Video card woes

[cmdr_zoom]

Something in my computer isn't working quite right, so of course, I am unhappy.

My brother gave me a hand-me-down video card that is about twice as good as the one I had before (ATI X1950 vs. X850). It's shiny. I can do HDR now, run stuff with options set to "high". But... it glitches. Sometimes it's flickers, sometimes it's random spikes in terrain or the tip of something stretching off to infinity when looked at from a certain angle. Sometimes half of my screen is taken up by polygon static. And the worst(?) part is, it's not consistent. It doesn't even steadily get worse over time, leading up to a crash, like if it was overheating or something.

At first I thought it might be an issue with my 400W power supply, but my brother seems to think that's sufficient and I've confirmed I have the right sort of connector (six little boxes, with pins in three of 'em). I'm running the latest ATI drivers. It seems to be securely slotted. Tonight I plan to take it out for a moment and blow on everything to make sure it's as clean as a hand-me-down card can be. But beyond that, honestly... I'm at a loss when it comes to hardware of this sort. (I can't even be sure that something's wrong with THIS card, and that buying a new one of similar specs wouldn't have similar problems.)

Worst case, I can always fall back to my old card. But I like the shiny, and I have no way of troubleshooting the new card unless it's in the machine. On the other hand, I also like "stable" and "reliable." If I can't get this resolved in a day or so, I might just give up and wait until my next comprehensive upgrade, possibly early next year.

Comments

[squirrelmh.livejournal.com]

Your machine doesnt have an onboard video card by any chance, does it? That sometimes causes issues with the computer trying to use two cards at once, or so I have heard. If you google "troubleshooting ATI video cards" there is a fairly comprehensive set of sites for this problem.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Considering that I took the other card out entirely, and never had any problems with it like this...

[squirrelmh.livejournal.com]

Bugger. Wish I could offer more useful advice then. I had similar problems a while back, but it involved the onboard Intel graphics processor, and my not having switched it off in favor of the newer, sleeker chip.
Ah well, good luck! I know how much it sucks having 'puter troubles, when you'd rather be smoking aliens or levelling up in WoW.

[pyromaniac-ks.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it could be a bum memory chip on the card. I've seen stuff like this before. If it has modular memory (and I think the X1950 does), make sure all the memory slots on the card are seated properly?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Will do. (See, that I can understand, and I agree that it could match the intermittent errors - glitchy memory's like that.)

[pyromaniac-ks.livejournal.com]

The instance I've actually run into it before involved an old S3 card with 2Mb onboard and 2Mb in slots. One of the pins on the slotted memory chips was bent, which buggered the contact. Which caused errors... much like you are experiencing now.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I used to get the "random polygon trash" thing sometimes with my previous video card, and it turned out that it was overheating; just not severely enough to crash it altogether. It'd just get weird sometimes. I think the GPU fan was intermittently sticking or something. Might want to check yours for dust in the hub (if it has a fan, of course). Mind you, that was an Nvidia card, it's possible they have entirely different failure states.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

It does - I think they all do these days, being little computers in their own right - and I'll be sure to check and clean that while I'm doing the chip-check. Thanks.

[twoflower.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a recent victim of overheating, definitely make sure the fans are canned-air blasted and your case well ventilated. Even then, if it's an old card, it may not be able to cool itself properly.

I hate computer hardware so much.

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity, what bus is your system?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

PCI Express (confirmed now).