Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Tyrian on March 22, 2007, 02:22:32 pm
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I have no idea where to put this, because it covers every game I own, so feel free to move it if necessary.
I recently attempted to update my graphics card's drivers. I have an ATI Radeon 9800XT and am running XP. I downloaded the proper driver from their website. Before installing it, I created a system restore point, just in case something went wrong. Well, I installed it, and everything went fine, right up to the end of the install. As it was finishing, it gave me an error, then crashed. I couldn't see what the error said, as it closed with the installer. I immediately restored my system to the pre-install state. Only now, every game I play suffers from extreme graphical distortion. It usually manifests itself in hundreds of little black boxes all over the screen or models that render in ridiculous tangles of lines. Basic functions like web browsing and e-mail are unaffected. My games are the only things not working right.
Any suggestions?
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Could be that your drivers got fuxored. Run ATI cleanup (or something like that). You can get it from the ATI website. It cleans every last trace of ATI drivers from you computer. After that, reinstall the newest drivers...
It usually is best to run the cleanup program before installing new ATI drivers. You get greater success rate...
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Try the Omega drivers. I hear that Catalyst sucks nowdays.
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So basically, clean the crap Catalyst put on my system with ATI's Pooper-Scooper, then go for the Omega drivers.
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:bump:
Alright, I couldn't find ATI's Pooper-Scooper, so I went with Driver Cleaner Pro. Uninstalled ATI's drivers, ran Driver Cleaner Pro, then installed the Omega 7.1 drivers. It helped a little, but 80% of the graphical corruption is still there. I've now used the same cleaning procedure to roll back to the drivers on the CD the card came with. The problem is the same as before.
Also, now that I have rolled back, I've picked up another problem. The icon for Windows Explorer randomly changes to the AOL icon whenever I run a game. I do know that there is a recent trend in viruses to attack the drivers, instead of the OS. I'm beginning to wonder if I've picked up something that my AV can't detect. I'm going to run a last scan with Avast!, but if it doesn't find anything, then I'm out of ideas.
I don't have anything left to try, and am about ready to take my machine to a local service shop. Anyone have any last minute ideas?
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Not exactly an idea, but... total reinstall
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yeah.. i think your computer is h4x0r3d. There comes a time when its quicker to fresh start than waste another second chasing down some problem that probably goes alot deeper than you think.
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the AOL
Maybe that's your problem? :p
Anyway. It sure sounds like some subtle OS format might be in order... It's generally healthy to do that to a computer any once in a while.
And that ATI ****shovel was not called "cleanup". I remember that because I used it last weekend. But I can't remember what it's called, and can't check it since I'm not at home now. :nervous:
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I remember my old sapphire 9800 pro 256mb card. Near the end of when i stopped using it. I started getting those little black boxes and flickies all the time. I really didn't know why the card was doing it. The card had always worked fine without the ram sinks it was supposed to come with.
Then every now and again it would do this randomly in my games. Fs just happens to be the only game i took a screenshot example with.
(http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/6099/untitled40dd2.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Then skybox textures of any mission was all flickering with black flashing triangles, and by this point as of last summer, it was doing it all the time, in all my games. My friend had a geforce 5700le 128mb that really couldn't do **** compared to the 9800, so i was going to sell it to him. The moment he popped it in his computer he ripped off the heatsink for the power regulator chip (it was a chip with a heatsink that was next to the external power connector to the card). Since me and my friend were running a computer business, i made sure right then and there that he pay me 50$ for my now broken card and gave him an angered lesson in how to treat delicate **** gently and properly...this mistake he made never happened again thankfully.
