Artifacting? The cause? The damage?

Well This is getting quite annoying for me.

Notebook

Vostro 1500

8600m GT DDR2
C2D T7100
4gb ddr2 ram
5400 rpm 120gb hd
windows xp home sp3
175.80 drivers (GREAT DRIVERS)

I decided to play with overclocking a bit to see how high I could push my benchmarks. I set a pretty high clock, and began 3dMark06 and within the first half of the first test I artifacted.

The screen was blue black and grey and white all random everywhere. I tried alt+F4 plus a few other tricks then about 25 seconds later held down the power button to shut down since nothing else worked. (temps were under 75C)

Since then I tried to play GTA about 2 hours later (clocks un applyed and regular clocks set) and I notice that there is a 1 pixel strip at the bottom artifacting which I believe had to be going for a good 20 minutes before I noticed it.

I decided to hold off gaming for a while till today in class. I popped open GTA SA to start modding and installed me self a cadillac escalade and after about 20 minutes the colors of the game suddenly shifted. It was as if brightness and contrast were raised, the sky was red as well as most things having a dull red to it and anything that had any light was VERY VERY white. I ran for about 40 seconds to see if it was just GTA messing up again.

Am I artifacting? did I damage my card?

Also although this is offtopic I dont want to create a new thread to clog up the boards but 3 issues, when ever I boot up with a ethernet cord plugged in my computer freezes on welcome screen and desktop for quite a while (does not happen with wifi), second when plugging into school ethernet (yes we dont have wifi very lame) my touchpad constantly clicks on random things and goes crazy (only with school connection), third how do I auto connect at windows start up instead of having to click the connection then click connect.

Any help would be great. Thanks

 

thats weird man.

if it were anyone else, I would say its overheating damage.... but OC'ing can cause artifacts if card is pushed too far... even if the temp is not in the danger zone.

is the card back at stock speed?

 

It set back to stock speeds the second I forced shutdown. I just finished running ATI tool artifact scanner for 45 minutes and nothing. Temps didnt even get past 65C.

Thanks gophn

any other opinions?

 

Did you try other games?

If the problem persists... you should probably get it RMA'ed to get a new videocard before your warranty is up.

 

Sounds like artifacting, but that can be caused by alot of things.

It may be worth re-installing your drivers.. safe mode, driver sweeper etc.

 

Doesnt overclocking void the warranty? I suppose theres a chance they wouldnt know...

 

Yeah I would take a stand and say that it is caused by overheating damage, as you described a line across the screen and white spots. Even though your temps remain normal as stated on GPUz or RivaT, but I still think your VRAM is probably overheating which is the cause of these visual effects. Why did it appear 20 mins in the game? So that kept me thinking. Usually from my experience, when you see White spots or lines, I believe**, it has got to do with the VRAM chip being push too far.

May I know what are the clock speeds you set to? Stocks for 8600M is 475/950/400. What were your clocks set to the time when you O'Ced your GPU?

But then again, it never fails to update the driver, try 169.04 instead, another 8600M power driver. I'm using 169.04 for my Inspiron 1720 and I did alot of overclocking and it was flawless. I never had an artifact and got a 3d06 score of 4287 1280x1024. But anyway, I don't know what made me want to say that to update your drivers, but if drivers can have the power and the ability to control and OC a GPU, I'm sure it might help nevertheless. Won't hurt to change and see how it goes...

Also, don't you mind showing us screenshots of what the artifacts look like on screen? Maybe from what we see we can more or less, judge whether if its overheating, or others... They help alot to further diagnose the problem easier.

 

Generally artifacts show up when you increase the memory speed too much, whereas overclocking the core too much usually earns you a hard crash. Sounds like the memory may have been totally overheated and caused permanent damage.

 

Ok, Temps shouldnt have gotten too high since I was running aircon to keep my room a steady 20C. Furthermore I was using my Zalman Fullspeed and had fans full speed.

As for clocks 680/not sure but slides connected/460. I have had far higher clocks.

As for screen shots I dont have any but this

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/8643/bf22006110112574889xd4.jpg

you see the messy bit that was the first onebut it covered the WHOLE screen.

