Okay, so it's 3:37 in the morning this Monday night, and I've been up all night trying to fix this fucking computer. Last Friday, I bought this Sapphire X1800 XT 256MB PCI-E off of Dmans218 (member from another forum), and I installed it as soon as I got home, to try out with my Enermax Liberty 620W I had got the same week. When I first booted it up, I noticed weird green/pink-ish scan lines and artifacts on the screen between the BIOS splash menu, and the Windows XP loading screen. I didn't really think anything of it, and I continued using the card. Later on I noticed my 3DMarks and benchmarks weren't up to par, so I checked the card memory/core frequencies, instead of being at the default 625/750, they were at 600/700 (for 2D AND 3D), even ATi Tools showed 625/750 as the default. So I bumped up the frequencies to what they should be, simply by clicking 'Default Clocks' in ATi Tools, and the frequencies had gone up to 621 / 747, just what I had been looking for. Except now, I've been having ALOT of problems... I get more and more artifacts on the boot-up screens, and I can only get into Windows XP 1 out of 5 tries, usually it just hangs after the Windows loading screen. However, I can get into Safe mode just fine, and everything is pretty much viewed properly (except the artifacts/scanlines in between boot-up screens.) I've tried, uninstalling drivers, reinstalling new drivers, registry cleaning, all that jazz, and nothing seems to work. The only thing I haven't tried, is bringing it into a shop to get looked at and formatting, which should I do? Thanks!
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Sapphire X1800 XT 256MB Problems
- Thread starter Karant
- Start date
I would of said you may have a crossfire edition meaning lower clock speed but you would of known by now lol, first have you checked the temps that the card runs at when you turn it on?, do you know if the card was always an XT and not and XL flashed? The screen not loading on boot up happened to me as well when I first bought my gpu, what fixed that for me was reseting the bios.
But worst case scenario is the card was faulty so the guy you bought it off sold it.
But worst case scenario is the card was faulty so the guy you bought it off sold it.
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2002
- Messages
- 10,266
I get the same greenish pink scan lines between my post screen an the winxp loading screen and everytime I change the clock speed in windows\during a game so im sure thats normal. I would just format everything and hope that fixes it. Your 3dmark scores werent up to par? Dont most 3dmark users use low settings like 800x600 no aa or af and all that good stuff turned off to get a higher "score".
I would recommend ati tray tools so you can bind a key to an overclocking profile so you can just press it while in game if your 3dclocks dont switch cause that happens to me sometimes. Ati tray tools on screen display for the win
I would recommend ati tray tools so you can bind a key to an overclocking profile so you can just press it while in game if your 3dclocks dont switch cause that happens to me sometimes. Ati tray tools on screen display for the win
its a sapphire and the heat sink sucks... im running a 1800gto 256 my self, the heat sink dosnt do a good enought job of cooling the ram, what happens is the ati vpu recover kicks in to try to stablize the card and lowers the clock frequencys if it dosent work after x trys. with my card i had to move to water cooling, drop the memory frequency by 50mhz, and bump the voltage to the ram by 2 notches from 1.8850 to 1.8890 it is now stable but i stil get artifacts every so often, basicly, the ram was damaged by the shitty heatsink not doing its job, and this is the only way to make it work close to correct.. (all in all i only lose mabe 2,3 fps with the details maxed... ) I would say try buying a new cooler for it, but form your description its beyond help, it is not even makeing it past boot befor it runs into issues.i would suggest eather returning it or use it as a trade in or something..
So this is not a software problem? Oh great...
This is the cards box...
Is it crossfire edition, with lower clock speeds? If so, what really are it's default clocks? Thanks!
seeing as how it has the big crossfire guy in the middle i would assume it is, however, ccc should detect it as such and have the clocks set correctly, so hitting the defualt clocks button in ccc should put it to the correct values... unless the bios was modded (which would be impossible to know, you could try finding the EXACT bios for the card and loading it to see if the clocks change)
other wise i have no idea what the defualt clocks would be, im sure someone will chime in with them
Well, I definitely have the non-crossfire edition Sapphire card, and mine has the same logo on it:
I think that's just saying that it's Crossfire compatible (not that it's a Crossfire-edition) card.
Edit: My suggestion: go to this website and download the BIOS for the Sapphire x1800xt 256MB. It comes with a little program that flashes it for you. Try that, and see if it works.
I think that's just saying that it's Crossfire compatible (not that it's a Crossfire-edition) card.
Edit: My suggestion: go to this website and download the BIOS for the Sapphire x1800xt 256MB. It comes with a little program that flashes it for you. Try that, and see if it works.
If you are getting artifacts everywhere at stock speeds and below, then your card is on its way out. I had a similar problem a few months back and was forced to RMA it:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1136696
The few things I did to try to test to see if the card was still salvageable include:
- running with the side panel off
- reseating the heatsink and putting a fresh coat of Arctic Silver 5
- blowing out dust
- cleaning up wire clutter
- pointing fans towards the card
- killing my CPU overclock and reverting back to stock
- reinstall drivers and using Driver Cleaner Pro
- reformatting
The last two may not really make much of a difference if you are getting artifacts even during bootup. The rest is worth a try if it turns out to be heat related. However, it's unfortunate that it seems these cards have tendencies to fail and have to be RMAed.
See if you can RMA it to Sapphire or talk to the person you bought the card from and see if it's possible to RMA to the retailer. If it works out, as soon as you get your card back, definitely look towards getting some aftermarket cooling. While the performance of the stock cooler is good when the fan speeds are adjusted, the overall cooling performance can still be better with aftermarket cooling.
I know how bad it sucks to be in this position now. Just go step by and step and eliminate each possible solution one at a time. Best of luck to you!
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1136696
The few things I did to try to test to see if the card was still salvageable include:
- running with the side panel off
- reseating the heatsink and putting a fresh coat of Arctic Silver 5
- blowing out dust
- cleaning up wire clutter
- pointing fans towards the card
- killing my CPU overclock and reverting back to stock
- reinstall drivers and using Driver Cleaner Pro
- reformatting
The last two may not really make much of a difference if you are getting artifacts even during bootup. The rest is worth a try if it turns out to be heat related. However, it's unfortunate that it seems these cards have tendencies to fail and have to be RMAed.
See if you can RMA it to Sapphire or talk to the person you bought the card from and see if it's possible to RMA to the retailer. If it works out, as soon as you get your card back, definitely look towards getting some aftermarket cooling. While the performance of the stock cooler is good when the fan speeds are adjusted, the overall cooling performance can still be better with aftermarket cooling.
I know how bad it sucks to be in this position now. Just go step by and step and eliminate each possible solution one at a time. Best of luck to you!
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2002
- Messages
- 10,266
Last resort............ FORMAT. Cause I get the same green\pink lines inbetween post and winxp loading screen like I said in my previous post.
Do you have the proper ati drivers installed for linux to work.
Do you have the proper ati drivers installed for linux to work.