Do I need to send this X850XT-PE back or upgrade cooling? Errors or no errors?

Nazo

Nazo

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 2, 2002
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I keep noticing what I would normally think of as an artifact in a lot of games. Almost every single time without exception, the issues are with shadows. They do weird things like flickering in NFS-MW and in another game I'm playing, Sudeki, I often see this sort of pattern of shadows on people that I'm pretty sure either should be a clean single shadow or not there at all. Is this normal (as in possibly game engine issues or something else like that,) or is this a form of artifacting I hadn't seen in the past with my previous video cards? I'm kind of wondering if it might be temperature related as stock cooling lets my card run pretty hot even when ATITool forces the fan to higher speeds. Despite what people love to claim -- that GPUs can take a LOT of heat -- earlier ATITool screwed up my fan settings and was forcing the fan down to 14% until 80 something (my normal settings have the fan usually running around 50% for most games, which is loud) and the video card was running into the range of 74C or so in just Sudeki (which is no NFS-MW, with it's most powerful effects being a slight shine to all the metals.) I wondered why the system made a VPU recover once, and then, a bit later it crashes and I noticed it was running 74C around that time. Maybe the GPU won't fry until 90C or so, but, it's not good for it to run in the 70s clearly. I should also add that I am using ATITool, running it at the maximum temperature at correct fan speeds (about 63, maybe 64C with the fan at 50% and no ocing) and I get no artifacts detected, which is part of why I wonder if I should maybe blame the game engines. Then again, just how much does ATITool test? Does it run any shaders or anything? Or does it maybe just toss sheer raw numbers of polygons at the GPU?

I may already be too late to try to send back to newegg. For one thing, this card is no longer being produced by the manufacturer (VisionTek,) even if they did just simply rebrand a stock ATI card as nearly as I can see (didn't even toss in extra software or cables.) I'd probably have to rely on manufacturer warantee then, and even then I don't know if I can do anything since it looks like they've stopped even selling this card in favor of only selling the PCI-Express version (surprise surprise.) I'm pretty well planning on getting an ATI Silencer either way, but, legally I can't RMA this card if I change the cooling, and less legally, even if I swapped back after installing an ATIS, they'd surely notice the changed thermal paste.

So, the question is, is my card producing errors ATITool can't detect, is it just running too hot for full stability at the stock clocks, or am I just seeing problems in game engines (and Sudeki can't be that well designed -- even has known problems with some ATI cards, though mine isn't in the list so far as I know)? Do I try to RMA now if I even can, or go ahead and get that expensive cooling upgrade so I can finally start properly ocing this card?


EDIT: BTW, on subject but a little off, is there any way to change the BIOS fan speed setting without using a weird modified BIOS? Like some kind of tool that would let me just simply change my stock BIOS fan setting? I don't like having to rely on ATITool -- especially after this little screwup that forced my card to run so hot like that...

EDIT2: I noticed my memory won't hardly OC at all, but, when I ran ATITool, it managed to get the core all the way up to 576 before it locked up the system. The memory ran up to 596 or something along those lines before it started backing down to 591.55 or so. Stock being 590... It's not hard to believe the memory could produce errors more easily than the GPU since I'm running the card at stock until I improve the cooling (it's bad enough as it is -- I'm especially worried the way temperatures just practically jerk nearly 30 degrees in a matter of seconds sometimes. Not good for any electronics, even if they aren't supposed to fry until something far higher.) Under worst conditions right now, the card's "ambient" (eg memory) temperature is in the area of 42C, which isn't particularly bad, but, definitely isn't particularly good either considering chasis temperature is 28C or so tops.

Oh yeah, and I tried an underclock. I set the GPU to 450 and the memory to 475. I still saw some of the same sort of flickering and other such things that just felt like artifacts to me, and ATITool still says 0 artifacts.
 
