Video card... or something else?

[1N0V471V]

I got my X2 CPU in last Friday but was unable to mess around with it until Sunday afternoon at a location with no Internet connection (2.6GHz on stock voltage!). I went along overclocking as one should, running Prime95 and Memtest throughout the day. Then it came time to game at a friends house lastnight. Both CS:S and F.E.A.R. get white artifacts (not everywhere though) while playing for maybe 2+ minutes. I know for a fact it's not the processor (ran Prime95 for 24 hours), RAM (ran Memtest for 6+ hours), video card (tried using the 7900GT, and two different 6600GTs, all of the EVGA branding), PSU (600w, enough said), etc. etc. It worked perfectly fine before and I could game for hours. I also attempted to re-install the games as well as the video drivers (I also tried the latest BETA). The only thing left I can think of is to re-format the drive and start over? The last time I did this was two weeks ago. Maybe there are some patches needed from Microsoft that aren't downloaded through Automatic Updates?

Ideas are appreciated!

 

[Lord Evermore]

Did the games ever play right in the first place, or did it start after you transported it to your friend's house? You might have knocked the heatsink loose just slightly, enough that it stays alive but produces heat issues. Did you try reducing the overclock at all? That's always the first thing you should do when you run into problems, despite the successful Prime95 and memtest. Did you try running it with the case side pulled off and a fan blowing into it, to remove any possibility of it being an airflow issue?

"600w, enough said" -- Technically not enough said, not everybody may see your signature, and there are plenty of cheap "high wattage" PSUs that aren't nearly as good as better brands that are rated at half the wattage. The OCZ 600W GameXStream of course does have plenty good ratings.

"2.6GHz on stock voltage" - also only impressive if someone sees the signature

 

[1N0V471V]

Games worked fine and I did some hardcore all night sessions of CS a few times last week. I did no try reducing the overclock, which I will try when I get home (this is normally the first thing I do when I run into these kidns of problems). And yes, the side panel window was off nearly the whole time.

And about the "bragging" I know, but if those people don't look in my signatue, well, too bad for them

 

[Lord Evermore]

the side panel window was off nearly the whole time.

Still not necessarily enough, try it with a fan blowing into it. Cases are designed to have proper airflow with the sides on. If you remove a side, you don't get the same directional pull of fresh air (a rear fan doesn't need to pull air from the front of the case and over other components, if air can just come in from the side, and a video card or CPU fan also might not necessarily actually pull much fresh air from the open side, they could just recirculate warm air).

I doubt it's anything to do with software, if it was working before (although you should always go check the Windows Update website manually, as primarily only critical security patches are downloaded through Automatic Updates). There's also the AMD dual-core driver optimization patch that you may want to install, though I don't think it will necessarily fix anything here. This definitely sounds like some sort of heat issue, or possibly an outright damaged component, maybe from a static discharge. You weren't shuffling your feet on the carpet before you picked it up were you?

 

[1N0V471V]

Well, we had a box fan blowing on it the whole time in the basement in the air conditioningg. I monitor my temps with Motherboard Monitor and it seems to work well -- my cards were not overheating I know that. I guess it is possible something got messed up due to static, but it's so humid out I find it unlikely. I installed the CPU on granite counter tops and properly grounded myself to the case. I think what I'm going to do is test my stuff in my buddy's computer (he's got a DFI SLI-DR too) and see what kind of results I get.

If it were static, which it very well could be, one would think that it would not work in 2D mode fine (used it to surf the net and encode some DVDs for a few hours lastnight). Thanks for the help Lord Evermore, I do appreciate it.

 

[1N0V471V]

The optimization didn't help... setting to stock speeds soon