Death of a Video Card or Bugged New Driver?

[TteFAboB]

Greetings,

After failing to run the "Scarface" game I did as suggested and updated my Vid Card driver to the lastest version. I have an ATI Radeon 9800 with 256mb of memory. My last driver was version 6.9 from Sept. 2006.

Anyway, the problem wasn't with the driver, but with the USB joystick. I've managed to play the game fine. Today, one day later, I'm getting a bizzare "glitch" with any game I run, after managing to run games fine early in the morning. If this could be part of the problem, before installing the new driver I only uninstalled the old driver, I didn't uninstall the old catalyst control center. Could that be a problem, even if yesterday I didn't have any issues at all?

Here's the menu screen from Gal Civ 2, the glitch carries over the entire game, including video cutscenes, and dissapears with the closing of the game. It's actually worse than it looks:

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3550/glitchmenugg5.th.jpg (http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=glitchmenugg5.jpg)

And here's a screenshot of the "3d rendered" world of Scarface. This SS doesn't capture all the yellow flashes and crazyness on the screen. These "blocks" of glitched textures aren't "static" as they appear on a photo. They blink and flash really fast:

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6624/glitchgameqq5.th.jpg (http://img339.imageshack.us/my.php?image=glitchgameqq5.jpg)

So, in summary: everything was working fine. I installed a new driver (for all that matters, without uninstalling the old Catalyst Control Center). Everything remained fine. I turned off the PC. One day later I turned it back on and still didn't have a problem. It was only later in the day, after successfully running the same game without issues, that this "glitch" started to appear. Now any game I run is "glitched". Rebooting, cold-booting, waiting for RAM to clear, nothing prevents the "glitch" from showing up with any game I try to run.

What could it be?

Bad driver? Very likely. It's the only new element.

Bad vid card? Not very likely. My card is old alright but it was working fine untill now.

I'll uninstall everything and download the 6.9 driver to see what happens.

[kiwi_2005]

Yep i would go back to an older driver. I would get a problem simular with my nVidia card, for instance recently when i updated to forceware driver - 97.92 i would get weird lines coming from the centre of the screen when in a game, any game, with the lines pointing outwards all over the screen. Going back to a previous driver the problem was fixed.

Dont know about ATI cards, but im sure you got driver problems.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

thats artifacting, ur memory on your video card is either fubar, or the motherboard agp slot/nearby capacitors are leaking, check ur mobo for bulging or leaking capacitors. and clean out any dust thats near video card heatsink it might be a heat related problem, if all of the above dont fix it then ur video card is near death

[kiwi_2005]

thats artifacting, ur memory on your video card is either fubar, or the motherboard agp slot/nearby capacitors are leaking, check ur mobo for bulging or leaking capacitors. and clean out any dust thats near video card heatsink it might be a heat related problem, if all of the above dont fix it then ur video card is near death

:huh: Ive had heating problems in the past, changed the fans around, seem okay. Now recently i updated drivers got the problem i mentioned above went back to previous driver and problem stopped. I hope it was just that last thing i need is to fork out another card:damn:

[Kapitan_Phillips]

I have a Geforce 6200 256MB card and Scarface is like a slideshow *miffed*

[stabiz]

Yeah, but the GPU is kinda old in that one. A newer card with less RAM would actually perform better. Best bang for buck these days - if you ask me - is the 7900GS. It will run any game, and costs about 150$ in Norway.

[TteFAboB]

Thanks for the tips guys. :up:

But it's a no-go. :down: Rolled back to old drivers, searched for any defects in the hardware and cleaned out the dust, though there was almost none in the card's fan. All for nothing. The "glitch" is still there. This card is a goner.

Now I have to figure out if my Motherboard accepts a newer card or if it's time to build another PC from scratch. I could use one of those new dual-core CPUs for Gal Civ 2.

How do I find out which card fits in my motherboard or if it's too old for any of these newer cards? (Intel D875PBZ http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bz/)

[elite_hunter_sh3]

http://www.gecube.com/cms_file.php?id=2484

AGP worlds fastest agp card(or so they say)

http://www.gecube.com/products-detail.php?prod_cat_pid=9&prod_cat_id=166&prod_id=65116

wont be out till end of march, so u might have to wait a week after sh4 comes out:dead: and 1 week without our beloved sh4 is hell on earth for most of us:arrgh!:


OR you can get this x1950 pro instead of the 30% faster x1950 xt agp

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161069

[TteFAboB]

:rotfl: Seems like they're a little desperate to keep that monster cool.

Nice suggestions. :up:

I've searched for info on these cards, including the 7900 series, and I guess that's the way to go indeed. Just need to find out if my ~400w PSU is enough to feed them.

[Skybird]

I am running a 7800 GS for AGP myself since three months, and I'm happy. It may be that these cards are now more pricey than PCI cards - but rebuilding a new PCI-system just to put in a PCI card would cost me even more money, no matter if I do it "cheap" or not! :lol:

I don't follow the hardware trek anymore - I have learned trying to evade it wherever possible. Less stress, less costs, and happy computing nevertheless. If people don't believe me I only say Hey, play some of the old Amgia games to see the difference! :lol:

I lost a very close girl-friend when giving up on Amiga...

[elite_hunter_sh3]

get the big x1950xt, ull be fine running sh4 on max :up::rock: