Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: MOSQ on November 02, 2004, 12:57:36 AM
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The new patch has caused my graphics to flicker little patches randomly across the screen. They are most noticeable on cockpit instrument surfaces, but are visible on wings and control surfaces too. I made a film to see if they are on it. However when I start the film viewer I see them in the viewing screen area prior to starting the film, so I can't tell if they are really on the film or not.
I downloaded latest ATI driver and reinstalled Direct X9c, no change.
AMD athlon 64 3200
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mb.
1 Gig Ram
Win Xp
SB Audigy
I tried both the 512 and 1024 textures, different slider settings, every different video option, including different screen resolutions.
My graphics were running perfect on patch 10. All sliders maxed out.
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Can you take a screenshot of it?
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I'll try, the problem is that they last only a fraction of a second then move to a different part. But I'll try to grab several at lunchtime and shoot them to you.
Thanks for the reply,
Mosquito
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fraps might be able to take a "video" of it?
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Originally posted by Pyro
Can you take a screenshot of it?
I tried, took 20 screen shots. The flickering is not there in the screenies. Made a very short film. I can't play it on that machine because anything AH causes the flickering. Meaning that the AH Film viewer screen is flickering just sitting there idle, or when I start AHII and go to the Copyright page with the clipboard, it's got the flicker to.
So I put the film on a floppy and viewed it on my Win 98 machine that has AHII also. There's no flickering in the film either.
I tried unchecking Hardware Vertex , no difference.
I'm at a loss what to do now. It does not make the game unplayable, it's just annoying.
And things were running so smooth and sweet on patch 10.....
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Make sure you have "fast writes" disabled on your video card. Caused all kinds of wierd artifacts and flickers for me.
g00b
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I think my vid card is dying. I ran 3D Futuremark 03, same issues in all the tests, only even worse. Checkerboard artifacts randomly appearing across the screen.
So it's not an HTC/AHII problem.
I've asked ATI for an RMA. : (
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I see flickers and whatnot especially on town and field structures from higher altitudes. Shore battery 'hills' also flicker. It looks like tearing, but multiple patches of tear. Almost seems like a z-buffer problem.. but I dont think thats correct.
AMD 64 3000+
9600xt
1g ddr400
Latest Omega drivers.
Fastwrites on.
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Originally posted by MOSQ
I think my vid card is dying. I ran 3D Futuremark 03, same issues in all the tests, only even worse. Checkerboard artifacts randomly appearing across the screen.
So it's not an HTC/AHII problem.
I've asked ATI for an RMA. : (
how hot is your pc?
mine does this if the case gets too hot, its because the graphics cards ram is overheating
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I have a 9800 pro at home, and it works fine for me. Check your drivers. I hope your vid card isn't dying!
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MOSQ, IMO, your card is not dying but overheating, may be your card fan is dead or almost dead. Be sure your card fan is working at max rpm and that the fan and the metal dissipartor are both perfectly clean of dust and dirt.
I have your exact problem once every several months, after cleaning the fan and the dissipator the problem is gone.
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Superfly,
My system has worked great until a few days ago. No vid card driver changes. But last night I went ahead and used driver cleaner and reinstalled both the latest ATI drivers, then a previous version of the ATI drivers, and finally as a last resort the newest Omega ATI drivers. No change.
Mando and everyone, thanks for the replies.
I checked my vid card fan, it is running and I can feel the air moving. As to whether it is running full speed, I don't know and don't know how to check.
It is perfectly clean, it's only 60 days old. It's a new system, runs very cool. I don't know what the vid card temp is, but the MSI software says the cpu is running at 38C when idiling and 40-42 C in 3D games. I have the Thermaltake Venus 12 HSF which is a great HSF cooler for the Athlon 64 3200.
I may get an aftermarket vid card cooler and give it a shot. I hate to rma the card for a couple of weeks at least plus shipping costs. The shipping costs would probably pay for an aftermarket vid cooler anyway.
It's strange it started all at once, and only in games. The desktop and standard apps work fine. Direct X reports everything is OK. The only other thing I can think of is I upgraded to the latest SB Audigy drivers at about the same time. I may remove the SB Audigy from the system and see if that affects the vid card problem. Seems unlikely, but PCs are pretty strange creatures.
