Is this artifacting?

C

coolrunnings

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 21, 2004
Messages
511
Ok I have some wierdness going on with both Core 2 Duo systems I've been working with lately. Randomly when we turn on the computer, it will come up with a garbled display instead of the usual BIOS post screen. Hitting the reset button fixes the problem but it's rather unnerving to boot to that. Both machines have Asus boards with the 975x chipset in them. One has an Nvidia 7300GT and my own has a 512mb X1900XT Crossfire card. Anybody have any idea what causes this to happen?
 
Not like any glitch I've seen.

Are you sure it's not a motherboard bug?

You say these are both Asus 975 boards - are they the exact same model?
 
I don't think that is considerd artifacting.
The computer is cold-booting and the video
card isn't even warm or too hot yet. As to why
your getting a messed up system post screen, I'm unsure.

I would say though that the it's inside the bios and
to fix it would require a bios flash, I could be wrong though.
 
Two different boards. Mine's the P5W-DH Deluxe. The other one that has this issue is a P5WDG2 WS board. Both have the latest BIOS. Think I should post this on the mobo forum?
 
I some times get that with my asus board, when i turn the pc from cold, the screen will be garbled, its done it with 3 new computers but all running the same type of motherboard, recently i flashed to latest bios and i havent seen it appear yet, so i suspect its a bios issue more than anything else.
 
It's probably some Bios error. reset your bios by unplugging the system, removing the CMOS battery. Mash the power button a few times and count to 15. Put the battery back in , plug in the system and start it back up.

That resets the bios, and should fix everything.
 
Well, last time I had a garbled bios screen, I found out my graphic card was practically dead... It's a possibility that both cards crapped out around the same time. But try the bios flashing. Did you do any setting changes before this happened (or did you build these two systems at the same time, turned them on, and both displayed the garbled images?).
 
I've worked on an older pc that had that problem. Sometimes it would boot to a garbled screen, sometimes not. Also, it would occasionally happen after the machine was running for a while. This was on a socket 478 P4 with a 9800XT. Swapped the 9800 for an old MX440, problem gone. Found that the voltage was dropping quite a bit with the power hungry 9800XT, with the 12v rail dipping as low as 10v. New power supply fixed the problem.
 
I had a similar problem. I have an ABIT KN8 Ultra NF4U 939, and a X1800XT. The bios splash image looked like the color pallette was randomized. This was 100% repro, not like your situation where is happens once in a while. Everything else worked fined, games, movies, windows, etc... A bios update came out soon after. I installed it and that fixed the problem.

I have seen garbled boot screens from a bad video card, however everything else was garbled too, games, windows, etc... It also seems unlikely that both video cards are bad.

I have also seen a bad monitor cause a similar problem but all the video was broken, not just the boot screen.

If just the boot screen is garbled I would say it is a bios problem, keep checking for an update. Since it happens once in awhile it could also be related to heat.
 
getnate said:
I had a similar problem. I have an ABIT KN8 Ultra NF4U 939, and a X1800XT. The bios splash image looked like the color pallette was randomized. Everything else worked fined, games, movies, windows, etc... A bios update came out soon after. I installed it and that fixed the problem.

I have seen garbled boot screens from a bad video card, however everything else was garbled too, games, windows, etc... It also seems unlikely that both video cards are bad.

I have also seen a bad monitor cause a similar problem but all the video was broken, not just the boot screen.

If just the boot screen is garbled I would say it is a bios problem. A new bios will probably come out soon, keep checking their website.
Click to expand...

yeah, I'm assuming that there were artifacts in the OS. If there are though, that almost guarantees you a messed up GPU.
 
It's totally random. Only has happened 3 times total. The card works perfectly in every other aspect though. It gives no problems in Windows, no issues in games (they rock)... I'm thinking it's BIOS related but who knows. Cutting edge = bleeding edge eh?
 
coolrunnings said:
It's totally random. Only has happened 3 times total. The card works perfectly in every other aspect though. It gives no problems in Windows, no issues in games (they rock)... I'm thinking it's BIOS related but who knows. Cutting edge = bleeding edge eh?
Click to expand...

If it's not a problem forget about it and play some video games.
 
Heh, it's not so much for me that I'm asking. The reason I'm concerned is that it's happening on a business machine that has to be running rock solid. Downtime isn't an option. *shrug* Guess there isn't much I can do about it.
 
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