Idk what was with my 9800, i eventually found out it was a problem due to the fact that my card was supposed to have been shipped with ramsinks, and mine didn't have any. So the ram started over heating at factory set clock speeds, In order to get rid of some wierd ass artifacting in my games i had to downclock the 9800's ram by like 130mhz, and then it stopped artifacting. Then i was like wtf is this bull****? I really didn't want the card broken though, it was still useful for desktop usage and gaming for that matter. Me and my friend sold 6 p3 1ghz 768mb ram rigs for people from our spare parts over the years, an extra video card would have seriously allowed us to sell a seventh computer (the machines we were selling were for everything you use a computer for, along with some light gaming(we were in no way selling gaming machines)). People loved it, we fixed machines, and if anybody wanted a computer with 17inch monitor, keyboard, mouse, average hard drive capacity, with not to mention pretty good specs for an office machine. These things were a steal selling them at 200$ a piece.
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What's in that screenshot is exactly what one of my games, Guild Wars, is doing, except those yellow bars are vertical and darker in color. The thing about triangular artifacts is what Oblivion does what loading, except the triangles are squares. I'll take a few screenshots and post them here to see if you guys have any more ideas.
The only thing is, I've never taken a screenshot before...Just never had the need...Just hit "PrtScn," but what directory is it saved to?
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C:\Games\FREESPACE2\screenshots\
by default installation parameters.
To me it sounds like the card is damaged. You could try total re-installation, but I doubt it will do any good. Also, you could try underclocking the card to find out if you can set it to stable, artefact-less mode.
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It depends on the program. In Windows it'll just go to the clipboard, but games will usually save them to their main directory.
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I'll have to de-clock it through the BIOS right?
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No, I don't even think it's possible to set GPU clocks via BIOS.
Since you have ATi card, I suggest using ATITool (http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/) instead of RivaTuner (which is better, if you had NVidia card).
Also, you could want to check what the temperatures of the card are under load. Do the problems start as soon as you start playing or does it take some time for them to appear? How is your case ventilated?
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Video corruption issues are almost always due to heat. (That said, some video cards take a moment to dump their buffer, which produces momentary artifacts but these generally do not last).
In the case posted at the beginning of this thread, I'd suggest a driver wipe and reinstall with stock drivers... and if that doesn't work, format the hard disk and start over. Eliminate all software possibilities first.
That said, there are a couple simple measures you can try before you go that extreme to gather clues. See if your video card has temperature monitoring. Motherboard Monitor (google it) is a great freeware utility for monitoring system temperatures. Check the motherboard and processor temps. Video card is usually independent, but if your system has a case heating issue it will affect all components. Conversely, if it's just the video card you won't see elevated CPU/mobo temps. Next step is to pop open your PC case and check all the fans, make sure they're all running properly. Any decent BIOS will also have a hardware monitor, so when you reboot your system check the fan speeds. Speed depends on the individual fan, so you'll need to look them up.
While most video corruption is due to heat, and is easily resolvable, it can also cause lasting damage to the video card. In short, you can fry it, and this frequently happens with or without heat issues. Which means you need to make sure it isn't software and it isn't basic hardware issues. With those two possibilities eliminated, it is likely you have a fried video card.
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Idk, for ****s and giggles get an ati overclocking utility to see if the problem is the cpu from overheating or the ram. More times than one if you're getting artifacting is usually soley on the ram from overheating, as you can usually overclock the gpu by a crazy amount and it wont artifact anything, as well as overclocking gpu's these days doesn't offer much benefit compared to overclocking the ram. Overclocking the ram is where the performance is at.
Get an overclocker that has a 3d preview thingy that will test for artifacts after you overclock. www.omegadrivers.net (http://www.omegadrivers.net) Radeon omega drivers include such a utility, but you don't have to go that extreme just to get the overclocking utility. Of course if you also want an easier time taking screenshots, loading smartshaders, and even overclocking with extra settings to tweak on your card for extra performance use omega drivers.
Or if you want just for testing purposes which seems to be what you would want in a situation like this.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/ (http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/)
Plain old ati tray tools has that overclocker with artifact tester as well. Without any modified drivers, just tweaking ****.
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While we're on the subject of temperatures, what should the normal temperature of a processor be?
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GPU or CPU?
