[Odalisque]

I know this isn't a tech board, but something screwy is going on with my display when I do anything with a lot of video (games )

I updated the drivers, no luck, so I was wondering if anyone had any idea what it was. I took a few screen shots of it.

It starts out with a little stretch glitch.


Dosn't go away.


It gets worse


And then unplayable.


Any ideas?

[OsoMarron]

You got an ATI card, don't you? At least a friend of mine had a similar issue with Quake 3 and NFS:U where the image would degrade in a similar way... didn't have problems when he switched to nVidia.

You might try updating your Direct X and playing around with your game video settings to disable certain features and see if the problem goes away.

[Odalisque]

I have an nvidea actually, 6800, (I know it's old, I don't have the money)

I hadn't thought about new direct x though, I'll look into that.

[Belisarius]

The 6800 might be a couple generations old, but it's a good, solid card that will work well with most games. And it's not that old - only a few years.

It could be a couple of different things. First possibility is that the game doesn't like the versions of the nVidia driver you've used so far. Try switching it with a previous version or with a newer version. If you have the most current version available from the nVidia site, you can also look for leaked drivers. LaptopVideo2Go has a large collection of leaked drivers that I use. The drivers there are not just for laptop video chipset, but are applicable to all nvidia products - the site simply provides modifications to support otherwise unsupported laptop chipsets. Be sure to try the original nVidia drivers if you've only used drivers from the video board manufacturer so far.

The second possibility (and what my guess would be) is that your video card is overheating, causing the artifacts you see. If you've overclocked your video card, undo it. Check to see how warm your computer gets - try running the game with the case off to see if that eliminates the problem.

The third possibilty is that you have some weird software conflict. I don't know how you'd go about tracking it down, so a full OS wipe and reinstall would probably be the best way to check.

The fourth possibility is that your card is simply dying - there isn't a lot to be done with that apart from trying to get it taken care of under warranty.

[Odalisque]

Okay, thanks for all your help guys, I'll see what I can do about it.

[Jim3535]

I have the same problem with my ASUS AGP 6800GT 128MB. In fact it's not just crap like that, but many games are totally unplayable. I have tried everything to fix it to no avail.

I read about more people with the same problems as me on the ASUS forums and no one had a solution. Even replaced cards die.

I have tried:

• Lots of games (a few work, but many do not)
• Replacing the cooling with a zalman
• RMAing the card
• Various old and new drivers
• OS reinstalls
• etc.

About a year ago I got so pissed off that I gave up, got an xbox 360, and haven't looked back since.

However, I did discover 6 months ago that my power supply was under voltage on the 5V molex line and have been wondering if that could have contributed to it.

[Odalisque]

I installed Max Payne 2 to test it across games, so I know it's not just a COV thing. Voltage is an interesting question, and one I'll keep in mind.

[Jim3535]

Oh, another note about the voltage. The motherboard read it ok but the actual voltage on the connectors was low when I used a multimeter; so don't trust software measurement tools. It was probably reading it off a mobo regulated supply, not the PSU.