Problem with Sapphire X1900XT - Overeating, Artifacts & Crashes!

[lukepingi]

Yeah, I realise that the warantee has been voided, but I may be able to get over that by replacing the orignal heatsink....?!!

On another note, I have just had a new 'semi-crash'!

I was gaming with Oblivion trying some stuff out, when it semi-crashed: the screen went black / to stand by temporarily, then came back after a couple of seconds. The game continued to work, but I quit to windows as RivaTuner was running and I wanted to see what had happened.
Windows came up with a window saying the display driver had crashed and that it had recovered from the error. I looked at the RT monitor file and took a snapshot:
(picture above)
and (picture above) to the zipped RivaTuner file if anyone wants to look at it!

Basically it looks like when it crashed, the fan went off and the temp shot up (obviously). Before the crash, there was a small amount of artifacting, but you can see that the temp of the card wasn't actually very high at all - low 70's. So maybe its nott he temp of the card causing the crashes?

I'm confused!

So can this help anyone diagnose the problem at all?!!!

Hi everyone, sorry to ressurect an old thread but I am in need of some dire help.

I've basically got this exact problem at the moment.

I've got a similar system and I mainly use it to play World of Warcraft. Over the last month I've been getting a lot of artifacts in the game. I didnt know what they were until I've done some research. Slowly slowly they got worse and worse, and through reinstalling my graphics card and getting different driver versions and also toning down the graphics nothing helped. I continued playing through the month like this because it wasnt that much of a hinderance, until the last couple of days the above has been happening.

During the game it will run for about 5-10 mins and then the screen will freeze and then the monitor will crash and then come back on and the game will minimize and I will get a notice from Catalyst Control Center about some recovery. The game will work for a bit then happen again. Now last night the monitor even crashed when I wasnt in a game. The screen just froze and then the monitor went off and went to an orange light and it wouldnt turn back on. I reset the comp and everything booted up properly just the monitor wouldnt display anything, still on orange light. I know it loaded up properly because I heard the chimes of windows xp as it went to the start screen. I turned the monitor off completely and unplugged it and re plugged it in and it came back online.

I did an artifact search with ATI tools for about 5 mins until the screen froze and crashed again and the monitor went off and wouldnt display again. In the 5 minute artifact search it found nothing though.

I really dont know whats wrong, I dont know a whole lot about computers but I know a little. I've got a similar system, HiS x1900xt with conroe and 2 gig of a good brand of ram. The monitor is old and 2nd hand, I was thinking something was wrong with that until I came online and read about artifacts, I've definitely had those for the last month while playing World of Warcraft, I just didnt know what they were. I've opened the case and had a look at the graphics card and it looks like its fine, the fan is working. I've got a good case (coolermaster) and a good PSU, its a really well built computer, and to my knowledge I wasnt having heating issues. I ran motherboard monitor and I dont think anything was out of the ordinary. I only played World of Warcraft and thats not a very graphics intense game, so I really dont know whats going on. I built the computer myself, with the advice of a friend and I'm pretty sure I did everything perfect. Had it for about a year or so and only experienced problems recently.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[kalniel]

Try underclocking your graphics card.

Otherwise it does sounds like some hardware is failing - either the graphics card or the PSU.

[lukepingi]

Try underclocking your graphics card.

Otherwise it does sounds like some hardware is failing - either the graphics card or the PSU.

Do you underclock the graphics card by going into the bios when the computer boots up? Or do you do it some other way? What do you actually do in the bios if thats the case. (sorry I'm not brilliant with computers)

Can a faulty PSU cause artifacts?

Can a faulty monitor make a game crash?

Can a faulty graphics card make a monitor go off and not turn on for a bit?

[kalniel]

Do you underclock the graphics card by going into the bios when the computer boots up? Or do you do it some other way? What do you actually do in the bios if thats the case. (sorry I'm not brilliant with computers)

No not the bios. In catalyst control centre there is an overdrive section - typically it's used for overclocking, but you can use it to underclock too. It's all done with sliders so fairly easy.

Can a faulty PSU cause artifacts?

Yes.

Can a faulty monitor make a game crash?

Not normally. There was a weird bug ages ago where the plug and detect feature could cause crashes but that was fixed a long time ago.

Can a faulty graphics card make a monitor go off and not turn on for a bit?

Yes.

[lukepingi]

No not the bios. In catalyst control centre there is an overdrive section - typically it's used for overclocking, but you can use it to underclock too. It's all done with sliders so fairly easy.

Yes.

Not normally. There was a weird bug ages ago where the plug and detect feature could cause crashes but that was fixed a long time ago.

Yes.

Thanks for the help so far.

When I get home I will try and underclock the graphics card. What is underclocking going to tell me if it fixes the problem? That my graphics card is overheating? If the problem doesnt get fixed, what should be my next course of action?

I managed a 5 minute artifact search with ATI tools and nothing came up, the screen crashed after 5 minutes though. Should an artifact problem been detected within 5 minutes?

[kalniel]

Thanks for the help so far.

