Artifacts on 9800 pro...go figure!

[Dr. Kramer]

Ok, so I decided to upgrade the video card on my old beast...
Current specs are...
P4 1.7
640MB PC`33
80GB master
40GB Slave
PS - antec truepower 380
Previous Vid - Geforce4MX440
New vid - Sapphire 9800pro 128MB

The problems arose on the first boot...Artifacts on the boot screen, loading screen, and my desktop. And when I load my desktop, if hardware acceleration is full, I get these white lines all over the place. But if I turn the acceleration down one notch, almost everything clears up, I'm just left with 5 vertical series of white lines that are each about 3/4' long. I've been reading around like crazy trying to find a solution, but to no avail. I have the updated bios for my MB. I have a dell 4300, so i really can't mess around with too many bios settings. I can change AGP aperature, snooping, and IRQ assignments.

I've tried disabling fastwrites, but that didn't help. I have no other ideas here...thanks for any help

I'm also in the process of finding anonther computer to try it in to see if it's the card...

DK

 

[Petros]

Instant artifacts like that are usually caused by a broken pixel pipeline.

Either
A. The card is defective
B. The driver is looking for more pixel pipelines than the card was built with (I.E. a 9600 flashed with a 9800 bios). I had a problem once when I was sold a "9700" but it was just a bios-flashed 9500.

Either way, the company you bought it from needs to replace it. I'll wager that it will do the same thing in another computer. Try running 3dMark 200X on it and post a score. That's usually a dead giveaway.

Or C. It could be overheating. But that doesn't sound like your problem, because it doesn't get worse or crash.

 

[LordOfLA]

the 9800pro runs very hot by default almost as soon as you power on so overheating is a very real possibility. Try taking the side off of your case and leaving a gap of about 1.5" and see if the artifacts go away.

 

[LeeJend]

If it's not the drivers the card is junk. Uninstall the card in device manager, use drivercleaner or nasty file remover to clean out any left over nvidia drivers and reinstall.

The card may have been a return from somebody who trashed it or just defective from the factory. It happens. A 9800 PRO should have no problems straight out of the box.