Getting to the Heart of the Video Card Problems

Once again the hardware mojo is plauging me. My nice, fast, expensive and awsome video card (ATI 9800 PRO) is giving me grief. It started out as some odd patches of (and I don’t know how to describe it better than this) wackiness when in 3D mode but has no progressed to full system lockups. Figuring it had something to do with heat, I purchased a sweet Thermaltake Volcano 9 CPU cooler. This, while having horrible instructions, does work well and after a bit of trouble getting it going, works dandy, regulating the CPU temperature to stay under 45C or so. In a fit of rage and madness as odd video spots and glitches turned to full system lockups, and before I went completely batshit, I invited Cat5 and Lawrence over to see if their debugging kung-fu was better than mine. After watching the game we went to it. Read on for the horrowing tale (and some more pictures).

While the cat snoozed looked on Cat5 and Lawrence and I did an array of testing and playing. The symptoms looked something like this, kinda in order of harshness and how things seemed to progress:

• small “flecks” of missing or wrong color in the “Windows XP” logo as it starts up (before any special video drivers are loaded I’m guessing)
  
• bands of purple in 2D mode
  
• squares and lines of of “bad video” when in 3d mode
  
• the ATI “VPU recover” kicking in and letting me know the card had locked up in 3d mode
  
• complete and total lock ups in 3d mode
  
• random graphical glitches in normal 2D mode
  
• complete and total lock ups giving just a monitor with no signal going to it when entering windows
  

So I got and threw in a big-ass CPU fan. Kept the CPU cooler, but no change in glitches. Even after booting the box up after sitting all night, off, beside an open window with cold air pouring in it locked up hard yesterday morning.

Things started getting progressively worse. I plugged the card into Firefly’s machine, which while it is almost identical in setup (same P/S, slightly different version motherboard, less of the same kind of ram, same OS and same level up currentness) and after installing the same drivers and benchmark, it gave the same problems. Ok, very odd.

To see if maybe it was just something in a service pack or something, I installed a fresh and clean version of windows XP, no updates other than installing the video drivers and… bingo bango bongo, same issues. Even on booting up before the video card drivers were installed I had the “flecks” of bad color in the windows xp starting up screen. Ok, something definately wonky.

So Lawrence and Cat5 poked around in the BIOS. I updated from 1005 to 1007 for the A7N8X bios, but that didn’t help. We increased the voltage going to the AGP slot, and that almost worked. Windows booted up with no flecks, no 2D glitches, and the first two or three tests ran fine under the benchmark. The third of fourth though, just started to go bad again, and the memory chips on the card were very hot. While the cat appreciated this, we did not.

Just to be sure, we put the card into Lawrences machine (which he had helpfully brought along) and installed the drivers. He has a totally different motherboard, which is what I was wanting. Same flecks, same screwyness in the benchmark.

Case closed. Card is messed up somehow.

I don’t know why it was working fine in the system in the computer store, or why it was working fine for me (though there was oddness before, but the card was “fixed”). However, there is definately a problem with something, and since the card has the same problem in three separate computers, I think a replacement card is in order IMHO. And while it’s bad hardware, I honestly don’t think it’s the bad mojo, from me or the apartment because I’ve had two others confirm that it’s a problem!

I plan to take the full box into Discovery tomorrow night after work, put my game face on and after showing them with not only my current setup, but also the fresh and clean XP install, demand that I get a new card, and get one sooner rather than the 2-3 weeks it took last time. Assuming of course, that it doesn’t work perfectly because they have some sort of good hardware mojo shield around the store!

Send courage mojo please.