[Swamp_Thing]

This has been happening for quite a while now, but today it pissed me off a time too many.
The deal is, this happens to me while i´m playing visual and system heavy games, like Splinter Cell, of MOH:Pacific Assault. And it happens despite the driver i install. It´s all working good, then suddenlly the system freezes for a bit, like 20 seconds or so, and either i have to reset and reboot, or this happens:



Note the pixel corruption. This shot isn´t the best to judge, as the pixel corruption is usually much worse and takes some 50% of the frame´s pixels. And then to get rid of this, i have to rebbot the system, as no matter what game i play next, the pixel corruption remains.
I think it´s driver or DirectX related, but there is a chance my graphics card is acting up aswell.
Anyone knows what this is, and what causes it? And how to fix it?
I´ve tried several drivers, i´m currently using nVidia´s 67.02 beta. But i´ve tried vs.52.16, and vs 56.72, and vs.66.93, and they all do it. It started happening when i started using DirectX 9, but that could be just a coincidence, i don´t know. Installing a lower version won´t do, as i have many games that require it to work.

My specs:
Pentium 4 at 2.4ghz.
MSI FX5600 128mb AGP card.
MSI 875P NEO motherboard
1gb ram
Windows XP Pro, with SP2 and patched.
DirectX 9b
nVidia driver 67.02 beta.
No overclocking whatsoever.

Anyone have a clue as to what is happening?
 

[Flipside]

I get something similar with some games on my 5200, though that is overclocked, but was bought overclocked.

I've tried just about everything to get rid of it, drivers, DirectX etc etc, but I'm becoming more and more cnvinced that this is an indicator of hardware or heating problems

[Fury]

That is indication of overheating. If your card is not overclocked, then it's an indication of hardware failure.
Get the card replaced if it's still under warranty, if not then buy a new card.

[aldo_14]

Might not be any use, but the NVidia drivers are up to 71.84, now.  Could be an incompatibility between older Drivers and Dx9b; I'm not sure on the relative dates.  You could just try DX9c, of course - there's a slim chance it could be a known bug with DX9b.

EDIT:

Or what he said  I've never had an overheated GPU before, not sure what it looks like (my CPU auto-shuts down at a certain temperature, and I switched to a more super-cooled case, so....dunno about that side of things)

[Col. Fishguts]

I got similar effects back in the days of Voodoo2, when I as playing Unreal to long and te card overheated (until I installed an additional case fan).
So yes....most likely your card gets too hot.

[Swamp_Thing]

If it were overheating, why does it happen only on certain games? And why does sometime happen shortly after turning on the PC? Hardly enough time to overheat then. And with other games i can play for hours on end, without any problem.
I don´t think overheat can be the problem, alltough i don´t discard hardware failure. My PC is equipped with 8 fans, i never get temperatures above 35.
Card is off warranty, so i can´t replace it.

[Ghostavo]

The exact same thing happens to me in BF: Vietnam, and only in that game...

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
If it were overheating, why does it happen only on certain games? And why does sometime happen shortly after turning on the PC? Hardly enough time to overheat then. And with other games i can play for hours on end, without any problem.
I don´t think overheat can be the problem, alltough i don´t discard hardware failure. My PC is equipped with 8 fans, i never get temperatures above 35.
Card is off warranty, so i can´t replace it.

This sort of graphical corruption is an indication of overheating or hardware failure/defect.

The problem may arise in some games because of the strain on the video card that they place and others don't place.  It also may have to do with what functions are being called on the GPU in one particular game and not another.  But generally, artifacts like that are heat related or defect related.

It doesn't take long for a CPU or video card to reach a high level of heat after startup.

Once my room was nearly 30c in the summer and this pushed my R9700Pro upto its limit.  Things started to look very funny.  Through the winter its been just fine.  I'm a little worried for this summer.

[WMCoolmon]

I had a similar problem in BFVietnam with a GF4MX440.

Well, more like things would slowly start to screw up until models started disappearing. And my average framerate was ~5 FPS.

And I may have been using a Duron, or a PIII 733 mhz.