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EDIT: Oh, and before you start thinking "Oh, but, you need super-duper 1000 watt four 12V rail power supplies for that thing" bear in mind that I've used an even weaker power supply for a much tighter setup. An unlocked very overclocked 6800nu on an Athlon mobile barton overclocked to 2.5GHz running up to the 50C ranges at something like 1.75V (in other words, being a mobile didn't mean less power consumption in this case since it was still using more than stock for a non-mobile.) I don't know how much more an underclocked X850XT PE uses compared to an unlocked and overclocked 6800, but, I know that my 3700+, even with raised voltages, is using considerably less power (and I think temperatures are supposed to affect power consumption, so the fact this thing is running in the lower 30s under max Prime95 load compared to the previous being in the 50s probably matters) than that barton did, so I figure things may even out. Then again, this power supply is a LOT better than my previous 420W too.

EDIT2: On newegg I see one reviewer using this thing with a 6800GS SLI setup and an Opteron running at 3GHz. My voltages are nearly rock solid, so I'd say this PSU is quite sufficient.
 
rma if ur not satisfied :p u payed good money...just say it artifacts at stock speed and get another one which oc's better
 
Thing is, I'm not even 100% sure I CAN RMA. I know you're supposed to be able to, but, VisionTek stopped making these. Newegg ran out and removed the card entirely from their site within weeks of me buying it. ATI's product registration forms don't even list the AGP model and I was forced to select generic ATI Radeon X850XT PE so I could submit a support ticket on an unrelated issue I'm having with part of their software. Also, I had just put in the money for the ATI Silencer in the bank and have been just waiting for it to clear to order that silencer, so that would be for nothing since I'll have to go back and withdraw enough to ship a heavy video card in a method that they won't get upset about (some cheap little USPS box and non-static safe bubble-wrap isn't going to cut it here, they'll just refuse to replace it if they have any sense.) Besides, I'm still not clear on if I'm going to be waiting weeks just to get another card that does the exact same thing when there's nothing actually wrong with the card. The only other video card I have is an ancient PCI card that runs so slowly I can't even so much as watch video files in XP (I have to use linux, or maybe install an old version of Windows -- preferably 9x.) So for weeks I'd be without any PC games at all, minimal abilities to do simple things like watch anime properly, and so on. If the problem lies in the games themselves, it's just not worth it.
 
These Shadow issues you are talking about are the result of a need to update drivers, I just purchased Visionteks X850XTPE today from Fry's and all you need are the newest drivers from ATI's website, I assume Visionteks are a little older, or you may need to download the newest patch for your games (i noticed this kind of artifacting in Farcry, BF2, and other games with my old 6600GT, and walaah, that was the problem, PM if you have any questions)
One more thing, I don't think they've stopped selling these, in fact i'm almost positive, but even so i picked mine up right in the nick of time.
 
Darn, you got my hopes up. Unfortunately, I'm using the latest. Lol, I haven't used manufacturer provided drivers since my Geforce 2 GTS way back when there was no nVidia WDM for the VIVO and you had to get support from the manufacturer. Back then the manufacturer drivers were actually something other than rebranded drivers from the company that made the chip, but, I'm fully aware that now they are just the original drivers with a different logo stamped on them.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and, I'm using the latest patch for NFS-MW. At least it was last I checked. It's darned hard to find the patch for this game because EA has put up a really stupid site for it where you can't just click a "download" type link to get to patches, but, have to dig through pages of tech support to find it. I updated to what was the latest a while back in the hopes it would fix the game jerking and general crappy running problem (which is unrelated because that same problem has occured even on a system with a 7800GTX.)

I just mean VisionTek stopped selling btw. They've removed it from their catalog as nearly as I can tell, and Newegg, like I mentioned, has removed it from their lists entirely (not just simply marking it as out of stock like you would expect if they planned to sell more later.) Of course, ATI is still releasing a tiny trickle of X850XT PE AGP chips, but, I must say that I can't for a second blame VisionTek if they truly did choose to stop making and selling these considering how slow that trickle must now be. Actually, all I found in stock last I looked was the far more expensive ASUS card.

One good thing from all this though. It almost confirms that it's at least possible that it may be software related. I assumed game engine, but, maybe drivers.
 