Central processing units should stay under 50 degrees celsius on a desktop, in my opinion... and they will, if the ventilation is properly done. Laptops are a bit different, for example Sempron processors can take heat up to 90 degrees Celcius without being damaged. My Athlon64 is idling at the same value as the ambient temperature measured inside the case, due to a custom intake pipe made of a Sprite bottle and duct tape that takes room temperature air to the processor cooler isntead of case temperature air... At load the temps rise to about 45 degrees Celcius, give or take a few degrees depending on whether or not the window (of my room) is open or not.
GPU temperatures are generally higher than that and they can take more heat than CPU's; Athlon 64's can take temps up to 65-70 degrees depending on model, Intel chips throttle down before frying themselves, and other CPU's have their own critical temps. But for example my GeForce 7600 GT has a throttle-down temperature limit of 130 degrees Celcius. Not that it ever goes up there. It idles on steady 41 degrees Celcius and load temperatures are always under 50 - on less demanding games as little as 45 degrees Celcius. The Zalman VF-900 Cu cooler might have some part on that, though... :drevil:
I don't know about ATi card temperatures, though. But the hotter it runs the more likely it is that it gets artefacts or is damaged...
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For a cpu usually like 42C. Sometimes lower, sometimes higher as long as it doesn't cause corruption and random restarts. For my 7600gt gpu which actually came with a thermal sensor about the same temperature range as my cpu actually. Why is this? You should try popping off the heatsink on your 9800, it's about the same size as a socket 370 p3 processor, even the core on the 9800 is about the same size as a p3 core. The reason for this is how small people were making processors back in the pentium 4 days, utilizing .18 and .13 core sizes. I think the 9800 is probably a .13 core size.
Anyway, this brings up memories about my voodoo 3 3000 pci. The hottest graphics card of the day, if not the hottest graphics card ever. It had a passive heatsink and was always burning to the touch, it was an interesting card because i could overclock past voodoo 3 3500 specs and it'd be burning hot, but just as reliable as factory set clock speed.
Bottom line is gpu's get about as hot as cpu's. It's just that with gpu's when they overheat, it rather makes the system unstable or results in graphical errors as opposed to a cpu overheating and smoking with purple, blue, or even any color of smoke for that matter for something blown up.
About the only time a gpu fails is when you pretty much physically damage the card. Luckily a card like the 9800 will just lock up your system if you so much as have the heatsink removed from the gpu. Somehow the heatsink came off of my 9800 so i had to devise a way to put it back on (which i did), but before i discovered the problem i was just wondering what the heck was the reason my computer wouldn't start up. Putting the heatsink back on made the card normal again so i could start up.
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GPU or CPU?
Central processing units should stay under 50 degrees celsius on a desktop, in my opinion... and they will, if the ventilation is properly done.
Bad generalization. It really depends on the processor and its age. For example, Intel P3 and P4 processors generally stay under 50°C. AMD Thunderbird processors operate around 65°C. Both of those are at max-load.
As a general rule (which covers hardware from the last 10 years or so), motherboard should be under 40°C, CPU under 70, and the GPU under 50. Generally its video RAM that's the problem heatwise, though, as someone already said.
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Anyway, this brings up memories about my voodoo 3 3000 pci. The hottest graphics card of the day, if not the hottest graphics card ever. It had a passive heatsink and was always burning to the touch, it was an interesting card because i could overclock past voodoo 3 3500 specs and it'd be burning hot, but just as reliable as factory set clock speed.
This gives me a wicked idea...
*jr2 reaches over to a shelf where he keeps a couple of Voodoo3 16M AGP and PCI cards, and turns a fiendish eye towards an old derelict comp in the corner*
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GPUs do not overheat easily.
I bought an Arctic Silencer 5 for my X800XT a couple of years back, because I thought 80C was a little warm for my GPU and the fan noise of the stock cooler was annoying. A few months later, my graphics card started randomly crashing under heavy, prolonged load. Turned out that the Silencer's fan was stopping whenever the temperature passed 60C, possibly due to bad lubrication in the fan bearings combined with a ****ty motor. The GPU would hit 120C before it started acting weirdly, and I suspect it was actually the RAM overheating which caused that.
