Relentless Artifacts on Radeon X1900XT

L

Ladyhawk

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 5, 2005
Messages
244
My video card is displaying artifacts in most of my games. The worst offender is Call of Duty 2, especially during the beach landing at Pointe du Hoc. Other games also suffer from artifacts. I've noticed that DirectX 9 games are the worst offenders. Sometimes if I switch to DirectX 7 or optimize for SLI (I don't have SLI), the artifacts diminish, but don't vanish entirely. (They used to if I switched to DX7, so I think the problem is getting worse. Of course, I've tried multiple drivers, so perhaps the problem is worse with the drivers I'm using.

What I've tried to solve the issue:

1. I've tried various drivers, thoroughly uninstalling in between with Driver Cleaner Pro.

2. Various other graphical settings

-disabled hardware acceleration
-disabled write combining
-tried different desktop settings
-tried lower graphical settings in-game
-tested Direct3D in dxdiag.exe
-ran fan at full speed during games

3. Last night I tried cleaning the video card, blowing the dust out in case that was causing overheating (no overclocking is involved).

I'm stumped. At this point, I'm inclined to think the problem is hardware-related. Maybe DirectX or some other Windows nonsense is the problem. I don't know. All I know is that I've tried various drivers and settings and I'm still having issues.

I can attach dxdiag info or screenshots of the artifacts.

System Specs:

ASUS P5W DH DELUXE
Sapphire Radeon X1900 XT 512MB PCI-E Crossfire Ready
2 GB DDR2-666
Catalyst 7.5 (Currently)
Windows XP SP2
(Lots of other stuff)

Any help? I contacted ATi, but I'm not sure about their customer service. *shrug*
 
I know you probably dont wanna do this but a format can "maybe" help with this sort of thing, personally I have had graphical problems that have only been cured by a format as windows got fuked up and even with new vid card drivers the same problem would appear and I thought it was hardware but a format as a last resort cured it.

So if you havent tried that then try it if you feel upto it and see if it helps.
 
The card will artifact/crash if it is too hot or has not enough power.
Try another PSU.
If its too hot, well, you know...

It could be a software issue but having not seen the artifacts, I'm guessing a bit.
If you can borrow another PSU to test, you can at least rule power out.
 
I haven't got around to fixing the problem, but increasing fan speed helps a lot, especially with older games.

I'm tried to clean it using compressed air, but not much dust came out. Considering the fact that I have a parrot who puts off a lot of dander, I'm guessing the inside of the card is full of dust.

I've never opened up one of the newer encased video cards, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to. I just bet there's an Amazon parrot dust bunny in there the size of a tribble. :)
 
I have the SAME exact problem and SAME exact card.

It NEVER did that until 2 days ago.
Now, my idle temp is at 56-57 I start ATItool, put the cube on and in 2 minutes my temp is at 90c.

I'm completly out of idea of what I can do to fix that problem... removed every pieces of the card and nothing is wrong, no dust, nothing.
The fan seems to be spinning fine as well...

I'm in total darkness as to what I can do with it... it's NEVER been OCed and I bought it new.

Anyone can help ???
 
Its possible the heatsink paste on the GPU has gone off.
After a while, the liquid in the paste evaporates off leaving only a compressed powder.
This is worse than useless as a heatsink paste so needs replacing ASAP.
 
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