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GF3 problems

S

Seven

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2004
Messages
153
A couple years ago an online friend sent me his old [VisionTek] GF3 Ti 500. I had it in my old Compaq box and it worked great for months, then mysteriously started artifacting very badly. It's been a long time, so I don't remember all that much, but I think it ended up not giving a picture at all. I never could figure out what was wrong with it, so I went back to my onboard video for a couple of weeks until I got my GF4 Ti 4800SE (still using it). I ended up coming accross the old GF3 again a few months ago, and decided to try it out in the old man's Compaq. It worked perfectly, and had been doing perfectly still until just today. It started artifacting, and whenever something was moved / changed, it would flash to black, and when the picture came back it would show the move or change. The artifacts seemed to stay in the same place too. On the WinXP splash screen, and on the mouse pointer (weird lines on and around it, even when moved), and a couple other places. It basically made the PC unusable though, so I switched it back to onboard, and decided to see if I can get some answers here. I don't have enough knowledge or experience to understand whats up with it. The problems seem a bit strange to just be overheating, since it just did it out of nowhere after months of working fine. Any ideas?

If it ends up theres nothing I can really do with it, does it still hold any value at all? Can it be traded for anything? Like recycled or something?
 
So no ideas?

I have such bad luck posting for help in forums. No matter how big the forum seems I can never find an answer to the problem I'm having.
 
Did you visually inspect the card for excessive dust, damaged components, or other obvious defects? Have you looked at the card while it is on to see if the fan is spinning?
 
Try opening up the side of the case and put a big room fan next to it. If you still get the artifacts there is prolly something wrong with the card. If you don't it's a heat problem that's causing the artifacts. Also, have you tried some older drivers? I've heard (can't remmeber where so I don't know if this is true) that older drivers tend to work better on older cards, maybe not just something to try. Hope that helps solve your problem.
 
Well, I feel stupid. I put it in my old comp just to test to see if the fan was running. Nope. Not spinning at all. Normally I would be smart enough to check something like that, I swear, but for some reason it just didn't occur to me this time. The problems it had back when the fan was actually working probably threw my mind off.

Anyway, I ordered an IceBerq aluminum cooler from SVC for about $9 shipped. Even though its pink (what were they thinking?), I'm hoping it does the trick. If it doesn't work, does anyone know of any video card recycle programs or something? Feels so wrong to throw away something like a video card, even if it is screwing up.
 
Make a mental note: Check the simple stuff first. That usually takes care of the problem.

I hope the new fan works. On the driver issue, the 41.09 detonators, are the best performing drivers i used for my gf3 ti200. They didn't work with far cry, but the card really can't handle that anyway.
 
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