PC video graphics ongoing error

October 1, 2005 3:25 AM

I'm having real problems with my gaming PC and really hope someone here can help...

when playing 3d games on my 6800GT card (on a machine with MSI K8T Motherboard, AMD 64-bit 3200+ CPU, 1Gb PC3200) I am getting very intrusive thick and thin black lines leading to the centre of the screen from all over the screen leading almost inevitably to hang and then a BSoD.

Changing drivers doesn't help, temperature deosn't seem to be an issue and the only thing that's made any difference was reimaging back to a 'straight out of the box' image I had from a year ago. I loaded up a 3D game (the Starship Troopers demo) and it was lovely, ran with no glitches, stutters or crashes. But then I upped the video resolution from 1024x768 (which is kind of the point of the 6800GT) and instantly I get the interferance lines/hang/BSoD again. I guess this means another reimage (and all the subsequent loading/configuring... *sigh*) but
can anyone *please* help me, and give me a clue as to what's happening and why? I've Googled, read/joined forums, and tried pretty much everything.

Thanks in advance...

posted by timpollard to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I was having a similar problem with an AGP GeForce 6600 GT card on a VIA chipset, and after wrestling with it for over half a year, RMAing the card FOUR times, and trying every damn trick, workaround and bit of advice from all over the 'net, finally said "oh, to hell with this" and got a computer that supported PCI Express and an ATI Radeon X800.

The GeForce 6 series seems to have many problems with VIA chipsets; as you've probably seen, the stories of woe are numerous.

Try going to a Radeon. I haven't had a single crash in a 3D game since I switched.
posted by atholbrose at 6:58 AM on October 1, 2005

Bad video RAM?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:28 AM on October 1, 2005

I've seen this before. I agree about it being a problem with the via chipset. The first thing I would try would be this fix:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=4432

If this doesn't help your other options are to get a different mobo or switch to a radeon card.

Let me know if that fix works! Good Luck.
posted by meta87 at 10:37 AM on October 1, 2005

Since the 6800GT is a rather expensive graphics card, not to mention all the other parts you have in the system... If you absolutely cannot get past the Via chipset/nvidia glitch then you could buy an Nforce motherboard. They are awesome motherboards and can be had cheaply, especially if you don't overclock. Then you could turn around and sell your mobo on ebay or build a home theater computer.

Asus K8N mobo on newegg
posted by Dean Keaton at 1:45 PM on October 1, 2005

Agreed with the above poster, should have mentioned that when I mentioned maybe getting another mobo that I was refering to one with the nforce chipset.

newegg.com has some that are pretty cheap!
posted by meta87 at 1:47 PM on October 1, 2005

Bad video RAM?

This was my reaction, because the problem showing up with higher resolutions suggests that when the framebuffer uses memory beyond a certain point, something is going screwy.

The problem with that line of thought is that I can't think of a single goddamn way that - and I may be reading his explanation of the problems wrong - a hardware problem like that would cause radial visual artifacts. I've never even heard of a problem of that nature occuring before.

As general advice, though: stick with nForce chipsets on Asus mobos. My Radeon 9800 never crashes, but people don't optimize for it the way they do for nVidia.
posted by Ryvar at 1:59 PM on October 1, 2005

Have you tried using coolbits to underclock the RAM/GPU to see if this glitch goes away (in case you did get a card with a bad batch of RAM or a mis/over-binned GPU)?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 2:23 PM on October 1, 2005

Bum... on closer inspection (and using different temp checking software), it turns out the fan on the card has actually failed, and at the time i checked was running at 127c when I checked.. /probably/ not a good thing.

Many thanks to all who replied, I now have to send my card off to taiwan or somewhere to get it fixed *sob*
posted by timpollard at 3:32 AM on October 4, 2005