Is my graphics card dying? Yes, bought another one.

I used the computer yesterday morning and everything was fine. switched it on in the evening and got a funny start-up screen, the one where it says Microsoft XP and has a little loading bar, it was covered in a strange blue checker pattern.

my mouse has some funny artefacts around it, and text has it too, plus nothing is playing correctly in either WMP or PowerDVD, although a screenshoot from within PowerDVD show perfectly, the actual image i'm seeing is the lower one:


funny text and also look at the GPG banner: Click

perfect screencap from within PowerDVD:



but i'm actually seeing this: Click



last time this happened it was because the fan on the gfx card had died so it was overheating, but the fan is still working now so i think it's the card itself that is dying.

photos and everything work fine, just text and moving images are showing up wrong, also the 3D FlowerBox Screensaver is showing up all distorted.

if it is dying, any recommendations for a replacement? the last time i upgraded anything was in mid-2003, so 4.5 years, so it's will probably need a whole new mobo and CPU as well a gfx card.

thanks.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2008 09:34PM by Muks_C.

Hmm that looks like buggered VRAM, if it's on since startup then you probably will need a new card, but try the usual - clean card, new drivers etc etc.

Plenty of mega cheap good quality AGP cards still around. I myself have a VGA cooler 9800 PRO lying around with nothing to do

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i took it out and cleaned the dust off it and also from the fan, but it's still the same. this is a photo of the startup screen: Click

it's a 128MB Radeon 9600Pro. i'll have a look for new drivers and see if that helps.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2008 08:01PM by Muks_C.

It's not drivers. It wouldn't happen on the startup screen if it was.

Almost certainly the video RAM dead, as Nick said.

If you can, now's the ideal time to do a full upgrade. Some great budget chips around, and 2gb of DDR2 RAM almost costs less than a 24 pack of Stella. Some good mid-high range graphics cards on the market for around £100 too.

It's not the ideal time for an AGP card. They still cost loads (supply and demand, or lack of) compared to their PCIe equivalents.

Go for a full system if you can at all. If you're happy to build one yourself, or have a mate do it, we'll get a lot more system for a lot less cash. I'm sure a few of us will happily spec systems for you.

Welcome to the Matrix, Muks


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

i downloaded drivers from the ATI site and installed them, it's cured the WMP/PowerDVD playback, and the text problems, but the cursor/pointer problem persists:



i also have now got a slower refreshing screen when i scroll down. instead of the smooth change i had as i scrolled down it's "blinking" and "wiping" the whole screen as i do it.

Gav, if this pointer problem could be cured, i'd keep the current system until it went kaboom, although a whole new system is definitely overdue. i don't have enough cash for it right now though (just paid car insurance, road tax due end of the month etc.).

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2008 08:39PM by Muks_C.

Just keep it until it does go kaboom then. Make sure you've got a back up of everything though, just in case it's the PSU (fairly sure it's not, but they're temperamental things) and it takes out your hard drive if it does go. :P

Try some other cursors. The Vista cursors for XP for example (here) which I think use alpha blending. Might be enough to kick the issue for a while.

Personally I think the issue is just going to come back, but good luck.

i've tried just switching to a different cursor theme in the Mouse options, and i still have the extra lines around it, so it guess it's something to do with the displaying of the pointer, and not which pointer i use.

any ideas about the wiping/blinking as i scroll up or down?

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Graphics RAM dying perhaps?

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Graphics RAM dying perhaps?


Jesus and i thought the show your desktop's thread was bad :\

sorry Neil, i'm not a computer expert so can't instantly diagnose what the fault is, so need to ask others who do know what they're talking about for help.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Yeah, but we diagnosed the fault for you (it might not be of course, but without having it next to us it's as educated a guess as we can make) which related to graphics and movement on the screen. You asked what might be causing other issues with movement on the screen so we told. It's all going to relate to the same thing.

It was diagnosed about 4 times before you got it thats what i was refering to.

but how did installing new drivers fix the majority of problems then? only the pointer and blinking/wiping problems remain.

and Gav, i hope it's not the PSU, i bought it in December '06 on your recommendation, it shouldn't be dying only 13 months after puirchase, should it? or is this built-in frailty so you have to keep buying them once you get past the 12 month guarantee? (like iPod batteries i read about in another thread)

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

It's absolutley impossible that installing new drivers affect the boot screen. Just be glad your graphic card gives you a warning before it dies peacefuly or goes with a boom. Most hardware that died on me didn't give me any warning.

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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

Muks_C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> but how did installing new drivers fix the
> majority of problems then? only the pointer and
> blinking/wiping problems remain.
>
> and Gav, i hope it's not the PSU, i bought it in
> December '06 on your recommendation, it shouldn't
> be dying only 13 months after puirchase, should
> it? or is this built-in frailty so you have to
> keep buying them once you get past the 12 month
> guarantee? (like iPod batteries i read about in
> another thread)

Nah, it shouldn't be the PSU. It shouldn't be anything other than the graphics card to be honest. I just keep options only so if you go and replace something it's done only through suggestion than recommendation. The best advice is to try someone else's graphics card just to confirm the cause, though that option isn't usually viable.

The graphics drivers didn't fix the issue, they probably just updated a method for drawing windows, so the problems may appear different or in different places. Chances are if you try to play a game you'll get all sorts of errors and maybe a crash too. As ZaZ said, and myself before him, if it were a driver issue the boot screen wouldn't be corrupted. Some component has just come to the end of it's life, and it all points to the graphics memory.

And no, in computers if you had to replace the PSU every 12 months no one would buy the replacement, unless all the manufacturers got together and came up with a plan. It's never ever going to happen.

i still have the strange blue checker pattern in startup like this: Click, so it only fixed the text, and WMP/PowerDVD playback problems.

i still have an old graphics card somewhere, i'll try it and see if the issues go, and report back.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

i was wrong, i don't have the old gfx card, i must have got rid of it the same time i got rid of my old mini tower, a couple of years ago.

so Gav (and anyone else), could you please spec up a system for me?

i think my current case will do, i also have working DVD and DVD writer drives and a PSU and sound card, so i think i really only need a new mobo, CPU, gfx card (with Shader 3.0, or newer, so i can finally play Splinter Cell: Double Agent) and RAM.

my current IDE hard drives also work fine, but am i right in saying that new mobo's use the SATA connection? so would i just need an IDE > SATA adapter to use my existing drives? or is it better to buy 1 new SATA drive and use my current master IDE drive as a slave using an adapter?

also please make the spec so it won't be out of date the day after i receive it.

i think i can manage to fit everything together myself.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

What is your PSUs make and wattage? Also do you have ATX or microATX case?


My photo gallery: [viltzu86.deviantart.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2008 05:24PM by villej.

Easy way of checking if you don't know is to tell how many CD-bays you have in your current case. Far from ideal way of checking, but better than nothing. That said, when I spec something the chances are it'll use a MicroATX motherboard anyway, as they're generally cheapest.

I've never used a SATA>PATA converter myself, but most motherboards will have 1 PATA connector anyway (enough for 2 devices). You let me know how you want to play that. DVD drives cost around £20 new, hard drives it depends on what size you want (400gb is around £60 I think) - might be easier to get a new drive and keep 1 or 2 of your old PATA devices).

Do you have a budget limit, or just a cheap as possible gaming build?

I might have a shot tonight, if not tomorrow.