[colecampbell666]

I was using ATITool overclocking my card, a 9550, and all of a sudden the display went like this:

Please tell me if I can fix it!

[attachment deleted by admin]

[BloodEagle]

 

Did you try rebooting?

[JGZinv]

Doing a Google...

Found:
August 3rd on....
You have a board which runs dual X16 slots and not the dual 8x in SLI and single x16 when not in SLI then.

what your problem is that the intel sli combination is not as fast as an amd sli combination. Many people like me and you have this problem, ur system is fine. My system is p5n32 sli deluxe, p4 3.4 @ 3.8ghz, 2gb pc4200 ddr2, 2x7800gtx and I get around 8200 in 3d mark 05 search the forums and u will find more people like me that have this problem. That score that you have sounds about right.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=39&t=16952

Perhaps that's it.

When in doubt, go back to your last set of working settings.

[colecampbell666]

I doubt that that's the problem as I don't have an Intel board or SLI. I have a
Sappire Radeon 9550 256 Mb
P4 1.5 Ghz
512 Mb SDRAM 133 Mhz
GigaByte GA-8IDML -C.

I reset the clock to default and rebooted my system numerous times. 'Parrently it's a problem with too high memory clocks, as I've read, but I only had increased those from 200 to ~235 and the core from 250 to ~340.

[Admiral_Stones]

Well, since I'm pessimist, I will say now that you either f**ked up your screen or fried your GPU.

[castor]

Tried reinstalling the driver?

[Herra Tohtori]

My system is p5n32 sli deluxe, p4 3.4 @ 3.8ghz, 2gb pc4200 ddr2, 2x7800gtx and I get around 8200 in 3d mark 05

Fascinating... I've got an MSI MS-7184 (aka Amethyst-M) motherboard, AMD Athlon64 3200+ (@2200MHz), 3 GB PC3200 DDR-ram (@ 2x220MHz FSB) and a single GeForce 7600 GT (@ 700 MHz core, 2x850 MHz for memory) and I got 6976 from 3DMark05. It's interesting that with your specs - including DDR2 memory and dual 7800 GTX setup, you're only getting about 18% better results than I. What kind of driver options were you using? Obviously if you were using some driver level anti-aliasing, AF and other high quality options, then it's makes more sense, as I run the test with none of those...


Relating to topic, that's a rather clear sign of GPU memory problems all right. Either you managed to get yourself partially fried memory on your graphics card, or your drivers are stuck at using too high memory settings for some reason (or you have some box ticked somewhere that tells your PC to apply overclocking settings at the startup - never a good idea unless you're 100% sure about stability at the determined settings...).

If I've understood correctly, the artefacts persist over booting the PC, am I right or left? If that's so, download GPU-Z and see what memory clocks the GPU is using. If they are too high (ie. other than default clocks), go to whetever overclocking utility you used (official drivers? RivaTuner? ATiTools?) and revert to default clocks. If that doesn't work, uninstall the overclocking utility and the GPU drivers, and re-boot with Windows default drivers which are most likely crap, but at least you'll see if the memory is physically fried or is it just something on software that makes it function improperly. Use of your preferred driver cleaner tool(s) is also recommendable. Then re-install the ATi drivers and if you still want to do overclocking (assumign you get the problem fixed, that is), do it with some lighter touch. It's apparent that your GPU memory doesn't overclock as well as the core. If you can boost the memory to 220 MHz, I think the best would be to leave the core at about same overclocking ratio, +10% (275 MHz).

Overclocking just one component much more than the other is not the wisest thing to do - IIRC, if you overclock the core too much it'll work faster than the memory bandwidth would allow, which would mean that it would be under unnecessary stress and the memory would be he bottleneck of the card anyway.

Hope you get the card working properly again...

[JGZinv]

That quote was taken from the forum I linked to... it's not my specs.
I "wish" I had a PC such as that... instead of a old centrino laptop.

So can't help you there.

[Herra Tohtori]

Ah, my bad.

Point still stands... That GPU setup definitely should have more power. Might be the P4 processor is forming a bottleneck there or something. Oh well.

[colecampbell666]

Weird. I came back from an hour of sledding, and it works perfectly, as my sister found out when she turned it on. It must have overheated when I overclocked it and is now cooled down enough to function. I reset the clocks to default to be sure. Thanks for the help, as always!

[IceFire]

Looks the same as when my 9700Pro decided to die and go the way of the dodo.  Even tho its ok right now I'd be concerned that your card might be permanently damaged and will start showing these kinds of symptoms again in the future.

[Polpolion]

Note to self: This is what happens when you over clock your graphics card.

