ATI Radeon 9800 graphic glitches

It seems like any game I play that uses my graphics card for any sort of 3d graphics processing causes blips to appear on any texture. I have a,

Pentium 4 2.8 ghz
512MB Ram
128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 (Not Pro)
Windows XP
Plenty of hard drive space left

It's caused problems in Unreal Tournament 2004, City of Heroes, Americas Army and any other game I've tried. Here's a small part of a screen shot from Americas Army,

If you look closely they form a checkerboard pattern. I think the blips that appear represent what may be behind the solid, if there is a bright light or texture I can disinguish them from other objects through a wall with these blips. They tend to get worse as the game goes on, I've tried flushing the memory but it does not temporarily erase the blips. I have all the updated drivers, and tried the omega drivers as well, they give the same result. This has been happening since I first got the computer.

I've played around with just about every option I can find within games and the advanced display panel. The only solution that has ever given me any results is to underclock the card by 10-20%, but it'd be nice not to have to do this as it slows everything down and I beleive the computer crashes more often when I do this, but I'm not positive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, the blips really do hurt the eyes.

Thank you.

 

looks like a heat issue.

 

After I saw your post I shut down my computer for two hours and just booted it back up. I ran Americas Army immediately after it finished booting up, for the first moment it ran it seemed fine, but no more then 20 seconds after loading the map the blips were back worse than they were in the screen shot I posted. The computer is kept at room temperature and the fans/vents aren't obstructed in any way. Is it possible that the card didn't cool down in a two hour period, or that it heats up that quickly? Or is there something else I should be looking for.

 

I am having the same problem with my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. It is not overclocked, it happens when the PC is cold, all my drivers are up to date, and have been getting worse over time. Here is a copy of what I submitted to ATI's Tech Support today.

---------------------------------

I purchased my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro almost a year ago and this problem has been around just as long but has worsened lately. Sometimes it doesn't happen for weeks, but last night it happened about 10 times every few minutes.

Intermittantly, during a game (such as Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City) the screen will become corrupted with various polygons.

You can see some screenshots I took last night in Unreal Tournament 2004 at:
http://www.tigerdave.com/images/ati_problem/

The first screenshot (http://www.tigerdave.com/images/ati_problem/desktop_after_exit.jpg) is how my Windows XP desktop looked after leaving a game that has become corrupted.

Sometimes my Asus bootup screen is corrupted on a cold power up therefore requiring me to power off/on 1-3 times for it to go away.

I am also using an ATI HDTV Component Adapter connecting the Radeon's DVI port to my widescreen HDTV via component cables.

I saw your Infobase #4075 (http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4075.html) which details the possibility of the power supply being at fault. I am using an Enermax 350 Watt Dual-Fan Power Supply (EG365P-VE FCA) and don't have another power supply to test with at this time. You can see a complete breakdown list of my PC's components here (http://www.tigerdave.com/htpc/index.htm). They were all purchased new less than one year ago.

I have used every version of Catalyst since whatever was out July 2003, to the present v4.6 with no success.

I am a PC technician and yet I cannot figure out the cause of the problem!

Again, it's works OK most of the time, but intermittantly, I experience this corruption problem and lately is has gotten worse.

 

Hi All,

I too have had checkerboard problems with my new ATI 9800 Pro. In August bought a HP m377n Media Center which came with an ATI 9200 card. I upgraded the power supply to an Antec 400W unit and purchased a 9800 Pro and ATI HDTV adapter for connecting to my Toshiba 30HF83 HDTV, also purchased in August. I am running Windows XP Media Center SP2 with a 2.6 GHz P4, no overclocking, and 512MB DDR SDRAM.

Initially I had some success and was using the HDTV as a monitor, whereby from across the room I could surf, email, watch TV and Media Center stuff, and play DVDs. This nakes a great work-from-home and entertainment system.

Then ocassionally I would get checkerboard artifacts in green, purple, or colors that would whow up on my VGA display, S-video, and HDTV display modes. Usually this starts when viewing any video ecen Weatherbug or Media Center TV. Also RESTARTING would not make them go away and they show up on the XP boot screen in color. Depending on display resolution/timing you get them in bars, diagonal, or stripes. When present. the Media Center would tell me "Your Drivers are Not Compatible with Windows Media Center" and I could not play back or watch video.

I have completed all Windows and HP Updates and I'm using the latest MCE Catalyst drivers from ATI (8.051). Talking with HP support they showed me how I can power down, disconnect all power to the CPU, and hold the front-panel CPU POWER switch to "drain" any sustaining power from RAM. When I do this, I can boot up again without artifacts. But they reappear rather quickly.

