Artifacts with Rad9800 Pro Help please.

[catattack]

Hey all, I got fed up with artifacts showing constantly in CS Source so I finally took matters into my own hands. I updated drivers, undusted the card and after someone telling me to take the fan off and put new adhesive on, I did that as well. I was CERTAIN it had to be the adhesive because once I took the fan off, the old adhesive was flaking off (not to mention it was the adhesive that came with the card). I put a new spread on and tryed CS again. To my suprise the artifacts were there though a little quicker. I know that if you put to much adhesive it's bad to and i've done plenty of this with mobo's so I know when enough is enough. I was wondering if anybody know's a different reason for something like this to happen? I'm sorry if this post is quite juvenile though i'm not the smartest guy with computers

Thank you all for your help

[aidanjt]

What are the temps like with the card?.. get ATI tool, its wonderful for testing for artifacts on radeons..

[catattack]

I already have that and did the artifact testing. Though it came negative for artifacts

[Russ]

try changing to omega or softmod drivers, worth a shot

[catattack]

hmm can you give me a quick push to where I can get the *right* ones? Am I flashing the card?

[theslasher@ntlw]

Hi mate the try here http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1328 and no you are not flashing your card.
Is you psu giving your computer plenty of power you could try re seating your card,but as you said you put new thermal paste on.
Try the drivers you never know.

[catattack]

Yes I have a antec true blue 440w psu so i'm pretty sure it's good enough. Ok thanks i'll try that.

[Zak33]

and after someone telling me to take the fan off and put new adhesive on, I did that as well. I was CERTAIN it had to be the adhesive because once I took the fan off, the old adhesive was flaking off (not to mention it was the adhesive that came with the card). I put a new spread on and tryed CS again.

right..hold up big boy. Sounds to me like you're just getting an overheating GPU.

Can you get the heatsink off or is it stuck on? What did you use?

In theory the best thing to do is:

Take the heatsink back off, and CLEAN the GPU (graphcs processor unit) and the heatsink. They must be smooth, free of anything at all, and ultra clean.

Then you need some thermal compound, LIGHTLY spread across the gpu, then you resucure the heatsink back on.


Lastly......MAKE SURE you plugged the fan back into the connector!!!!

[catattack]

Well I did EXACTLY that and while I was cleaning off the old adhesive it was deffinetly flaking off really bad. Cleaned both sides than put some Artic Silver on. Than after I spotted some artifacts, I did was Russ asked me to do and downloaded the Omega drivers. Everything kinda went away after that. So thank you all for your help and if something arises once again you know where i'll be coming for help

Thank you all for the help!

[Agent]

Artic Silver on.

no no no no no !!!

Dont ever ever _ever_ use AS on a graphics card. If you get it on pins / anything with a signal in it, it can short provided they are close enough. Its slightly capacitive.
Have you put any on your RAM by any chance ?
You really should clean as much off as you can and use something like Artic ceramique, provided its not been permanently damaged.

Although, it does sound like you were having artifacting issues before you applied the paste ?

[catattack]

yea and i'm still having them now that i've been playing a few games. I see a good improvement in speed yet they're still there. I did an extremelly cautious job of putting the artic silver on though. Is it really that much different than other adhesive? If I did it really clean cut and safe would it still work like the "ceramique" type?

Your scaring me agent

[theslasher@ntlw]

Have you tried using the DVI socket you might have a dodgy ramdac it might be messing up the signal to the monitor.

[catattack]

Can you explain that a little more thurough? I'm not to sure what you mean by DVI socket and the bad ramdac lol. Yes i'm not the smartest with computers Though I do have three sticks of memory on my mobo, two of which being 256x2 corsair 3200 I think? Other is just a 512mb 3200 to.

Thanks.

[dave87]

Hes speaking about purely the graphics card, on the back of which there should be 2 or 3 connections - 1 blue one with 15 pins, one S-video, and one called DVI or Digital Video Interface. With your card you should have received a DVI to 15 pin HD Socket, which you can then use, which could cure your problem

Dave

[theslasher@ntlw]

Sorry adout the geek talk did it work?

[catattack]

Hes speaking about purely the graphics card, on the back of which there should be 2 or 3 connections - 1 blue one with 15 pins, one S-video, and one called DVI or Digital Video Interface. With your card you should have received a DVI to 15 pin HD Socket, which you can then use, which could cure your problem

Dave

So your telling me it would be better to use the DVI if I had a connector? I cant seem to locate one. What exactly do they look like?