Weird rendering errors in many games.

[Mandible]

As of late, my x1950, for whatever reason, has been displaying some worrying render errors in games.

I'm getting odd black squares instead of text or icons, or just generally around; and models will render without colours, appearing totally flat. I have experienced this in Garrys Mod, The Ship, and Battlefields 2, and if i remember rightly, a while back with Red Alert 3.

These errors, which I doubt are artifacing, as my temperatures are well within acceptable limits are always followed shortly by a crash. Anyone got any ideas?

My drivers are fully updated by the way.

 

[nepas]

RMA time,sounds like your card is dying

 

[OmegaStalker]

rma time,sounds like your card is dying

^ +1

 

[Mandible]

Okey doke, can you give me some advice on how to analse my problem, and check if my GPU really is totalled. Here's some more info for you.

- My GPU is 16 months old, and totally stock. No clocking, no hardware changes.

- In terms of gaming, it's a mixed bag. I'm still testing, but sometimes things crash, sometimes not. I've had some games run perfectly fine for hours.

- It's a sapphire X1950. Im running an AMD dual core setup.

- Running the Atitool tests, everything seems error free, except for that running the "Max mem" test crashed my PC after 2 seconds. The artifact test picks up nothing.

- The only artifacting i have seen is black squares replacing text/icons, or black models.

- I'm running cool, 45 degrees.

- It's fairly dusty.

 

[nepas]

The only artifacting i have seen is black squares replacing text/icons, or black models

If the card is running cool,stock with good drivers and its doing this then basically its FUBAR.

Sapphire VGA products carry a 2 year warranty with all enquires carried out through your initial place of purchase. This can only be carried out by the original purchaser Please contact your Dealer/Reseller for Warranty / RMA service. They will require proof of purchase which includes the original invoice/documentation.

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/warranty.php

best thing you can do is get in touch with the company you bought it from

 

[Mandible]

Uhoh... has anyone bought a card for sapphire before? I cant find any warranty in my documentation stuff. Got my cpu, psu etc... but no GFX documentation except a quick start guide and a driver cd.

Anyone fill me in in terms of both eligibility for refund/credit and what kind of warranty i should have (paper/data)?

 

[nepas]

just get in touch with the store you ordered it from

 

[Mandible]

Thanks for the help so far. I've double cheched and remembered that my gpu is in fact a Powercolor model, and have cleaned it up. Running 3dmark shows up no discrepancies at all. Could this be some other problem which I am misdiagnosing?

 

[Mandible]

I may have a fix for at least some stuff here. For the last 3 months it seems i have been down to 1 gb of RAM not 2... Sorta leading the the various page file crashes my games have had

One stick was upside down. It wasn't even in the slot properly.

I did wonder why the bloody clips were so stiff.

 

[!TIMMY!]

:O I didnt even know you could install ram upside down!

 

[zak4994]

:O I didnt even know you could install ram upside down!

Same here.

Tried multiple times (accidentally of course) and it wouldn't fit xD.

 

[jiffz]

I may have a fix for at least some stuff here. For the last 3 months it seems i have been down to 1 gb of RAM not 2... Sorta leading the the various page file crashes my games have had

One stick was upside down. It wasn't even in the slot properly.

I did wonder why the bloody clips were so stiff.

:rollingla Love that facepalm pic - so appropriate to the situation!

I dont know what DD2 ram is like, but with DDR ram, I don't see how it would fit upside down. Were both clips fully down? If so, how didnt anything giveway?

 

[nepas]

I dont think that facepalm pic is quite enough for this one,you need the ultimate facepalm pic

 

[Mandible]

You cant. It wasn't all the way in. Oh the foolishness.

 

[PeterStoba]

Oh my :rollingla I thought not connecting a molex and expecting a fan to spin was stupid...

 

[monkey7]

Worse: not having a new rig power up, reconnecting and rechecking everything on the psu and front panel headers and then have your sister point out the psu isn't connected to the wall socket -.-

 

[Diablo]

I couldn't work out why my sound card wasn't working...it had power, I'd reseated it and rescrewed it in, checked the software. Then I noticed rather a lot of 3.5mm jacks on the floor...

 

[Mandible]

Hehe. My only other gobsmackingly stupid moment was to spend an hour trying to work out why my dvd drive wouldnt read. The dvd drive wasnt closed. That was special.

Mind you the damn thing still won't write *rage*

 

[xX_o2_Xx]

oh right so you plugged it in half way, i'm suprised your power supply didn't blow, really suprised that your machine even booted up!

is the problem fixed now?

 

[Mandible]

Yup, tis all fine. I think the reason it didnt have any adverse affects is that without both sides of the chip being in guess it dint form a proper circuit. All the graphics errors were caused by memory shortages, so all is fine.

Thanks everyone. Lock/Delete thread.