I think I forgot something, lol, the X850 XT PE doesn't support shader 3.0 so you might have that turned on, and its defaulting and creating artifacts, try turning it on lowest detail but the same resolution and see if you get artifacts. By the way are these artifacts like huge randomly placed shadows.......also try and download some demos of newer games and see if they do it too. (try Quake 4 or maybe F.E.A.R.) and see if it artifacts
Oh and one more thing, Visionteks website still has the X850XTPE for sale. Also artifacts are usually little dots, not huge shaded areas, I can almost guarantee its a software issue.
 
I don't think there's any way you can trick a game into "defaulting to shader 3.0" And I don't think I ever played NFS-MW on my old 6800, so I doubt it could have configured itself to that either. Anyway, if Sudeki is capable of 3.0, I'm Bill Gates. That game looks like a seriously low budget ripoff to me. Besides, as I understand it, PS3.0 includes some radically different instructions, so if PS3 instructions were sent to the card and somehow not discarded, I'll bet there'd be a lot more serious artifacts than what I'm seeing. Mind you, this is why D3D has those APIs to ask what capabilities a card has, and this is why games don't even have an OPTION to choose PS 3.0 normally (with the exception of Fable, which, will revert ALL your settings, not just the shadows setting, if you set it to the max, which apparently is PS3.0 mode.)

It's kind of hard to explain exactly what I'm seeing, but, it's definitely not little dots. However, artifacts are not only little dots. My old 6800 would every now and then screw up the z buffer or something (well, I'm guessing that's how it did it) and the physics of something would get massively warped so some vortex is stretched beyond possible limits or something. Kind of hard to explain, just things got warped. The shadows are closer to an artifact like that than random dots appearing (which I remember seeing on my old 9600 Pro way back when.) Really, this is much more minor with just things like the shadows in Sudeki kind of appearing as a bunch of misplaced little squares on people. In NFS-MW, they just kind of move around as I approach a building, but, nothing happens if I'm still. Anyway, I can definitely believe it could be software. In fact, in light of the fact that I've never actually caught an artifact yet, I've decided it must surely be, even if it does just look plain wrong.

Oh, and I said VisionTek doesn't actually sell the X850XT PE AGP anymore. I didn't say they dont' have a buy link on the product page. Click that link and watch what happens. I didn't find it in their catalog anywhere. They still sell the PCI-E version, but, the PCI-E version is easier to get. Remember, ATI has to make a seperate chip for each version, so if they decide to produce even less of the AGP ones than before, companies like VisionTek who rely on a smaller profit margin per sale are going to stop trying to sell that product due to the fact they'll likely end up loosing money on it instead. ASUS charges more, so makes more per sale and has more money to throw around, so it's not a coincidence they might choose to hang in there if others quit. Anyway, if you can find a place on their site where VisionTek is actually still selling (and I don't just mean a buy link, but, a "Add to Cart" style link) please do let me know because I would like to know if I'm mistaken here, but, right now I have no reason to believe it.
 
Have you used your 6800 in the same computer as the ATI, cuz you could have left over drivers, if so try driver cleaner (freeware program, easy to find, just google it) but other than that i'm stumped
 
Yes, same PC. However, I definitely used driver cleaner. Which was a pain because I had to reinstall the system drivers since it's a nForce motherboard.

Anyway, I'm just going to say that I'm seeing bugs in drivers and games here. It looks like it has to be software to me. Sudeki just looks cheap, and NFS-MW has a serious bug affecting performance that EA refuses to address (still no response after all these weeks to my e-mail, not even automated) so it's not hard to imagine issues with shadows.
 
How about just calling them instead of going over a million times about how its not listed anymore. Just because a company is not selling the product doesnt mean they will not honor the warranty and replace the product.
 
I doubt it's a cooling issue, as 74C under load is average for an X850XT PE. I have no idea what your problem is, and your card might need an RMA, but I doubt it's a cooling issue.
 
Hmm, well, I didn't really entirely think it was cooling, but, mainly I meant the memory since it's right on the verge there like that. I don't think 74C should be average though. They are SUPPOSED to be properly testing to ensure their hardware can handle high temperatures, and since mine goes unstable there, if that's "average" for an X850XT PE, this chip should have been in a lower model.

