Video Went Haywire

[Unclean]

Hi everyone!

 

I hope appealing to the technical gurus in here would help. Last night when I was playing UT, my system locked up and the monitor showed a ton of vertical lines (1 pixel wide) in various colors.

 

Here's the information that may be useful:

 

Technical

AMD 4000+ (I bent two pins putting it in, but they were straightened and fit in the socket now. Might still be suspect.) No overclocking.

ASUS A8N SLI Premium Mobo

1GB OCZ Performance Memory

Sapphire ATI X800 XL 256MB

 

UT and Guild Wars settings maxed out, ATI Control Panel set to highest settings

 

Situational

Saturday: played UT for about 3 hours, then Guild Wars for about 11 hours

Sunday: played Guild Wars for about 10 hours, UT for 2

 

Here's what I'm going to try tonight:

Download & install MBM5 -- supposedly there's an alarm that will go off if temperatures reach a certain level.

 

Any thoughts on what it might be? Just a 1-time fluke? Any of you experience this? Or is it a known issue?

 

Thanks in advance!

[NOFX]

sounds to me like some heat. When I OC my Radeon 9500 pro and it gets hot enough, I just lock up and the computer restarts, I know its heat that is causing this. Last time I have seen lines, was my voodoo3. The problem got so frequent I had to replace the card. About 95% its heat. Keep it cool!!

[MrDuke]

Saturday:  played UT for about 3 hours, then Guild Wars for about 11 hours

Sunday:  played Guild Wars for about 10 hours, UT for 2

 

Are you serious?

 

Gad, to be young again...

[Unclean]

Well, this was the one weekend when my girlfriend wouldn't be around, so I had the place to myself. It is nice to be 25 and have no real responsibilities to speak of, though.

 

NOFX - I'm not overclocking the card at all, but it could still be heat, eh? Perhaps the MBM5 program will also monitor the videocard temp. If not, how would that be tested?

[NOFX]

yes it can overheat without Overclocking, make sure you have good airflow. My previous video card Overheated without Ocin'g it. With everything turned up to high, its putting even more stress on it.

And dannng. 10 hours of Guildwars and 2 hours of UT. Are you blind yet?

[Unclean]

Surprisingly, no. I've found the secret. With contacts, I can only play games for a few hours before getting a headache. However, with these new glasses with anti-glare (I think it's called Elize), I never get computer headaches.

 

*Ok, I rewrote that four times, and that's the LEAST salesy I could get it.

[General J]

I have that same problem with my contacs. My eyes start to dry out and I can't see anything on-screen with them in. I usually go for my glasses when I will be at the computer for a while.

 

As far as the lines, I agree with NOFX. I have a 9600XT, and it has done the same thing. Try finding an aftermarket heatsink and fan for the card.

 

This should fit your card, I believe. You can always call and ask them about it though.

[Brillow_Head]

A refresh rate higher than stock 60 Hz always helps reduce eye strain too.

[Unclean]

NOFX and General J -- you were right! Yesterday Guild Wars cut out after about 40 minutes of play, so it became more serious. Here's what I did to fix it:

 

-cranked the fan up to high (it was on medium before)

-took the second computer off the top of the case

-moved the case away from the walls (it was flush up against the side, and nearly flush on the back

 

Haven't seen the problem after 4-5 hours of gameplay.

 

Thanks again, NOFX and Gen J!

 

About the eyestrain -- think we should create a new thread about that? *Eye* think we should -- others no doubt have the same problem.

[NOFX]

no problem man, getting all the dust out of your case will help those fans cool down the heatsinks better also. I started slowly noticing the heat rise, until my CPU would get so hot running at stock speeds my comp would shut down during CS. This is my CPU, not my video card. Even though people tell you not to use air duster, I bought a can at wal-mart and got all the dust out. Haven't had any problems since.

[General J]

Never had a problem with air duster... Just dont spray it with the can upside down You can usually find "free" cans of compressed air at places like Office Max and Office Depot (Usually something like $2.99, with a mail-in or instant rebate)

[Preacher]

Also make sure the PC is off and you wait a min or two before rebooting to allow enough time for the vapor to evaporate.

[General J]

Nah... Just leave it on and hold the can upside down! Just kidding.

 

Good, noteworthy, advice Preacher!

[Wolfsblood]

My experience with heat. Guild Wars is extremely gpu intensive, much more so than most other games I've played recently.

 

Earlier this summer when I was modifying the components in my system (switching out hard drives, fiddling with stuff) I had left my side window off. It was really hot (90's+ high humidity everyday), and I figured that having the side panel off would allow more of the hot air to vent out. After a few minutes of GW I would get random green artifacts, and the longer I played, the worse the problem became. It almost never showed up in cs:s. It got to the point where I had a floor fan blowing in the side of my case. Once I was done messing with the guts of the system, and put the window with the fan back on, the problem went away, and never re-surfaced.

 

It was also while my wife was playing GW that we found out her viddy card fan died. SWG didn't lock up, but after 10-15 minutes of GW, her system rebooted. She had a 9600xt at the time.

 

That could be why the 10+ hours of GW overheated your card. Just my thoughts. Glad you got the problem fixed.

[JackieChan]

Geez... Didn't know GW was such a problem according to Wolf's post. Don't know if it'll happen to me because I have like 6 fans in my case (two in the front, one in the back, one on top, and two for the PS).

 

On my old computer and in the early stages of my new one, my monitor displayed red lines whenever the color white was on the screen. Never did that in games or with any other color displaying on the screen. Just white. Then about a week ago, it stopped. Wonder what was doing that. I was guessing it was the monitor because whenever I backhanded it, it stopped displaying the red lines.

[Wolfsblood]

It's not that GW is a problem, just that it's more gpu intensive, rather than cpu intensive, as Source apparently is. (At lleast from what I've heard)

 

My guess is that the developers coded it so that those with the beefiest gfx cards would see the biggest imporvement in frame rates and effects, since that seems to be the main driving force in encouraging people to buy new computers/hardware. For most people, it's far easier to add a new gfx card than to add a new cpu. Just my thoughts.

 

 

And yes, if you have good air flow (which I didn't at the time) you should have no problems. I've only got 2 80.. fans blowing in, 1 120 blowing out, and the requisite chipset, cpu, and gpu fans, and have had no further issues.

 

Again, the main issue I think was that I had the side window off because I was too lazy to finish fiddling with the components and wanted to spend my time gaming.