[Tyrian]

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?

[Prophet]

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...

[redsniper]

Try the Omega drivers. I hear that Catalyst sucks nowdays.

[Tyrian]

So basically, clean the crap Catalyst put on my system with ATI's Pooper-Scooper, then go for the Omega drivers.

[Tyrian]

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?

[castor]

^{Not exactly} an idea, but... _{total reinstall}

[DeepSpace9er]

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 deeper than you think.

[Prophet]

the AOL

Maybe that's your problem?


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.

[S-99]

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.


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.

[Tyrian]

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?

[Herra Tohtori]

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.

[redsniper]

It depends on the program. In Windows it'll just go to the clipboard, but games will usually save them to their main directory.

[Tyrian]

I'll have to de-clock it through the BIOS right?

[Herra Tohtori]

No, I don't even think it's possible to set GPU clocks via BIOS.

Since you have ATi card, I suggest using 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?

[MP-Ryan]

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.

[S-99]

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 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/
Plain old ati tray tools has that overclocker with artifact tester as well. Without any modified drivers, just tweaking ****.

[brozozo]

While we're on the subject of temperatures, what should the normal temperature of a processor be?

[Herra Tohtori]

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...

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...

[S-99]

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.

[MP-Ryan]

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.