The Most Annoying Problem EVER

[UVIC]

Hello, I hope someone here at this extremely knowledgeable forum has dealt with this problem I am having that is probably the worst I have ever seen. I have a weird video effect that manifests itself into many of my computer games, completely ruining them and rendering them unplayable. The affected games off the top of my head include: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Full Spectrum Warrior, Brothers in Arms, World of Warcraft, Knights of the Old Republic, Call of Duty, and Far Cry, although some are worse than others.

The symptoms go like this. I will begin playing a game, and after a minute or two of being in-game, spots begin to appear rapidly for a split second all over the screen, then soon after, lines begin to appear between objects that are in the game like trees, houses, what have you in the color of the objects that make it so that I cannot see anything past these obstructions that change with the movements of my mouse.

It?s hard to explain, so I made this site in order to show you some of the pictures I took while playing Far Cry today.
http://members9.clubphoto.com/bill1019963/3697262/owner-81c0.phtml

Any ideas would be much appreciated, because this is a serious waste considering that I paid for these games and am unable to enjoy them.

I am running:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0GHz processor
MSI K8N Neo Platinum Motherboard with onboard soundcard
Radeon 9800 Pro
WD 120 Gb hard drive with < 50% used disk space
And my whole system is less than a year old, with a very cool running environment.

Thank you.

 

[Nohr]

First thing I'd try is uninstalling the video card drivers, then use Driver Cleaner. Reinstall drivers.

Another thought is the card could be overheating. Are you overclocking at all?

 

[Tremulant]

Sounds like a video card problem. Can you borrow another 9800 pro from a friend?

 

[AMDCrazy]

How much ram are you running? 9800pro may not be good enough to play those games.

 

[imported_Nirvana]

I don't think that's the issue. I ran Farcry for a test on a HP (Athlon XP 2400, 512mb, Geforce 4 ti4400), and thought slow as hell, the game ran fine without any artifacts like shown in those screenshots.

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

If reinstalling drivers doesn't work, then I suspect a faulty video card. How long have you been having this problem?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
If reinstalling drivers doesn't work, then I suspect a faulty video card. How long have you been having this problem?

:thumbsup:



looks like you are getting lost vertices. Likely bad video card but there is a slim chance it could be driver/software related.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
If reinstalling drivers doesn't work, then I suspect a faulty video card. How long have you been having this problem?

:thumbsup:



looks like you are getting lost vertices. Likely bad video card but there is a slim chance it could be driver/software related.

yeah, this.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

check your cooling on your card, make sure its clean from dust and the fan is operational

 

[UVIC]

Well I have some good news and some bad news. I found the source of the problem, but it is a lot more serious than outdated drivers. I checked my video card while the computer was running a few minutes ago, and I lo and behold the fan is completely dead!

It is as still as a corpse, and is hard to spin using my fingers even. I cleaned all visible dust from it, but I think it seems like the internal mechanisms are fried, as it spins more easily at different points in the revolution.

I need to get it replaced, and I am going to take the fan to the computer store right away, but do you know if there could be any permanent damage to the GPU? I feel ill when the heatsink goes from room temperature to untouchably hot within seconds of the computers startup.

Thank you for your advice.

 

[duragezic]

It could've damaged it. It sounds like you've had this issue for at least a few days now, which prolly wasn't too good on the card all this time to have NO active cooling. I'm surprised your 2d display is fine still, and that games didn't just outright freeze with such a hot GPU.

 

[Eureka]

If you can talk off the fan, just simply get another one (a better one). However, you might want to get your GPU checked, it may have started melting or something since the fan's dead.

Norm