[Herra Tohtori]

Note to self: This is what happens when you over clock your graphics card.

Not true. It may happen, but it isn't a certainty, and with any degree of ability you can avoid this bad reactions.

My 7600 GT is currently set to 700/850 MHz for core/memory on heavy 3D mode, and default clocks are 650/800 MHz. Then again, I've got a 3rd party cooler with heatsinks thermotaped on the top of memory chips. Might have an effect on stability or not. I myself suspect that I just happened to have a freaky good card with very high performance/heat ratio, and consequently stability, with both memory and core. By comparision, normal GeForce 7600 GT's are usually clocked at about 560/700 MHz for core/memory respectively.

It's obviously true that there's always some risk of causing lasting harm to hardware when you overclock it. That's why it's never a good idea to keep things overclocked as high as they keep working, it keeps them on brink of "not working" and can cause harm during longer period of time, even if the setup is "stable" initially. Also, if you don't get at least 10-15% increase to the clocks before they refuse to go further and you start seeing those artefact lines (or the PC crashes), it's not worth it to overclock at all and it's better to stay at default clocks.

Computer hardware are individuals... even two devices from same line next to each other can offer vastly different overclocking performance and tolerance. Testing is obviously the only choice to find out.

Thus, it's perhaps best to buy the GPU's at least from a manufacturer whose warranty covers overclocking. That means eVGA at the moment... although, who's gonna know the card was overclocked when it fried. (Same applies to 3rd party coolers btw) AFAIK the information about the clock speeds is not saved anywhere on the card. Card BIOS remains unchanged, it's the drivers that tell the card to go to overdrive... and the drivers are on ur HD, runnin ur hardware... and you don't really need to tell them the card was overclocked when it cooked itself.

[colecampbell666]

Herra, I thought that you said that you had a 9500 in some other topic?

If you still have your 9500, I have a brand new 9700 for you: http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/guide13.html

[Herra Tohtori]

Nope, never had a Radeon 9500. Before this GPU I had a GeForce 6600, which I still have on my shelf - it's a good card, and when I get a new PC at some point I'll likely put it to use since it has actually working VESA support (makes playing GP2 and Red Baron possible), unlike this 7600GT.

Closest to 9500 would have been the Radeon 9200 SE (feel free to laugh) at my parents' computer, which I might have mentioned at some point. It can only run FS2_Open with mediaVP's (without AdvEffects) at meager ~30 FPS on 1024x768 resolution, with no anti-aliasing...

[MP-Ryan]

System specs?  Prepare to be fairly astounded...
-1.2 GHz (OC to 1.33) Athlon Thunderbird processor, circa 2001.
-512 MB SDRAM at CAS2 latency.
-128MB Radeon 9500Pro (OC to 297/290)

Fortunately, the CPU, RAM, and mobo were all fairly high-end at the time this was bought which is why it's lasted so long.

FSOpen?

I run with mediaVPs (excluding adveffects, but including LSNebs and some minor graphical enhancements).  In most missions, the framerate runs around 40-50 fps.  In some, it drops as low as 9-10, usually only when there are large models present).  That's at 1024x768

It does pretty well for an old system.  The old Ti4600 graphics card did considerably better, but unfortunately it got fried a couple years back.

[colecampbell666]

That's right, it was Ryan with the 9500. Same avatar.

here you go Ryan, a new 9700: http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/guide13.html

[Herra Tohtori]

It won't work for Ryan, because he has the Pro version of 9500. AS stated in the upgrade guide/article, 9500Pro doesn't upgrade to 9700, basic 9500 does (with any luck).

Ain't the world of computers wonderful...

[MP-Ryan]

It won't work for Ryan, because he has the Pro version of 9500. AS stated in the upgrade guide/article, 9500Pro doesn't upgrade to 9700, basic 9500 does (with any luck).

Ain't the world of computers wonderful...

Not to mention, the 9500Pro kicks the crap out of a base 9700 performance-wise anyway =)

EDIT:  There is also a hardware modification that allows you to turn a 9500Pro into a 9700Pro, but I'm not in the mood to fry the only video card I've got at the moment =)

[jr2]

Weird. I came back from an hour of sledding, and it works perfectly, as my sister found out when she turned it on. It must have overheated when I overclocked it and is now cooled down enough to function. I reset the clocks to default to be sure. Thanks for the help, as always!

Ya, when you get problems when overclocking, try a reboot, then if that doesn't work, shut it down and wait for it to cool, then try again.  How about put an aftermarked cooler on that GPU?  say, one with a fan.    Then try again.