What's the reason for artifacts on my x1900gt ?

[sourtimes9990]

Hello,

I was hoping for some advice/opinions on a recent problem that is cropping up with my video card. I have a Sapphire x1900gt 250mb rev.2 pcie gfx card. Recently I've started getting tearing artifacts, the kind that look like a long line ending in a point, sort of a huge, stretched out, narrow triangle coming off the tip, edge of something being rendered. A few months back this card was having some heat issues, it was really hot to the touch both feeling the heatsink and the back of the card where the gpu is mounted.

I purchased an accellero x2 and the temps came right down and the heat issues were resolved. Currently monitoring it with ATI Tray tools, my temps are still good, 37C idle and 49C load. And to touch the back of the card where the gpu is or the metal of the heatsink there is no noticeable heat. Yet recently I have started getting these artifacts. I have tried drastically underclocking the card as well, yet they still seem to crop up.

Sometimes it starts immediately after loading a game, other times it doesn't until a few hours into playing some wow or cs:s, other times it does not happen at all. What is odd is the inconsistency of it happening is uniform between the card being underclocked or running at it's stock clocks.

I've never overclocked this card and I have a decent enough, quality brand (Enermax 450W) PSU for the system I am running. The heatsink is properly mounted and I should have no other heat issues, I have a Scythe Infinity on my CPU (e6400 not oced) and my idle temp there is 33C and load is low to mid 40sC.

The only noticeable heat issue I notice in my system is my NB is fairly hot to the touch, not quite hot enough to burn if you leave your finger on it, but almost there. I have an Asus P5B vanilla mb. But I believe if not mistaken that even if it were to be too hot, it would not cause artifacting in 3D games.

The card is about one year old right now. Just curious if this is a sign that the card is going to die, or I will just have to deal with this artifacting. What is odd is if I alt-tab out and back in, it goes away, but it is clearly artifacting. I've tried using several different driver versions for the card as well.

Any help or thoughts are appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

 

[lyssword]

*nvm you tried that
By the way, if you drastically underclock any vid card, you'll start to see artifacts to the same effect as drastically overlocking.

 

[Modular]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: sourtimes9990
Recently I've started getting tearing artifacts, the kind that look like a long line ending in a point, sort of a huge, stretched out, narrow triangle coming off the tip, edge of something being rendered. A few months back this card was having some heat issues, it was really hot to the touch both feeling the heatsink and the back of the card where the gpu is mounted. </end quote></div>

Those are memory artifacts and, as a general rule, aren't fixable. You could try underclocking the memory and seeing if that helps. Are you sure that the aftermarket HSF is making contact with the memory chips?


There's not much we can do for your card. She's on life support. Sorry