When I get home I will try and underclock the graphics card. What is underclocking going to tell me if it fixes the problem? That my graphics card is overheating? If the problem doesnt get fixed, what should be my next course of action?

Underclocking unfortunately addresses several factors at once, but it will cover for lack of power from PSU, overheating and instability caused by the factory settings on the card being too agressive.

If underclocking does make the card stable then you should be able to use it like that without a problem for WoW. If you want to narrow down the problem further then check temperatures with a program like speedfan - if the underclock is lowering temperatures significantly (or stopping them from continuously rising) then heat is a likely factor. If the temperature doesn't change that much then it's probably power related.

If underclocking doesn't help at all then you probably have a faulty component or a more serious problem with the PSU, swapping out parts is the only way you can verify this further.

I managed a 5 minute artifact search with ATI tools and nothing came up, the screen crashed after 5 minutes though. Should an artifact problem been detected within 5 minutes?

Not neccessarily - lack of artifacts just means that at the starting temperature and speed your card is doing the maths correctly. As the temperature increases you could either see more artifacts, or it could cause a critical error and just crash. Or as the temperature of your PSU increases it could decrease its efficiency to the point where it isn't supplying enough power and thus crashing the card.

[lukepingi]

Thanks for the informative reply, thats helped me understand things a bit better.

I'll underclock the card when I get home and hopefully it fixes things and I wont bother doing anything else.

If it crashed when there was no 3d images running would that make things any different? If theres no 3d then the card shouldnt heat up should it? And if thats not heating up the PSU shouldnt be working any harder either should it?

If underclocking doesnt do anything, could a problem be in the ram? I've got 2x1g ram (a good brand). Could I take out one stick and boot up and see what happens, if it fails then take out the other and replace with the first and see what happens? Or is this definitely not related to RAM?

[kalniel]

If it crashed when there was no 3d images running would that make things any different? If theres no 3d then the card shouldnt heat up should it? And if thats not heating up the PSU shouldnt be working any harder either should it?

Other things can still cause the PSU to heat up, but it won't be the graphics card load causing it to, you're right. If it crashed when in 2d mode then you have a serious hardware failure or broken directDraw drivers (clean reinstall of drivers and directX would rule this out), or a problem unrelated to the graphics card.

If underclocking doesnt do anything, could a problem be in the ram? I've got 2x1g ram (a good brand). Could I take out one stick and boot up and see what happens, if it fails then take out the other and replace with the first and see what happens? Or is this definitely not related to RAM?

It easier to test the stability of other components with programs - look for Orthos and give your computer a good run on that - it will test CPU and RAM on full power, which might also show up any problems with your PSU (what PSU is it by the way?). You can also use memtest86+ for a VERY thorough (and time consuming test of RAM).

[lukepingi]

I'll have to get back to you about the PSU. I know its an Antec and that it was a pretty good one, I didnt go for a cheap one.

Whats a good (free) way to completely delete and clean my driver and directx? I can try a proper clean out, I only removed it with the add/remove programs thing in control panel. I can try that also if the underclocking doesnt work. If I do that should I just run with the CD's driver, or should I install with the CD and then download the latest driver? Does the latest driver just automatically install over the top of whatever is on the CD?

[lukepingi]

Its a NEO HE 550 PSU

EDIT: I've unlocked the ATI overdrive, but its already all set on the lowest settings I think.

Graphics Processor Status is currently; Requested - 621MHz and Current VOU Clock - 500Mhz

Graphics Memory Status is currently; Requested: 720Mhz and Current Memory Clock - 594Mhz

[lukepingi]

Ok. I did a clean driver uninstall and installed the latest driver. I also downloaded atitool. I did an artifact search on that for 5 mins and nothing came up. I then clicked on Find Max Core and the screen started to go funny and then crashed. When I rebooted I started up atitool and got this message;

ATITool did not exit properly. Crash because of too high overclock? Last working frequency was: Core: 6.75 Mhz - Memory: 459.00 Mhz

Does this mean anything?

With AtiTool I can underclock cant I? What should I set the Core and Memory to for WoW? Its default is 621/720

[lukepingi]

I set the core to about 480 and memory to about 540 and loaded up wow. I played for about 15 minutes and I thought all was well. No artifacts to be seen (that may be because of the clean driver uninstall, but artifacts use to show up the more I played though from what I remember). And then it happened again. Screen just froze and then the monitor went off and I had to hard restart the comp.

Where should I go from here? What tests should I do? Should I just buy a new graphics card? Is there a way to test the PSU but not the graphics card so I can narrow it down to a graphics card problem?

EDIT: It seems as though once it crashes a few times from 3d action it gets worse. I went to do a artifact test with ati tool and it crashed the second I clicked it. I want to cry.

[fraps]

Just skimmed the thread, but artefacts on the boot screen are 90% certainly the graphics RAM gone dodgy. It's not getting to the stage of using graphics drivers and already you have problems - I'd put my wallet on it being the card itself, and unless you've a qualification in swapping out GDDR, then it'll be a new card (or RMA if it's still in warranty).

85c isn't anything to worry about on a X1900XT.

I get about 80c on load