and causing the headache.

At this point I don't believe that underclocking the card is going to work, because I doubt it's a card issue.

I'm going to stick with some kind of hardware corruption. Amybe related to the PCI-E bus, or ... something. LoL. I could guess all day, but without some kind of video card swap, or MB swap, I think we're at a standstill.