Serious Video Issues

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BitterAvatar

n00b
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Messages
48
Alright, I'm not sure what's happening to my computer, but it's really bad.

http://www.calpoly.edu/~criggins/images/Fuck.PNG

The corruption at the top of that image ends up covering the entire screen. Sometimes my monitor will go black, and then recover and the screen will instantly be better. Other times, it goes black and then stops receiving video feed, which results in having to do a hard restart. I don't think it involves overheating because this has happened right after I turned my computer on.

The other weird thing is that when the corruption happens, I'll get the little pop ups from windows saying I have an unplugged network cable or limited connectivity, which I know isn't happening.

Recently my friend's video card was fucking up, so I tried putting it into my comp to see if it still did, and afterwards this started happening, but it doesn't seem to be entirely video card related, with the network connectivity and all that. I went inside my case and fucked with some wires, and that had fixed the problem, but it started up again when I tried a demo for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and now it's doing it pretty non-stop. Also, my mobo chipset has been without a fan/heatsink for two months now. These are the only two things that seem like they could be causing problems, but I'm not sure.

Hardware:
Radeon 9700 pro
A-bit IS7
1.5gb Kingston DDR 3200
Audigy 2
2 120gb SATA drives; RAID 0
 
wth ... a chipset without a hsf ... that might be a major cause .. those things heat up too u know

I can't really tell what the problem is ... how about an exact time line of what happened what you did and how you "fixed it"
 
Well, it's been without the hsf for nearly two months with no problems, so it seems weird it would come up now.

But here's the timeline:
1)Installed my friends 9800 for about 3 hours to see if it had heat dispersion issues: it did.
2)Removed it, put in my card, no problems the rest of the night.
3)Next day began having the video issues. One of the four pins on the hookup between the video card and PSU wasn't properly seated, so I reseated it and started the computer back up, and it worked fine.
4)No problems at all until I tried playing the Splinter Cell demo.
5)Messed up really badly, so I gave up for the night.
6) First boot up this morning almost instantly messed up, so I left it alone for awhile, came back, and as of right now it's doing nothing.

I can find no consistency with the problem.
 
You might wanna check that wire ... move it around a little

It might be something wrong with it, what happens when you wiggle it around ?

I seriously doubt another video card would mess up your system. This is a display issue so it's either your video card or the monitor cable.
 
Nothing happened when I wiggled the wire. Nothing happened when I wiggled any wires related to the monitor or video card. I've had my computer on about 4 hours now with no issues, but haven't done anything but use Firefox and my music player and AIM.

I wonder if after all the chipset was over heating? It has gotten warmer here lately, which could possibly trigger it, but can the chipset mess with my video?
 
Well i just tried playing the Splinter Cell demo again to see what would happen:

The game crashed, and then the graphics problems started up, it got real bad real quick, and it did the typical problem, saying I lost connectivity from my network, as usual. After like 15 second of that the computer restarted itself.

So, it seems almost positively a heating problem, but what? Is it most likely the mobo chipset? Cause I'm not sure what can cause graphics problems + network weirdness.
 
it might also be a power issue, i mean check tht u r gettin enough power from ur backup or whatever..also check the vc cable is good
 
BitterAvatar said:
Also, my mobo chipset has been without a fan/heatsink for two months now.
Click to expand...

well the mobo chipset is the communicator between cpu and video card, so you might want to try to put a passive heatsink on top of it and see what happens
 
That kind of video corruption looks like a problem with the RAM on the videocard to me. At least that's what it's turned out to be when I've seen that type of problem in the past. Try the other suggestions though, it could be a cooling or power issue.

Try the card in another machine too if you can.
 
Yeah I'm in the process of getting something to hold the heatsink on. I have an IS7, and one of the 4 loops ripped out, so I need to find an alternative to holding it in.

I've got spring break right around the corner, so I'll trying putting a spare video card in here and see what happens too, since I don't have a spare computer. But one question, if it was the ram, wouldn't there be a consistency to it? Cause it hasn't done it until I start playing a game, and then it doesn't stop unless I leave it alone for awhile.
 
well you can try using thermal adhesive ... but u should get a good heat sink that you won't remove ... or you can order the stock one straight from Abit for only $6 which is the price of S&H. All parts are free :D
 
Yeah I went ahead and ordered the thermal adhesive and a nicer heatsink + fan combo. Once that's all set up I should be able to figure out the culprit, which is hopefully just overheating.
 
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