Why are most of my games doing this?

mtbaird

Gawd
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Dec 12, 2003
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There is a picture of the main menu in Age of Empires III. The card hasn't ever been overclocked or anything. I put an aftermarket cooler on it but that's been on it for about a year.

It doesn't do this in counterstrike but i couldn't even play the Bioshock demo because of how bad it was. I've alt-tabbed out of games before to check the temperature and its never near the threshold level. The card is a 6800gt btw.

I just reinstalled the drivers too. I used drivercleaner and everything to make sure it was a good install. If anyone could help me out that'd be great, thanks.
 
Maybe the card is full of dust and its a sign of overheatting, which driver version are you using right now?
 
That looks like memory corruption IIRC, basically check your temps while running a game and post them. Either that or your memory just got fubar'd or fried at some point. It's definitely a hardware issue. Check for dust as posted above and make sure your case isn't a furnace. Other than that, you may have to RMA/get another card imo if the above doesn't work. :(
 
i know i get messed up textures if i chage the video settings without restarting the game.
 
I took off the side of the case and turned the fan up all the way and then ran AoE III. It started out looking ok but as i started to play random textures would flicker. Then i went back to the main menu and it flickered a lot too.

Does this sound like somehow the memory got messed up? I'm running a zalman fan that came with ramsinks which get cooled by the air coming off the fan. I have no idea how the memory could have been corrupted. Is there any program out there to test this?

Also, any reason why CS wouldn't be affected by this? Just because its a really light game for graphics cards to deal with? This is frustrating, thanks for helping me guys.
 
I would say to reseat the GPU heatsink... take it off.. clean all the old compound off and use some arctic silver or some other paste that doesn't dry out or seperate like silicone based and mose low end non-silicone based stuff does.

As for the air coming off the GPU heatsink actually cooling the ram-sinks.. hahahahaha... so you blow hot air off the gpu heat sink and expect it to cool the rest of the card.

I never understood that mentality from the cooler manufacturers... cool in comparison to what?

IT could also be that you need to reseat the card in the AGP slot.. you could be not getting enough juice to the card for it to work properly... that raises the question about how good the power supply is.

In any case... make sure to reseat the heatsink... just because the "threshold temp" isn't being reached doesn't mean much.. you could have a hot-spot and the rest be cool enough to mask it to the sensor.
 
alrighty i'll try that soon.

i moved the computer from my home to my house here @ college so maybe i shook something loose there, i dunno its wierd. The heatsink is getting pretty hot on the lowest fan setting so i feel like its transferring heat decently. I'll try and reseat it though
 
My old 6600 did that when I cranked up settings too high and it wasn't overclocked either.
 
Well... if it doesn't fix it after reseating the heatsink and card.... it may just be overheating at high stress times in games...

If the heatsink gets nice and hot/warm... it isn't a good enough heatsink or there isn't near enough air flow to keep ot cool.
 
Who made the card? If it is BFG, XFX or Evga you probably have life-time warranty and should send it in rather than try to replace the heatsink/thermal paste.
 
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