Computer Problems

kilabane

I just got this computer like 3 weeks ago and it has some graphical problems with many games.  It's an Athlon xp 3200 9600 xt 256mb, 1 gig ddr ram.  I have downloaded various drivers for my card but none of them have any affect. The only thing i can figure is the card is fried or something. I took some screenshots, is there anyway to post them here? Any help would be appreciated

Lhex

What type of graphical problems exactly? Visual tearing, locking or freezing, low FPS, crashes? And what games does this happen with? It could be many things.

I had a crappy power supply which caused probs.  I had crashes alot and I increased the voltage to my AGP slot by .1 in the bios and it fixed it.

Make sure you have DX 9.0b and latest drivers which you already mentioned. ATI has a VPU recovery thing that may or may not cause probs.

Make sure your running at the correct cpu clock speed. One time for some reason I was at 1.1 ghz when I should have been at 2.4. I went in my bios and fixed it. Weird stuff like that can happen.

There are several utilities out there that may or may not help. Some that get rid of spywares, cleans the registery and removes old drivers (driver cleaner).

Make sure you have the latest upgrade to your motherboard as well.

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

kilabane

Like purple blocks across screen, blue and green squares and patterns on the ground, yellow squares in the sky, tearing, smearing, but its never crashed and i get a good FPS. It happens in Call of Duty, Rome:Total War, Empires:Dawn of War, BattleField Vietnam, JointOps: Typhoon Rising. I took a couple screenshots but i dunno how to post them.I went to dxdiag and it said i have direct x 9.0c. My BIOS is Pheonix: AwardBIOS v6.00 PG. My windows is 5.1 build 2600.  I'm not sure what my powersupply is. How do i go in BIOS? Thanks

Lhex

Before you do anything make for certain you have installed the correct and latest drivers for your card.  Maybe mess around in the options of your card, and turn up or down some of the options from low to high quality then lower and increase your screen resolution in game to see if this changes anything. Sometimes just tweaking a setting can solve this problem.

I sometimes get this type of visual tearing if the card becomes hot. I built my machine and like a dummy I forgot to make sure the card's fan was connected and working.  But if it became too hot I would think it would just freeze up on you.

For it to be happening in all those games makes me think there is a problem with some software setting or your card is hot or just faulty.

In your graphic cards options,  right click desktop/properties/advance, you will see tabs for your card. There maybe an option to change the agp speed from 8x to 4x and see if that helps or try that in your bios. To enter your bios restart your computer and hit delete during the flash screen.

It could be your card needs a little more voltage and you can up that just .1 in your bios.

I also want to make sure your not running an overclocked machine, are you? Do you know how hot your cpu is running? Sometimes you can see a pc health temperature status right when you restart, or go to your bios and see what it tells you there. Or see if you have a utility that can tell you, ussualy included in your motherboard bundled software that hopefully came with your PC.

Maybe remove the card and reinsert it and make sure all its connectors are secured and plugged in well, have the latest drivers and tweak some of the software settings, make sure your cpu is not running hot or your graphics card. Check for viruses and remove spyware (last thing but something you should do regularly). What PC is this? Dell? or you make it?

Maybe someone else can shed some light on the subject.

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

DerfelCadarn

Does it only look werid in-game(does it affect the desktop)? Also, is this computer competely new, or upgraded/used before. Here is a program to get rid of any old drivers cause this- http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/. Just keep trying sets of drivers.

EQ2 Qeynos Guild- http://www.imperium-arcanum.com

kilabane

Its a completely new system.  Its not overclocked. Its mostly in game but on a vary rare occasion there will be purple squares on part of the desktop that go away when i put a window or something over it. I bought it from Ibuypower. Also i thought this was weird but it says in chipset advanced features that my memory freq is 200mhz, i have 2x512mb ddr pc-3200 sticks, i think theyre supposed to be running higher than 200mhz.

I went to the BIOS screen and wrote some stuff down from hardware moniter:

MB Temperature 28C/82F

CPU Temp 48C/116F

VCore Voltage 1.69-1.71

+3.3v voltage 3.44-3.35

+5v voltage 5.05

+12v voltage 12.73

CPU Fan speed 2678-2700 RPM

Chassis Fan speed 0 RPM

+Fan speed ratio 10/15

Speed up/Down Response Time 4 sec/8 sec

CHIPSET ADVANCED FEATURES:

CPU External freq (mhz) (200 mhz)

CPU frequency multiple setting (auto)

System Perfomance (optimal)

Memory Freq by sdd

resulting freq 200 mhz

Fsd spread spectrum [.50%]

CPU VCore setting [auto]

CPU vcore setting [auto]

CPU vcore 1.650 V

Graphic Aperture Size (256m)

DDR reference voltage (2.6v)

AGP voltage 1.5v

Thanks