Thanks Again,
Mosquito
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Originally posted by MOSQ
Superfly,
My system has worked great until a few days ago. No vid card driver changes. But last night I went ahead and used driver cleaner and reinstalled both the latest ATI drivers, then a previous version of the ATI drivers, and finally as a last resort the newest Omega ATI drivers. No change.
Mando and everyone, thanks for the replies.
I checked my vid card fan, it is running and I can feel the air moving. As to whether it is running full speed, I don't know and don't know how to check.
It is perfectly clean, it's only 60 days old. It's a new system, runs very cool. I don't know what the vid card temp is, but the MSI software says the cpu is running at 38C when idiling and 40-42 C in 3D games. I have the Thermaltake Venus 12 HSF which is a great HSF cooler for the Athlon 64 3200.
I may get an aftermarket vid card cooler and give it a shot. I hate to rma the card for a couple of weeks at least plus shipping costs. The shipping costs would probably pay for an aftermarket vid cooler anyway.
It's strange it started all at once, and only in games. The desktop and standard apps work fine. Direct X reports everything is OK. The only other thing I can think of is I upgraded to the latest SB Audigy drivers at about the same time. I may remove the SB Audigy from the system and see if that affects the vid card problem. Seems unlikely, but PCs are pretty strange creatures.
Thanks Again,
Mosquito
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take the card out, check the AGP connector is clean then put it back in....might be a bad contact there....
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Originally posted by Overlag
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take the card out, check the AGP connector is clean then put it back in....might be a bad contact there....
I did that when I pulled out the card to get the S/N and P/N for the RMA request.
I'm a little worried if I mess around with an aftermarket cooler and bung up the card, ATI won't accept it on an RMA repair/replace..
I'll mess around with the SB Audigy card/drivers before I get radical with pulling off the stock hsf.
Thanks,
Mosquito
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Well, Im still thinking it is a temperature issue. You may try to run the games at a lower refresh rate, for example the minimal of 60Hz just for testing. As a rule, the higher the refresh rate, the higher the heat.
In any case, be sure to have vertical sync turned ON.
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It is a heat issue. After checking on the web I figured out how to easily pull the retaining pins off the stock ATI HSF and remove it. It's really easy.
(If you're interested, the ATI push pins are two piece, you use needle nose pliers to pull straight up on the pin head, it easily comes out, then the second part of the push pin can be pushed back throught the video card from the backside.)
So I got a Vantec CPU cooler, the ICEBERQ 4. However what Vantec does not mention in their instructions (even though it's supposed to fit the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) is that the Radeon 9800 uses a metal shim around the outside of the GPU which keeps the cooler base from full contact with the chip. The Stock ATI cooler has a slight raise on the cooler base that fits over the chip, the Vantec does not, it's perfectly flat. You can remove the shim from the card with an exacto knife so the vantec has full contact, but that will surely void the warranty.
I tried using a little extra Arctic Silver 5, but the artifacts were far worse. Clearly the Vantec was not in full contact and not cooling properly. So I reinstalled the stock ATI HSF and am RMAing it now.
Here's something interetsing. I installed an Nvidia FX-5200 Ultra from my old system in my new Athlon 64 system to hold me over till the Radeon is returned. I ran FutureMark 03 and got 1/2 of the score as my ATI Radeon did. In fact Battle of Proxycon was so choppy as to be hard to watch. This was to be expected given the vast difference in these cards.
But in AHII, there was almost no discernable difference! The 5200 Ultra has great frame rate. The game plays 99% as well with the 5200 Ultra as with the 9800 Pro.
It just shows how CPU intensive AH is compared to other games that are GPU intensive. I would tell folks today when budgeting for a new system that primarily plays AH, to put more $ in the CPU and less in the graphics card.
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AHII is TOTALY CPU limited thats why
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I got here to late to give you this tip but maybe someone else can use it. When researching to install my card i read the troubleshooting guide and it said you could take your side panels off you cp case and blow air from a small room fan across your video card or cpu to check out overheating problems. If problem goes away with fan blowing air across the component then you know it is an overheating problem. Just a tip.