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X1950 help -Artifacting.

B

BlastRadius

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 12, 2004
Messages
187
Hello,

My friend has had a x1950 512mb (he doesn't know if pro or xtx) for 8 months. He has binned the receipt and the box (doh!) and now it appears to be artifacting like this:

my.php


I have asked him to run ATI tool tonight to check. I'm afraid that is as far as my knowledge of the ATI brand goes.

Could anybody please offer any help - Could this be a catalyst problem?
 
What brand, what bus, overclocked? and find out the gpu temps.

How do you not know the difference between a x1950pro or x1950xtx.., just look at it. or find out with atitool.

Ether the card is shot (my first one slowly deteriorated until it wouldn't run at stock clocks, or more likley the VRM is overheating due to in adequate or lack of vrm heatsink. And if thats the case, I got $10 on it being a sapphire card.

Catalyst problems wouldn't make shit hardcore artifact like that.
 
BlastRadius said:
Hello,

My friend has had a x1950 512mb (he doesn't know if pro or xtx) for 8 months. He has binned the receipt and the box (doh!) and now it appears to be artifacting like this:

my.php


I have asked him to run ATI tool tonight to check. I'm afraid that is as far as my knowledge of the ATI brand goes.

Could anybody please offer any help - Could this be a catalyst problem?
Click to expand...

We would really need more info to make any educated guesses beyond what Simpson already said. AGP or PCI-E? Motherboard? Power Supply make and model? Catalyst Driver Versions used. It it was an AGP card, Cats 7.8 and 7.9 had some major issues with the X1950 series of cards causing non-bootable systems and failed desktop screen draws. Artifcating wasn't one of the symptoms however.
 
Thanks for the replies. Sorry I cannot provide too much more information as he lives miles away so I cannot see it with my own 2 eyes..

I know it is PCIe and I think the motherboard is an MSI K9n-Neo, he is running 2g Kingston ddr2-667 and an AMD 3800 Single core.

It does look to me like it may be artifacting due to heat; hopefully ATItool and a few other benchmarks could confirm it. If it is heat then he has some Papst 80mm fans he could blast at it for now which may help???.

I don't think the card has ever been clocked and it spends most of its like surfing or playing WOW so nothing too demanding.

Is there any way to help stop the card artifacting? Better sinks or cooling?
 
BlastRadius said:
Thanks for the replies. Sorry I cannot provide too much more information as he lives miles away so I cannot see it with my own 2 eyes..

I know it is PCIe and I think the motherboard is an MSI K9n-Neo, he is running 2g Kingston ddr2-667 and an AMD 3800 Single core.

It does look to me like it may be artifacting due to heat; hopefully ATItool and a few other benchmarks could confirm it. If it is heat then he has some Papst 80mm fans he could blast at it for now which may help???.

I don't think the card has ever been clocked and it spends most of its like surfing or playing WOW so nothing too demanding.

Is there any way to help stop the card artifacting? Better sinks or cooling?
Click to expand...

W/O looking at the card or knowing what brand it is, its hard to provide more info. he may be able to solve the problem with pointing a fan at the vid card where the VRM sink is located (if it has one, some early sapphire and a few other x1950pros didnt have a vrm heatsink or a very shoddy one).
 
The memory is probably overheating, if he wasn't turning up the fan speeds right off the bat, there is a good chance the memory is dying, that is the #1 cause of artifacts and crashes. The default fan settings on these cards are notoriously too low. He can try upping the fan speeds to see if it goes away, if it doesn't, the RAM is now bad and you can only try for a replacement.

In the meantime, tell him to turn texture detail settings down in all games. That will put less stress on the RAM. I have a 1900XT 512MB, sadly out of warranty. Used to be able to play all games on high, but I didn't know about the fan settings till too late, now I can't play with high textures or I get artifacts and/or a crash.

With the serial he might be able to still get warranty service.
 
What are the idle and load GPU temps?
Has he kept the heatsink clean of dust?
 
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