Please Help

[Judaeus Apella]

I need some help. My screen will get pink and blue and other colored blocks all over it, usually the upper two thirds of the screen. Over a couple seconds it gets worse, then the screen turns blue or black. It seems to happen the most when I'm browsing the web with firefox. That seems to agitate it more. Also the drivers crash and restart nearly every time I try to play a game. The video card doesn't have much mileage and I just updated the drivers... but that seems to have made it worse! Stevil said it could also be a bad power supply, and that makes sense cause I've had it for much longer than the video card. He linked me to a download for TechPowerUp GPU-Z, and I've been watching it for power fluctuations but I haven't seen anything beyond jumps from 1.0 to 1.1. Are there software tests I can run to test the power supply and video card? Could it be drivers? Or maybe the motherboard? Possibly a short somewhere? I'd like to know how to test for these things, where to look, and if there are software testing programs anyone can recommend that are good?

[Charles Wirth]

More cooling to the gpu/vmem

[Judaeus Apella]

My 6950 is running at 40 C. The temp is fine. That's why this is so odd. I even cleaned it out to make sure no dust was blocking any part of the card from being cooled. I removed a small ring of dust from the fan and a tiny amount inside, but still no change.

[Judaeus Apella]

Ack! It crashed again! That's like the 20th time just today! Please help!

[Bobsama]

Is the VRAM cooled sufficiently? Just because the GPU itself is fine, doesn't mean the VRAM is. Otherwise, it may be the sign of a failing graphics card, a bad cable, or a bad control board on the monitor. Usually, however, it's the graphics card (if it doesn't affect CPU-side stability).

Try running graphics stress tests, or even just GPUGRID, WCG (HCC-GPU), or MW@H.

[Judaeus Apella]

Wait... am I missing something, aren't those used to help with research? How do I stress test with that? Is there a stress test tool you can use in the program?

[Charles Wirth]

Pull the card out and look for capacitors that have blown, they may have seeped some fluid or expanded in size.

It is possible to replace them and have the card back to normal.

[[XC] Oj101]

Try something like MemtestCL to test the memory on the card, artifacting like that is often VRAM related.

[Judaeus Apella]

Hmmm I slowed down the mem's speed by 100MHz and so far it seems to be stable... maybe thats all I needed to do.

Oh well, looks like I won't be overclocking it later if the ram in unstable at just 1200MHz with the fan turned up to near max. I was going to wait till I had it for a few years then overclock it with better cooling gear. Damn. My old card never had this problem.

[Source]

6950 is not that old. Is it out of warranty already?
What brand is it?

[Judaeus Apella]

Gigabyte, so its a 3 year warranty. Also, I unlocked the software overclock so I'm pretty sure the warranty is voided now. Or is it? I'm not sure how that works exactly....

[CrazyNutz]

Yeah it sounds very much like VRAM. You backed down the mem freq by 100mhz, did you have it overclocked or is this -100mhz from stock?

[Source]

If the card can't run the advertised stock speeds, you should check with Gigabyte if they are willing to replace it. (or the shop you bought it from).

If it says 1200MHz on the box and you have to manually underclock it to 1100MHz to make it work properly, you should indeed be entitled to a new one.

[Judaeus Apella]

I'll check the stock specs tomorrow, going to bed in a few. Just wanted to tell you guys that there's a new symptom. Sometimes when I walk by my pc, I get those same artifacts on my screen. Oo I jiggled the card while putting some pressure towards the slot its in, and that made the artifacts go away. This is getting stranger and stranger. All the contacts looks clean and the card isn't loose in the slot. Maybe static? Maybe the computer isn't properly grounded or static is coming from the TV or something the TV is plugged into? If it is static, can I bleed it out? When ever I've had that kind of problem with a cable box, I unplug everything for an hour or so and the problem goes away. And if I had problems with static in an volume nob on older electronics I'd just adjust the knob all the way back and forth until it went away.

[Judaeus Apella]

Now that I think about it I had a feedback problem that was coming from *I think* the Motorola Comcast DVR receiver I had also connected to my TV. The new one I got a few months back seems to have fixed the problem. Newer model. Maybe its causing another feedback problem or sending static through the lines and its messing up my PC? Is that possible?

I also looked at my vcard's retail box, but I can't find the stock memory speed anywhere on it. Odd... isn't that usually on the box?

[Judaeus Apella]

So its still happening, but less. If I give the vcard a good wiggle while pushing on it into the PCI slot, I get a lot of artifacts on the screen and they go away when I stop, but if I do that the problem goes away for a while. If it starts acting up, I just have to give it a good wiggle and push on it again. This feels like a bad PCI slot.... but the mobo's warranty is up. Dammit...

[Source]

Anyone in the neighbourhood where you can test it with another motherboard?
Might send the GPU back but if it turns out to be your motherboard you might have to pay for the return of your GPU.

[Judaeus Apella]

Well coming up either this weekend or this coming week I'm going to install a faster disk I'm going to put 7 on as my new OS. When I do that I'll take a look at the slot and clean out my tower. I'll see if anything looks off. Bad pins, clumps of dust or debris in the slot, corrosion, etc. I'll let you know if I find anything.