Right now I'm back using the ATI 9200 untilI hear about a possible RMA from ATI but it's not clear to me that this will permanentaly solve the problem. I've tried the 9800 tweak guide and other performance/quality/cache adjustments and no luck. It sure is nice having it all.

I thought I'd document this and see if anyone has had any further success.

hpfireman

 

Just installed a Radeon 9800. Seems to crash the display after 30 mins or so.
If I try to reboot, the time it will stay up is even shorter. Seems to be that it is getting too hot.
I get a VPU RECOVER error.
it says:
VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.

Does ANYONE know what I can do to fix this problem.
PLEASE HELP.
JJ3803@bellsouth.net

Thx

 

I had exactly the same problem with my Powercolor ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.
I would be playing Call of Duty and it would suddenly black screen for a few seconds, and the VPU Recover console would come up.

To fix this problem you should first download the newest drivers for your card.
Here > https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

If you are still having problems disabling Fast Write in the SMARTGART settings sometimes fixes it because some ATi cards have known issues with it.
That should fix your problem, It did with mine.

My friend was also having this problem and the above things didnt fix it so he tried upping the voltage to the card.
To do that go into the BIOS and up the voltage to the AGP by changing its value to +0.1V
I recommend that you only change the value of the AGP if getting new drivers and disabling Fast Write doesnt work for you.


I personally would disable VPU Recover (You dont have too)

YAY! that was my first post!

 

Altough I cant see the images u guys posted here are mines;
I'm gussing it's a voltage problem, I just found out that I've been getting corrupted graphics when my +3.3v goes down to 2.8 or below. I just ordered an another power supply.

 

Well, did the new power supply do the trick?

I myself bought a Sapphire Ati Radeaon 9800 pro two weeks ago and had the same glitches as are being shown here...Yet so far, no forum could give me the solution to the problem. I have the newest drivers, I tried the Omega drivers, I turned fast write off, I added a 0.1 V to the AGP slot, I turned off the VPU revocer....nothing helped. A 100 € down the drain, as now I am back again to my Elsa Gladiac 511 Geforce 2, thanks.

Does anyone know how to handle the problem??

Thank you all in advance!

Vorm

 

I have a faulty powersupply and a 9800 too and when I played games and my Vdd would drop to like 1.3 and the system would freeze so I'm guessing it's a viable route to check out. I am going to replace my PSU this week and see what happens.

 

I've been having the same problems with my Radeon 9800se AIW.

It was fine when I first got it and started playing up a good 8 months after I bought it.

Have tried all the usual remedies such as drivers, DirectX etc.

I got a new PSU (went fro 350w to 400w) and it cleared up.... for a while.

Had to buy a new internal power connecter (that goes from PSU to card) as the original had burnt out!

The problem seems to be overheating. A friend of mine (had a 9800 Pro) had the same thing and got desperate enough to remove the fan from the actual card and oil the mechanism.

After a couple of days it had worked it's way in and now it's running fine.

Mine's still screwed though.

ATI's answer to everything seems to be "download our latest driver".

Newsflash ATI... that doesn't help!

Anyway, I'm going to try oiling the fan (if I can find a screwdriver small enough to fit the screws) and clean up the heatsink, card etc.

I'll keep you guys posted on the results.

BTW those arctic coolers look like they might help out.

Link

 

OK a quick update....

My fan is fine and rotating fast enough to chop carrots (not that I've tried) , but I've noticed the PSU connector for the graphics card is looking a bit crispy around the edges.

I've temporarily swapped it with the A: connector (which are identical) and the glitches have cleared up.

My problem is obviously overheating, which is damaging the power cable, which then begins to burn out, creating greater electrical resistance in the wire, less juice getting through, etc.

I would suggest anyone else still getting these glitches checks the state of their psu to ati card cable for any scorched marks etc.

It may be the cause.

 

I guess we're stuck in the same mud i got an oldie{9200} but new cataylst driver says my VPu does the same im glad someone came to post this issue.Im thinking to serioulsy upgrade...

 

thanks for that.. I'll give it a go let you know how I made out.

 

I too have had problems with my card.

It started when i got world of warcraft. So I lowered the clock speeds using ATI tool down to 300 core and 270 memory.

