Uh oh...video memory failing...

[LePaul]

Kicked on the game PC Friday evening and had stripes and checker patterns on the screen.  I thought the fan on my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro had failed.  Nope, its clean and working...ran some diagnostics from some burn in programs I have, plus others I downloaded.  Video Ram is corrupted and failing.

Me thinks the card is pooched.  Im doomed to "Solitaire" on the laptop til payday.

Anyone else ever have a Radeon do this?  I cant find much on the ATI site to address this.  Or should i just yank it out and thank it for the 2 years of gaming it gave me?  LOL

[JB88]

it should be thanking you.

[BOOMHOWR]

Originally posted by LePaul
Kicked on the game PC Friday evening and had stripes and checker patterns on the screen.  I thought the fan on my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro had failed.  Nope, its clean and working...ran some diagnostics from some burn in programs I have, plus others I downloaded.  Video Ram is corrupted and failing.

Me thinks the card is pooched.  Im doomed to "Solitaire" on the laptop til payday.

Anyone else ever have a Radeon do this?  I cant find much on the ATI site to address this.  Or should i just yank it out and thank it for the 2 years of gaming it gave me?  LOL

I had a Radeon 9800 Pro that had a similar death. Apparently the fan quit working on it at some point in time. I would get blue screens with the error pointing to an ATI file.

So, I reinstalled the drivers and it seemed to fix the problem. But, one day I opened my case to put a new sound card in and found my video card fan laying on the bottom of the case. So only thing I could figure was when the fan quit working it got so hot, that it melted the plastic piece of thing that holds in.

You should remember Paul, I described similar artifacts playing Joint Ops with you one night.



p.s. I went Nvidia after that.

[LePaul]

Ive had nVidia/3DFX before this one....I got this from one of the BBS guys after he upgraded.  It was a small leap faster than my 4600 Ti.  I've been reading the recent video card reviews on Tomshardware this weekend.  For my AGP system, under 180 they score the 7600GT nicely.

[BOOMHOWR]

Originally posted by LePaul
Ive had nVidia/3DFX before this one....I got this from one of the BBS guys after he upgraded.  It was a small leap faster than my 4600 Ti.  I've been reading the recent video card reviews on Tomshardware this weekend.  For my AGP system, under 180 they score the 7600GT nicely.

Thats what im running now, is the 7600GT. So far I've been much happier with Nvidia than ATI (this is my first Nvidia card)

[Reschke]

I have a BFG 6800 OC that runs great in any game I need to. I just built another box with an 8800GTS in it that runs even better though... You can grab a 6800 series relatively cheap now online.

$139.99

[Viking]

Originally posted by BOOMHOWR
p.s. I went Nvidia after that.

You guys should note that ATI (AMD now) nor Nvidia actually makes the video cards, they just make the GPU. Also the RAM, fan and other components usually are made by third-party manufacturers. I've had an Nvidia 8800GTX for about a month now, and the fan has already started rattling. No matter - I'll be swapping it for a liquid cooling block soon enough.

[LePaul]

No no...check this thing out...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/14/thermalrights_the_hr-03_is_a_vga_cooler_gorilla/

Quick snippet from the review...

It's pretty apparent that the HR-03 stands out from the crowd. The most important temperature is at load, and the HR-03 paired with a fan manages to keep the graphics processor 25°C cooler than the stock cooler did. That is incredible, especially when you consider that the Radeon X1900 XTX stock cooler actually does a pretty decent job of keeping the core cool (although it's a bit noisy). It's also amazing when you consider that it cools down the core almost 10°C more than the former VGA cooling champ, the KuFormula V1 Plus, running at full fan speed!

25 Celsius is a lot!

[Viking]

Aye, but I'll be needing liquid cooling for the CPU anyways. It's just a quick fix to make a loop to the GPU then. I'm already running this Core Duo CPU faster than anything you can buy at normal clock speed with just fan cooling, but I'll need water to get that last bit of power out of it. (Currently running it at 3.5 gHz, aiming for 3.6 - 4.0. Normal speed is 2.4.)

[eagl]

Before you buy a replacement, remove and re-install the card.  While it's removed, consider scrubbing down the card contacts with a bubber pencil eraser to remove oxidation on the contacts.

Also check your voltages to make sure it's not just your PS crapping out or a wire harness coming unplugged.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Originally posted by Viking
Aye, but I'll be needing liquid cooling for the CPU anyways. It's just a quick fix to make a loop to the GPU then. I'm already running this Core Duo CPU faster than anything you can buy at normal clock speed with just fan cooling, but I'll need water to get that last bit of power out of it. (Currently running it at 3.5 gHz, aiming for 3.6 - 4.0. Normal speed is 2.4.)

Bah water is for drinking, liquified nitrogen is teh rox.

I learned that it's not smart to mix copper, iron and aluminium blocks in the same watercooling system. The hard way.

[Viking]

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't considered that.

[Nilsen]

I have the mobile version of the 7600GT in my laptop, and combined with 2gig of ram and a dual core cpu it runs all the games i thow at it with flying colors. The desktop version should be even better.

[Mini D]

Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
Bah water is for drinking, liquified nitrogen is teh rox.

LN2 sucks... LHe is the only way to go. If you're going to be rediculous, you might as well be as rediculous as possible. Of course, the cooler you get the more you're going to learn about the nightmares of condensation, but that's an entirely different subject.

I learned that it's not smart to mix copper, iron and aluminium blocks in the same watercooling system. The hard way.

You're going to learn alot more about water cooling systems before all is said and done. I recomend a 50% glycol solution in your water to control algecide and help with the thermal transfer. That... and NEVER use deionized water in a metal closed loop system. It will ionize somehow.

[XNachoX]

If you want to learn more about Water Cooling check out http://www.Overclock.net and http://www.PCApex.com