7900GT KO problems - screen gets gray lines?

[cid499]

I've been having some problems with my eVGA 7900GT KO OC ed. recently.

When playing games (warcraft 3, pro evolution soccer), I will occasionally, at random times after playing the game for awhile, get "messed up" screens. That is, the whole screen turns grey with weird looking stripes on it. I can alt+tab back to Windows, then alt+tab back to the game and the game works fine, but it is still a pain.

However, recently the problem started happening on the Windows desktop as well. The screen will flicker and turn a certain color, usually something close to whatever was on the screen last. The system still responds - I can alt+tab around between the open applications and the screen will change colors, and I can still hear my music playing in the background. However, I usually have to restart the computer, losing all my work.

Thinking that it could be my video card, I swapped it to another 7900GT KO - and I had the exact same problems. Thinking it could be my monitor, I tried on a different monitor, using a VGA connector instead of the DVI I usually use. Same problems.

Then, I tried running the 7900GT's in SLI. Something weird happened. The problem got half as bad - that is, only half of the vertical lines on the screen are affected by the gray flicker. See screenshot.

When running in SLI mode, if I alt+tab back to windows, the screen is completely gray. Then I have to alt+tab back to my game and I still have the "half-gray" problem. It goes away after about 5 or 10 minutes.


What could be the problem? I've updated to the newest Forceware drivers and swapped monitors with no avail. I've removed nTune and the problem still occurs. Using SpeedFan, temps never go above 60 C. What could be the problem?

 

[Xenozx]

Well it could be a few things. First things first, I was going to say it was an overclocking/overheating problem, but if you tried a complete diff card, then that should take that variable out of the equasion, unless that ones messed up too. But I had a bad card delivered to me from EVGA, and it was bad video memory on the board. It was either bad, or super overclocked to the point where it looked like your screenshot even in the bios, before it booted into windows:

the second thing is, I had a problem like this a long time ago. It dealt with my refresh rate/resolution. It happend on a CRT. Apparently the monitor was rated at 100hz refresh rate, but when I forced that it caused problems, mainly with vsync on. If I forced 85 hz, the problem went away. I also could get it to go away by ALT+TAB, but it would come back at random times. I would check the HZ setting on your LCD, if its set at 75, change it to 60. Also see if your game is forcing a particular refresh rate and if it is change it to lower.

 

[bazookaworm]

My friend had something similar to that but after swapping the cards the problem was fixed. Try it on another monitor and see if that works.

p.s. i can see you're playing dota

 

[cid499]

Haha, yea I'm playing Dota.

I've tried it on a different monitor, and it gets the same problem.. so I'm really not sure what is causing the problem.

 

[Sr7]

Those cards are both OC'd right? Either back off the clocks to 2/3 their normal, or try a different, non-oc'd card altogether. Chances are you bought your cards at the same time from the same place, and so they came with the same componentry, and are OC'd to the same level. Some games cause the GPU to show corruption more than others.

Even though you tried the second card, I believe it's entirely possible it would have the same issues since it is the same card and is probably oc'd as well.