M17 Video Card Problems

Hey guys, I've been having problems with my M17 while playing Battlefield 2 recently. I have an M17 with the dual 3870s with Catalyst driver 9.9. When I'm in-game in BF2, every once in a while my whole screen will start oscillating horizontal green lines and basically giving off like a disco/strobe effect. At first, I thought maybe my AA was turned up too high (8X) so I turned it down to (4X) but it still happened, so I'm turning to this forum to see if anyone knows the answer to this.

 

Check device manager to see is the slave 3870 is failing.

 

I will try that next time it happens,thanks. Will it not say "Device is working properly" if it's failing?

 

I used to get that on my desktop computer once, but instead of green lines they were red. Turns out it was the videocard's temperature that was way too high and artifacts started to show. My videocard's cooler wasn't running, since it was a new purchase I traded for a new one.
So check your videocard's temperature when those green lights start to show and see if they're running on acceptable levels.

 

Thanks for the help, what's the best program for monitoring my video card temperatures? Also, what's a reasonable temperature range for a video card to be at?

 

I use HWMoniter it will read almost all the temps for your system for you and display them.

Max temp for a vid card is 100, but thats the generally accepted absolute max before irrepairable damage starts occuring. Ideall under max load you dont want to see over mid 70's
(all temps mentions in Degrees C)

 

Just downloaded it and ran it until the problem happened again, my video card temps were 77 and 76 Celsius, so they're not overheating. I can't figure out what's causing this, it's driving me crazy!

 

When your temps are constantly around 75-80c it could be a problem. I'd monitor your temps some more and see if the problem is there before the temps hit 70+. Then use some aggressive cooler and see if it helps. If yes - reapply Arctic Silver 5 and you are good to go. It doesn't look like a driver issue to me. It may be the hardware problem, aggravated by temps rise.

 

Oh, sorry, I should have been more specific. That was the MAX temp. I will load up some games later and post the average temp.

 

Is your crossfire cable hooked in well? Or even your panels cable.

I know this probably wont apply but on the gateway forums alot of people were getting the same kinds of "tears" going across the screens and all they needed to do was reseat the LCD's cable and it cleared the screen problems right up.

So it might just be a loose cable somewhere that is making the screen go screwy as it has a little play in the connection

 

Hmm, I'll look into that...but it doesn't really explain why it would happen after 10-15 minutes of gameplay.

 

Just got off the phone with Alienware support, I was on the line with them for nearly two hours. The agent first accessed my computer remotely and went to install CPUID, and I told him I did it earlier and the cards were not overheating, but we still went ahead and checked the temps anyways. After that, he went to install drivers and I told him this issue has happened on the stock drivers and the Catalyst 9.9 drivers. And then he told me to turn it off and take it apart.

These are the different configurations he had me try to run the game in:
1. Master card in, no slave - ran fine, problem not replicated
2. slave card in master slot - computer would not display anything
3. original configuration - RAN FINE?!?!??!

His conclusion was that maybe something was loose and needed to be reseated. He stayed on the line with me as I played BF2 for about 15 minutes waiting to see if the problem would come back, but it didn't.

Now, I'm just worried that by unseating the heatsink so many times that it won't be as effective as it was before? Do you think this is the case?

Last Comment: Alienware Tech Support = A+

Just played a game of BF2 with CPUID running:
60 degrees on the processor, 74 degrees on both gpu cards