I put the stock cooler back on it. Currently, it resides in my secondary gaming machine and still works perfectly today.
My previous card was a GF7800GTX, factory-overclocked and watercooled. The GPU never exceeded 40C throughout its entire lifetime, but the RAM was cooled only with ramsinks. These should have been adequate, but I think one of the RAM chips was borderline; it seems to generate twice the heat of all the others.
That card is effectively dead; I can't even play Total Annihilation on it for more than a couple of hours before the RAM overheats and crashes the computer. And because I watercooled it, the warranty was void...
GPUs do not overheat. RAM chips do. If your graphics card is acting strangely, it's far more likely to be RAM to blame than the GPU.
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Bad generalization. It really depends on the processor and its age. For example, Intel P3 and P4 processors generally stay under 50°C. AMD Thunderbird processors operate around 65°C. Both of those are at max-load.
As a general rule (which covers hardware from the last 10 years or so), motherboard should be under 40°C, CPU under 70, and the GPU under 50. Generally its video RAM that's the problem heatwise, though, as someone already said.
What do you mean by age? I get a feeling you're just plain old talking about previous processor generations. P3's usually stayed at something like 35C or 30C, p4's did the whole 40C thing. Like what you said. But what do you mean by age?
Processors don't wear out. If you had a system that was at 40C and then a year later is like 10C hotter and you made no changes maybe you should try dusting it out.
But anyway i think i got what you meant about possibly past processors, as opposed to a processor getting old and getting hotter as it gets older?
On another note, gpu's can most certainly overheat. It's just that they usually result in system instability rather than smoke. For my 9800 without the gpu heatsink it kept my system from getting past the windows xp splash screen. A better thing to say is that worrying about a gpu overheating you should never worry about, unless the damn fan on it breaks then you'll have an overheating gpu which will result in some major system instability such as some bad lockup experiences (of course easy to fix as putting a new good fan on the heatsink). Ram on video cards is more the criminal as the whole problem of bad fans on video cards isn't so prevailent as 3d artifacting.
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Bad generalization. It really depends on the processor and its age. For example, Intel P3 and P4 processors generally stay under 50°C. AMD Thunderbird processors operate around 65°C. Both of those are at max-load.
As a general rule (which covers hardware from the last 10 years or so), motherboard should be under 40°C, CPU under 70, and the GPU under 50. Generally its video RAM that's the problem heatwise, though, as someone already said.
What do you mean by age? I get a feeling you're just plain old talking about previous processor generations. P3's usually stayed at something like 35C or 30C, p4's did the whole 40C thing. Like what you said. But what do you mean by age?
Processors don't wear out. If you had a system that was at 40C and then a year later is like 10C hotter and you made no changes maybe you should try dusting it out.
But anyway i think i got what you meant about possibly past processors, as opposed to a processor getting old and getting hotter as it gets older?
On another note, gpu's can most certainly overheat. It's just that they usually result in system instability rather than smoke. For my 9800 without the gpu heatsink it kept my system from getting past the windows xp splash screen. A better thing to say is that worrying about a gpu overheating you should never worry about, unless the damn fan on it breaks then you'll have an overheating gpu which will result in some major system instability such as some bad lockup experiences (of course easy to fix as putting a new good fan on the heatsink). Ram on video cards is more the criminal as the whole problem of bad fans on video cards isn't so prevailent as 3d artifacting.
Sorry, I should have said processor generation.
And don't get me wrong, I know GPU's can overheat, but usually it's the video RAM that gets too hot under normal circumstances - like you said, it usually takes a bad fan (or foolish overclocking levels) to overheat the GPU.
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GPUs do not overheat. RAM chips do. If your graphics card is acting strangely, it's far more likely to be RAM to blame than the GPU.
You have a relatively cool running card. I have actually had my X1900XTX overheat and crash (after passing 95C or so) even in old games like Descent 2 and Battlezone, if I accidentally closed down ATI Tool and the fan remained in the 2D mode's speed.
