Video Artefacts on a non-OC'd card

C

chiablo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
387
I have a buddy who just bought a used eVGA 6800 Limited Edition. The card has never been overclocked and the bios hack to turn it into a 6800 ultra has never been performed on the card.

The card ran fine on the previous owner's machine... when we plugged it in, it ran fine for a while, but during the 3dmark05 test, it started showing some weird artefacts. Black lines would randomly appear to shoot off the screen from objects. It also gets worse the longer the card is in use.

From my experience, this is an overheating issue, but the card is not being overclocked and airflow in the case is great... it also happens when the case is open.

We uninstalled all drivers relating to the video card and his old ATI card, ran driver cleaner and reinstalled the nvidia drivers. Did not fix it.

The next step was to upgrade his PSU to the recommended 480w. Did not fix it either.

I read on nvidia's site that the newest drivers fix a problem with "black lines" being drawn when 4x AA is enabled in some games. So we disabled AA. But the lines are still showing up.

Any suggestions? We're going to try to RMA the card since it's only a few months old (from when the previous owner bought it) but could there be something else going on that we haven't thought of?
 
I once saw something similar. I had overclocked a P4 with an Intel 865 (springdale)chipset. The 865's chipset wasn't as kind to higher FSBs as the 875 (canterwood). After finding others with the same problem, I went out and got a 875 MB and the problem went away. Is the motherboard/CPU OCed? If so, maybe this card is somehow bringing the issue with the chipset to a head (by removing a bottleneck that was hiding it prior to this upgrade)?

My other suggestion would be power. Make sure you have a decent power supply in there. And I'm not referring to wattage. I'm referring to quality. (NM, I see you tried that)

Good Luck!

H
 
This is a stock system, nothing is being overclocked.

Also, we tried swapping out the ram, did not fix the problem either.

The power supply is an Antec 480w. I have a dedicated power cable from the PSU going to the video card (I've heard that having a hard drive or CD drive on the same power cable can cause problems.)
 
Try reinstalling windows if driver cleaner didn't work. It could either be some kind of driver issue left over from older cards or it might be totally defective. I am running my 6800 ultra and 2 hds and it runs perfectly fine.

The 865 and 875 doesnt matter. Because when I had IC7, it ran fine on same speed, and I got AI7 which is 865 chipset. It works perfectly and stable.
 
Slava said:
The 865 and 875 doesnt matter. Because when I had IC7, it ran fine on same speed, and I got AI7 which is 865 chipset. It works perfectly and stable.
Click to expand...

For this guy's problem, no, it apparently doesn't matter. But there has been demonstrated instances of overclocks causing graphical artifacts on 865 chipsets while the exact same configuration and overclock works fine on the (otherwise) equivalent motherboard with the 875 chipset. Here's a link to my post among 20 pages of others which document it. :)

H
 
Just an update, we plugged the card into my wife's computer and it displayed the same artefacts.

I'm suspecting it's the card now and we are going to RMA it.

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
I'm trying to remember...was the eVGA 6800LE the funky card that was really just a 6800 Ultra that failed to run at high speeds? Or is this card just the 8-pipe version of the 6800?

If it's the first, your RMA process won't be fun, they didn't make many of them, and exact replacements aren't available. Somebody else here posted that the company offered him his choice of a 6800GT (lower end card) or for additional money, a full 6800 Ultra.
 
It's the 6800 ultra that is underclocked (or some pipes are disabled.) A bios can be flashed on it to unlock it to a full 6800 ultra. That alone made it popular and it sold out very quickly considering it was over $100 cheaper than the ultra. You don't even need to replace the Heatsink (like you would with most softmods) since it's the same one that's on the Ultra.

And I was just checking pricing... why is the 6800 GT more expensive than the Ultra on newegg?

http://www.newegg.com/app/SearchProductResult.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0
 
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