Graphics Card woes - TTLG Forums

Brian The Dog on 14/8/2009 at 23:20

Hey fellow-TTLG'ers,

I have been having some difficulties with my NVidia 7950GT graphics card for a while now, but it's starting to drive me a bit crazy. Every so often, when doing some 3D rendering (such as in games), the screen locks and the image gets distorted with lines of random pixels vertically overlayed. I would take a screenshot to show you what I mean, but I can't see anything on the screen worthwhile to enable me to take a screenshot :)

I've noticed this only happens when doing 3D rendering (so playing movies and general windows stuff works fine), but it happens in pretty much all games (Thief, Duke Nukem, Rome Total War, etc), and fairly early on. The games sound like they're carrying on in the background. It doesn't do it every time though, generally a reboot stops it happening.

Any ideas? Is my graphics card screwed? If so, do you have any recommendations for around the £140 level?

The rest of my PC spec is as follows, if it helps:
AMD Phenom 9950
Asus M2N-SLI motherboard
5Gb RAM (4Gb OCZ, 1Gb generic)
NVidia 7950GT 512Mb PCI-E
On-board Soundmax audio (sometimes use Logitech G35 headphones)
Windows XP x64

Thanks in advance!

Zygoptera on 15/8/2009 at 03:28

Could well be overheating and fixed by something as simple as cleaning its fan.

bikerdude on 15/8/2009 at 05:33

Quote Posted by Brian The Dog

I would take a screenshot to show you what I mean, but I can't see anything on the screen worthwhile to enable me to take a screenshot :)

take it with a digi cam or a phone...

TBE on 15/8/2009 at 19:35

Sounds like it's fried.

Who is the maker of your video card? Like BFG, PNY, eVGA, or MSI for example. Look into an (http://www.bfgtech.com/supportroot.aspx) RMA like this one here at BFG. Your card should be under warranty for at least 3 years being an nVidia product. Most companies will replace it free of charge. You may have to open your case if you don't know who made it, and pull it out to get all the information off it. Use a laptop or something when making your RMA so you can type in serial numbers, model numbers, etc.

Brian The Dog on 15/8/2009 at 19:55

Thanks for the comments. I have dug out my digital camera, and taken a photo of my monitor when it happened today whilst playing Thief (it always seems to happen when I'm reading the notes!).

(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/660/1000441n.jpg) Image
(http://img526.imageshack.us/i/1000440u.jpg/) Closeup

Apologies for the reflected flash :( Anyway, you can see what's happened, there are white dotted perforated lines running vertically down the screen every so often.

I had a look at my temperatures, and whilst they're a bit hot, they're not setting my alarms off or anything: CPU 58'C, MB 52'C, GPU 55'C according to PCProbe & Speedfan (hope they're accurate).

It's made by XPertVision, and I'll have to dig out the order info to see if it's within 3 years purchase time. I think it was bought from Novatech, but the packaging has long gone.

bikerdude on 15/8/2009 at 21:32

Quote Posted by Brian The Dog

you can see what's happened, there are white dotted perforated lines running vertically down the screen every so often.
I'll have to dig out the order info to see if it's within 3 years purchase time. I think it was bought from Novatech, but the packaging has long gone.

That card is potentially borked, but to be sure download and install riva tuner and under clock the core/mem speeds and see if the visual corruption disappears - I say this because some gfx cards come factory overclocked but some of them eventually fail at those overclocked speeds, the standard clock speeds for a 7950GT is 550/1400 core/mem. But hopefully its still under warranty etc, btw Xpertvision are now owned by palit.

Brian The Dog on 17/8/2009 at 13:19

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I have downloaded Coolbits and RivaTuner to see what the frequencies are doing. I purposely didn't buy an overclocked GPU as I wanted it to be stable, so the frequencies should be as Biker said. Will post tomorrow with the results (hopefully!).

Brian The Dog on 17/8/2009 at 22:57

OK, here's the results from RivaTuner:

Code:

$0100000000 Graphics core : NV49/G71 revision A2 (24pp,8vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0290 (ROM strapped to 0295)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 06)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 468.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 450.000MHz
$0100000102 Core clock domain 2 : 450.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 702.000MHz (1404.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000d Thermal diode inaccuracy : -7.000°C (1000b)

Everything looks OK from here, except it seems a bit underclocked on he Core Clock anyway. I've underclocked them to 400/1200 MHz, and will advise on how I get on.

Thanks everyone for your help, by the way :thumb:

bikerdude on 17/8/2009 at 22:59

Quote Posted by Brian The Dog

It might also be worthing checking the condition of the heatsink paste between the GPU - Ive seen a few instances where there isnt enough paste and this extremely bad, if your lucky and you replace the missing paste the GPu may survive..

Brian The Dog on 20/8/2009 at 10:03

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

That's a bit beyond my capability - I just plug the thing into my PC and expect it to work :D Underclocking seems to have solved the problems (no crashes over the past few days), so BIG thanks everyone! I will buy a nice shiny replacement card sometime in the new year when they've been reduced a lot (those GX275's look quite nice and just about in my price range)