That being said, the kinds of artifacts seen in that screenshot almost certainly indicate a memory problem. A GPU crash generally results in snow, a completely garbled image or simply a black screen. Memory problems show up as banding or other corruption on specific textures.
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Here are some shots of a couple of games that I took after the driver problems:
SW: KotOR II Main Menu:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/Tyrian_2006/K2_00001.jpg)
SW: KotOR II In-Game:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/Tyrian_2006/K2_00000.jpg)
I have no idea why they are upside down; when I run the game everything is right-side up...
WoW In-Game:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/Tyrian_2006/WoWScrnShot_032707_115610.jpg)
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Unfortunately, I couldn't get any shots of Oblivion; it's the worst of them all. But as you can see, it's pretty bad. Any other suggestions other than a total wipe and reinstall of Windows?
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I have no idea why they are upside down; when I run the game everything is right-side up...
They are TGA screenshots, right?
TGA's can have their starting point of data in lower right corner or upper left corner. Some image viewing/editing programs can't tell the difference and presume that all TGA's have their starting point at one end. What are you using to open the screenshots?
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Reminds me of my inverted tga shot. It was funny GTCV was mirrored. Anyway, before i popped out my 9800 my fs2 skybox was doing the same thing, and so did a couple of the dragons i passed when i was flying. Try downclocking the ram by a ridiculous ammount to see what it takes to make the clipping and artifacting stop just for ****s and giggles. Idk, at this point in the 9800's life, you either want to get rid of it, or seriously buy some ramsinks(apparently for me i'd rather have a new card as opposed to just getting some ramsinks...did i mention that the 9800 memory chips get very hot).
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:bump:
Alright, I've had some free time while sick to work on this problem.
I've downclocked my GPU a ridiculous amount, in 50 MHz increments. I went as far down as ATI Tool would let me. Still no change. To determine if there was a change I used Oblivion.
As to when it starts, it's there from the start of play. It only gets worse as I play more.
As to case ventilation, it's got one intake port on the front, one in the back, one in the PSU, and one side vent that leads to the top of the CPU heat sink. I clean dust from my case fairly regularly. My CPU temp peaked at 57 degrees C, and averaged 56 degrees C. My GPU stayed constant at 68 degrees C. For the temperature tests, I used FSO with the following flags:
C:\Games\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_3_6_9.exe -mod derelict,mediavps -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -nomotiondebris -missile_lighting -cache_bitmaps -rearm_timer -ship_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -fps
I am using the most up-to-date mediavps.
Right now, I am working on convincing my parents to allow me to format the hard drive. If I can do that, then I can eliminate all software possibilities. I'm hoping that will fix the problem.
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I can tell you one thing it's definitely not software doing that. It's obvious it's the ram of the video card overheating and holy ****ing **** get that case cooled down 56C is a little high, i've never had a case exceed 42C system temperature, get that temp down and you might fix your radeon problem as well.
I don't even know what overclocking software you're using for your radeon for testing, clearly it doesn't do the crazy job you're looking for. 50mhz? that overclocker already qualifies as sucky if that's as much it lets you downclock, get a better one that lets you downclock by like 200mhz, you're testing out the ram to see at what speed it doesn't artifact at to see what you can do to reduce temperature, and if it's reasonable enough to go buy ramsinks if that will fix the problem entirely. But where is your families computer? on the floor? It should never be down there because then it'll just be a little vacuum cleaner sucking up dust through the psu. Get the ****ing computer to a cleaner location or something, but yeah, clean that thing out, even go as far as re applying heatsink grease on the processor, everything clean that ****er out. Something that works good as long as your gentle is a huge honking vacuum cleaner, works great :nod:
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I can tell you one thing it's definitely not software doing that. It's obvious it's the ram of the video card overheating and holy ****ing **** get that case cooled down 56C is a little high, i've never had a case exceed 42C system temperature, get that temp down and you might fix your radeon problem as well.
First, 56C is the CPU temp, not the case temp, as I said in my previous post. Case temp is much lower, about 48C-50C, usually less. I'm using SpeedFan for my temp readings.
I don't even know what overclocking software you're using for your radeon for testing, clearly it doesn't do the crazy job you're looking for. 50mhz? that overclocker already qualifies as sucky if that's as much it lets you downclock, get a better one that lets you downclock by like 200mhz, you're testing out the ram to see at what speed it doesn't artifact at to see what you can do to reduce temperature...
1.) I said I was using ATI Tool in my prior post.
2.) 50 MHz increments. I declocked all the way down to 150 MHz, from 412 MHz.
But where is your families computer? on the floor? It should never be down there because then it'll just be a little vacuum cleaner sucking up dust through the psu. Get the ****ing computer to a cleaner location or something, but yeah, clean that thing out, even go as far as re applying heatsink grease on the processor, everything clean that ****er out. Something that works good as long as your gentle is a huge honking vacuum cleaner, works great
It's inside a cabinet in my desk. Not the best place for it, ventilation-wise, but out house is small and we have a space problem. I've had to cabinet door removed for months to improve airflow as much as I can. I also already said I clean the case regularly. Reapplying thermal compuond isn't an option, as my parents don't like it when I add/remove things from the computer.
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Well then, ****, i guess to say perhaps you're card not having any difference visually from downclocking the ram a whole bunch, maybe your card is as ****ed as mine was. Idk, the problem with the 9800 isn't likely to be able to be fixed, if not fixed any time soon. Go on the market and look for another one just in case. For now apparently your card is still good for desktop usage, and can even still do 3d(but extremely degrading 3d).
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This computer is used by the rest of the family, right? I guess they don't want it fiddled with because it still works fine for what they use it for, and like my parents (and anyone else who doesn't know or care what's in the box) they're scared of having it damaged more if it's opened up. Which is stupid, since at this stage that graphics card is ****ed, and anything you do isn't going to break it any more except possibly leaving it to die completely.
Something similar happened to me about ten years ago. The CPU heatsink in our computer had come loose and it was causing random crashes. My Dad would not even let me open the case to see what was wrong (I knew what was wrong, dammit!).
So I tinkered with some files to cause it to crash even more catastrophically. Within six hours we had the case off and the heatsink reattached, and the next day it was working fine again, after reinstalling some parts of the OS I claimed had been damaged by running it on overheating hardware.
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Heh... ppl fear the unknown. My dad is like that with computers, too.
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I guess i have lucky parents. Everyone in my house will open up their machines to fix them. My family is very computer literate. I guess to say my mom isn't so, but at least she gets to use a laptop, and she treats it very properly actually so no one has to open it up. I wish she knew how her printer worked though, i'm always helping her make that work on her laptop. Or i'll teach her how to burn cd's with something easy like nero express, and then she'll never burn cd's because she doesn't need to until one time that she does and then she wont remember how. She uses the same laptop every ****ing day, i know she can learn new tricks with it.
What's worse is that my dad likes to go overkill with the computer hardware at city hall. My dad's office computer has like a geforce 4 you see for an office computer that's the good part since he doesn't play games on his office computer. Now his secretary on the other hand he got her an ati x600 (didn't even have a powerful enough power supply in that machine to run that card until i came along) he got the other chick in the office his old 9800 pro for me to put in her computer because her old good video card blew out because she had the computer on the floor and the fan got clogged. I fixed that problem as well, but what the hell does she need a 9800 inside of her office computer? Those good video cards i guess must be worth their money for microsoft office, outlook express, internet explorer, and mozilla firefox. I don't know what the hell is wrong with my dad treating the office rigs as gaming machines, unless he secretly hosts a lan. People buying **** for their computer that they don't need...my other pet peeve. I mean just don't spend that extra money if you don't have to.
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Relax... they make it that much easier for us to get that stuff. (Supply & Demand - it'd prolly be more expensive to buy gaming rigs if it weren't for ppl like your dad.) ;)