Help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike B
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike B

Oh man this is terrible. I have had the same set up for a year and a half
with no probs and now something is seriously wrong. (I have a Radeon 9800
from
a Dell Dimension) first thing a couple of weeks ago, I started noticing
artifacts in my favorite game (Battlefield Vietnam). It eventually got worse
and worse to where I can't load *any* game now. HL2 and it's mods all freeze
up as well. The artifacts (cone-like lines coming from the middle of the
screen like a kalidescope that completely fill the screen) has now just
turned into the game throwing me back to the desktop... Ok, so no games I
think.. wrong. Now when I surf the internet everything slows to a crawl and
I can't navigate properly. One note: before the internet problem came up I
could do ALL things except gaming. The moment I started a game, everything
jammed up. I would re-boot and the PC wouldn't even let me back in.. I'm
thinking overheating, but my case is off, I've never overclocked, the
heatseek doesn't feel especially hot, and it can happen immediately after
the thing has been off for a day.. I have juggled drivers, and tried turning
everything down.. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas? TIA!
 
Mike said:
Oh man this is terrible. I have had the same set up for a year and a half
with no probs and now something is seriously wrong. (I have a Radeon 9800
from
a Dell Dimension) first thing a couple of weeks ago, I started noticing
artifacts in my favorite game (Battlefield Vietnam). It eventually got worse
and worse to where I can't load *any* game now. HL2 and it's mods all freeze
up as well. The artifacts (cone-like lines coming from the middle of the
screen like a kalidescope that completely fill the screen) has now just
turned into the game throwing me back to the desktop... Ok, so no games I
think.. wrong. Now when I surf the internet everything slows to a crawl and
I can't navigate properly. One note: before the internet problem came up I
could do ALL things except gaming. The moment I started a game, everything
jammed up. I would re-boot and the PC wouldn't even let me back in.. I'm
thinking overheating, but my case is off, I've never overclocked, the
heatseek doesn't feel especially hot, and it can happen immediately after
the thing has been off for a day.. I have juggled drivers, and tried turning
everything down.. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas? TIA!
Click to expand...
Have you checked your power supply? Especially when you are having problems.
 
Mike B said:
Oh man this is terrible. I have had the same set up for a year and a half
with no probs and now something is seriously wrong. (I have a Radeon 9800
from
a Dell Dimension) first thing a couple of weeks ago, I started noticing
artifacts in my favorite game (Battlefield
Click to expand...
Vietnam). It eventually got worse
and worse to where I can't load *any* game now. HL2 and it's mods all freeze
up as well. The artifacts (cone-like lines coming from the middle of the
screen like a kalidescope that completely fill the screen) has now just
turned into the game throwing me back to the desktop... Ok, so no games I
think.. wrong. Now when I surf the internet
Click to expand...
everything slows to a crawl and
I can't navigate properly. One note: before the internet problem came up I
could do ALL things except gaming. The moment I started a game, everything
jammed up. I would re-boot and the PC wouldn't even let me back in.. I'm
thinking overheating, but my case is off, I've never overclocked, the
heatseek doesn't feel especially hot, and it can happen immediately after
the thing has been off for a day.. I have
Click to expand...
juggled drivers, and tried turning
everything down.. Nothing seems to work. Any
Click to expand...
ideas? TIA!

Every year or so it pays to reseat (remove and
re-insert) your pci cards, agp cards, memory, etc.
A can of compressed air is also handy. My SB live
card had to be reseated very often. I could
usually tell, because all of a sudden the sounds
would be all distorted and no tinkering would fix.
Reseating would magically fix it.
 
Mike said:
Oh man this is terrible. I have had the same set up for a year and a half
with no probs and now something is seriously wrong. (I have a Radeon 9800
from
a Dell Dimension) first thing a couple of weeks ago, I started noticing
artifacts in my favorite game (Battlefield Vietnam). It eventually got worse
and worse to where I can't load *any* game now. HL2 and it's mods all freeze
up as well. The artifacts (cone-like lines coming from the middle of the
screen like a kalidescope that completely fill the screen) has now just
turned into the game throwing me back to the desktop... Ok, so no games I
think.. wrong. Now when I surf the internet everything slows to a crawl and
I can't navigate properly. One note: before the internet problem came up I
could do ALL things except gaming. The moment I started a game, everything
jammed up. I would re-boot and the PC wouldn't even let me back in.. I'm
thinking overheating, but my case is off, I've never overclocked, the
heatseek doesn't feel especially hot, and it can happen immediately after
the thing has been off for a day.. I have juggled drivers, and tried turning
everything down.. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas? TIA!
Click to expand...

Sounds like GPU corruption - similar to what you would get from overheating.

On these cards the Heatsink doesn't touch the GPU - there's a small gap
that they fill with heat compound. Perhaps it's worth checking.

And yes, PSU is worth checking too...

You could try disabling/enabling the GPU recover mode. That might trade
the slowness for corruption or vice/versa - but it's pretty much
academic, won't solve the problem.

Ben
 
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