I also had to replace the fan that was on the card with a processor fan from another computer because the factory one stopped working when it got too hot. The new one is duct taped onto the card. Red Green would be so proud

Today, I started getting the problem again. SWG was exactly like the screenshots above. So I swapped the power cables between the video card and the hard drives, and ... (drum roll) ... the card seems to have fixed itself.

BUT ... before it worked again I had to set the clock speeds back to stock (378/338). If I use my modified speeds (300/270) I get artifacts.

ATITool has been searching for artifacts for over 10 minutes now.

Gotta love technology.

 

Okay I found the solution to my particular problem with the molex connectors burning out.

It turned out that my mobo wasn't seated correctly. (Probably all these months of plugging and unplugging connectors.)

As a result the mobo wasn't earthed and was touching the casing, causing some sort of short which in turn made my ati card push more voltage through it and overheat badly.

I took the mobo out of the case and noticed brown marks on the side casing where the mobo had obviously been in contact with it.

I reconnected everything from scratch, making sure the mobo was properly re-seated.

It worked!

I don't get artifacts or picture corruption anymore.

Hope this is of some use to others.

 

well, my psu is toast.. I didn't notice any burn marks on the molex connected to my ATI card.. my psu just flat out pooped the bed.. oh well. Time to buy another one.

 

Hey i'm new and i was having this problem for the longest time...But there is a good fix for it.
Get ATI tools and underclock it a good 5-10, cleared up ALL of my problems whatsoever!
If you feel you can't live withouth the fastest .% clock increase, buy a cpu fan and mod it as a VGA cooler.
Either way, almost ALL non ati(and ati patrners like gigabyte and asus) use substandard aluminum heatsinks...
But personaly, i prefer just to underclock it a tad...
Best of luck.

 

Hi all,

Tigerdave and hpfireman, I´m too have a similar problem with a Radeon 9800pro...

I live in Brazil and yesterday, I saw the Connect3D 9800 pro on a shop with a price of R$ 1280,00 ~ US$ 556,00

My Connect 3D Radeon 9800 Pro a friend bought in Germany, I think the salesman knowing that my friend was departing to Brazil, sold him a defective card...

I was building my new PC a week after and I was using my old n' faithful GeForce 2GTS: Seventeam 350W power supply, Asus K8N mobo, Sempron64 3000+, 120Gb 7200RPM Samsung IDE... Solid like rock... big case with very good air flow, core and mobo temps always below 103º F even after a 3 hour Quake3 session...

Since the first boot with the Radeon 9800pro, glitches showed up on the BIOS screen (fonts looked like having some pixels on the right side), the Window XP boot screen had glitches too, it was granulated and the color dithering was coarse...

Well, to simplify, I´m too a PC technician with 20 years of experience (since Apple ][´s) and couldn´t find a solution, but I´m pretty sure it´s not related to heat issues, since it appeared from start, neither it´s related to power supply questions as my Seventeam 350W is a very good PS.

I´ve tried everything without success:
- Installed Windows XP from scratch (obviously didn´t worked as the glitches was showing even in the BIOS boot screen)
- Disabled AGP fast writes
- Reduced AGP 8x to 4x
- Downclocked the core to 300MHz
- Downclocked the memo to 200MHz
- Installed various Catalyst versions
- Removed the cooler, saw that I had a R360 core, and flashed with 128Mb 9800XT bios, nope... even serious glitches and artifacts showed up
- Installed heatsinks in the 8 Samsung memory chips
- ATI couldn´t help me as the card is a Connect3D...
- Connect3D didn´t replied me...

Now I´ve found your posts!!!!! Did you guys find out the problem ?

Thanks!

 

I'm having similar issues, and for me it seems it's either a heat issue or a power supply issue, or both. The power supply connector to the card is definitely looking a bit toasted, so I've tried unused ones, and they're getting toasted too. But the power supply is getting more and more flakey aside from that, so, I may just have to replace both :\


Glad other people seem to be having the same problem with the same card... I was worried

 

Wonder if two years later a solution has been found?

My 9700PRO just pooped out on me. I changed the power connector, and it worked for about 30 minutes... however, turns out just wiggling the card in its slot is what fixes it... kind of... sometimes the artifacts go away completely (only to return later) and sometimes they just change a bit... from worse to a bit better. Also noticed that it only occurs around 3D objects... pictures and web browsing is fine. I'm about to take the card out again and inspect it more closely... I'm thinking it is an overheating issue.

 

I put the card in the freezer for about 10 minutes... voila! it works! who knows for how long though. it's seeming more and more like this is an overheating problem.

http://www.giantmike.com/G5_9800_fix.html
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=21241
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=28026