Anyway, I'm replacing the cooling mainly because of the noise level and the fact that the stock cooling is very bad if you want the card to last more than a couple of years or so. I'm a little worried that ATI's so called quality control would allow such a thing, but, I'm guessing they just assume we don't care if the card only lasts a few years since most people with the really high end replace them before that.

And Jerunk, thanks for confirming my suspicions. BTW, I tried downgrading. I installed the Omega drivers based on 5.12 (I chose omega because supposedly they have a lot more fixes and such.) I still saw the shadows doing that. I reupgraded when I benchmarked nearly 1000 below what I expected in 3DMark05, but, realized after I reupgraded that the reason it benched so low was that I had ATITool set to load the underclock profile on load (oops.) Oh well, no point going back since I still saw the same stuff in 5.12. I suppose I could go further back, but, it's not really so bad that I give up the speed bonuses with newer drivers (plus compatibility as games are usually designed with the assumption you use the latest, and I'm planning on being ready for Oblivion when it comes out. Er... IF it comes out....)
 
So wait.......

You have a card that's not working right, yet you still havent called Visiontek? Yet you still want to put a non-stock cooler on a card that you know has issues and void its warranty? You're making no sense at all bud.

Call up Visiontek, they should honor your warranty. Just freaking do it, you're driving me insane by basically repeating yourself over and over and yet not even taking a logical step towards fixing it (like calling VisionTek). Also, your warranty is NOT with ATi, but Visiontek......
 
Please read the thread before responding, thanks. In particular, the post I pointed you to earlier.
 
.......

Your card has issues. Your card should go in for an RMA and be checked if the company you bought it from (Visiontek in this case) can validat your issue and therefore replace your video card with a working one. Just because they do not sell your video card any longer does not mean they do not have back stock in which they use to replace video cards. I can almost 99% gurantee you that they indeed have stock of your video card that they keep in order to fulfill RMA demands.

It would be stupid, yes STUPID, of you to buy a Silencer and put it on your video card. This would void your warranty and if it does not fix your problem you would be stuck with a broken card because you simply, for some unknown reason, did not call Visiontek.

Now, call Visiontek. They will tell you if they are able to RMA your video card or not. Trying to solve this issue on your own by replacing the heatsink and fan is just out right stupid. I dont know how to explain it any clearer to you, but you seem to continue to miss the point.

Call Visiontek........
 
*sigh* Flaming gets you nowhere. Fine, I didn't feel like retyping it all out for you since you ignored what we've all said, but, just this once. Firstly, it has been all but confirmed that this is not a video card issue, but, in fact, lies in the drivers. VisionTek has nothing to do with drivers and can't help there. Were I to RMA this video card, costing them money and myself the cost of shipping, then I get another video card which does the same thing most likely. What's more, I've yet to see a company that can respond very quickly on a RMA (well, Newegg is pretty decent about that, but, this isn't Newegg we're talking about.) In my experience, usually takes weeks. During that time, while I'm waiting for a new video card with the same problem (since it's software and not hardware) I can't do much of anything at all. Right now my so called HTPC is having troubles getting videos to run properly in windows, and GeeXboX gets no sound out of the YMF724 for some reason (doesn't even support the Chaintech Envy24 card and refuses to use it) and the main PC would have a video card so slow it can't even draw a simple window quickly as well as sound problems if I try GeeXboX (Audigy 2 ZS is messed up with current Alsa drivers.) You expect me to simply send this thing away on a whim when right now by all accounts it looks like a software problem, costing VisionTek money to restock, and hopefully test and reuse the card (if they just throw it away it costs them even more) as well as me the money to ship it. I'm not going to do it until I either am getting dangerously close to the warantee running out or confirm that it's a hardware issue, whichever comes first.

Also, I didn't say the cooling was a solution to this problem. Nor did I say I'm installing it on my video card tomorrow. Even if I RMA this card, do you honestly think they're going to send me an incompatible card? The ATS5 supports all X800 and X850s but the X800 All-in-Wonder. I can hold onto the cooling until I'm sure, and then solve the problems I told you were the real reason I wanted the better cooling for (noise & extreme thermal cycling.)

Now can we please move on?
 
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