Second was just a line with radom colors along bottom

thrid looked like this but with a redder tint and a red sky

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/sol2.jpg

I have tried other games and i notice little graphical glitchs

Thanks so far everyone!

 

I see you are playing BF2 in the first picture . I actually had BF2 look like that (and also with it covering the whole screen) a couple of times on my old computer (ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, no modifications), and a simple restart of the game fixed it.

 

Yeah it seems you pushed it too far. Temperature monitors only show the GPU core temps not the memory.

I suggest you backup all your stuff now as gpu failure might be next.

For now try changing the drivers with drivesweeper.

Also if you have the time, take out the battery pack and AC power and hold the power button for 30 seconds to flush the system.

 

Those are not my pics btw just similar, how could I have pushed memory too far? I have had it running at over 525 in the past.

Is there any defininite way to check if I did indeed push it too far.

Also how do I clear any evidence of OCing?

 

i believe that if u delete riva turner and anyother overclocking software, make sure no way to trace, then send it back, im sure that theey will replace for free! u know if they see rivatuner , they r gonna know.

 

Uninstall all ocing software.
Run ccleaner's registry editor.
It may also be worth uninstalling your driver then auto updating to the latest official release from your manufacturer.

Did updating your driver help at all?

 

There may be only 2 reasons.

1. Too high frequency GPU or GRAM
2. You hit bad video card.

 

I am avoiding driver updates atm since I know this driver is stable, prior to this I had used the driver for about 2 -3 days and it has done miricles for me. It has made TF2 playable and improved stability for my system in general.

Well here are 2 pics of trackmania

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/akihitothedragon/2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/akihitothedragon/1.jpg

In the second link there is somtihng funny about the world. Around africa and other parts there are light bits of a world outline rotating the opposite direction.

Also the text on exit saying Trackmania Nations was a bit jagged next to usual. as well as link 1

Settings were medium no AA 2XAS






I have had the notebook for 9 months. I am planning on telling dell if it does come to sending it in that I have always noticed issues when ever I played a game. I just saw things that looked weird since the begining and I googled and they were called artifacts etc.

 

Just dont send in your HD at all. Ask tech support if you can keep it due to the sensitivity of the data within it. Clearly they will see it as a motherboard problem anyway

 

There is one issue with that I have been nagging them with many issues

Stuck pixels on the right of the screen ( but the screen has ZERO backlight bleeding)

Over heating fixed by cooler.

Microphone Jack Does not function and never has

Hard drive is ticking loudly (failure could be soon)

Creaking noises from left of the media buttons

and now toss GPU into the mix

 

That's a long list of problems!
Send it in suggesting this is only the latest problem in a long list of build issues.

Be sure to give that registry a good scrubbing first
Maybe re-install vista aswell "to protect your privacy"

 

Alright thanks but I would like to be able to confirm that it is for sure "fried" so I dont look dumb.

I will re install windows with full format isntead of quick as well as combine the data and os partitions to one again.

Thanks

 

Ok.

Safe mode > Uninstall driver > Driver Sweeper > Reboot > Install latest official driver > Reboot > Artifact scans and stress tests.

Should about clear it up.

Try it again after the re-format aswell just to be sure:\

 

Question : are little artifacts a big deal?

I have to send the notebook in actually anyways due to all those outstanding issues. I will just clear hard drive restore to how it came.

Does Dell Japan have an Outlet? I notice they do not sell the Vostro 1500 anymore meaning I may be able to squeek a xps 1530 out of them. Cheers

 

Hmm...probably a little late and a little irrelevant now...but regarding those pictures in BF2, I don't think that's artifacting. I recall getting stuff like that tons of times in CSS with zero overclocking. My console said something about textures not being able to load up.

 

If it's hardware that's the cause of artifacting then yes. The instability that causes artifacting will eventually kill your gpu and you may end up having to replace the whole mobo

If it's software then it should be fixed with the re install.

You're likely looking at getting the mobo replaced anyway as your headfone jack is faulty so they mightn't look to much further into it.

Fingers crossed for the 1530

 

You should try the Dell Diagnostic before you go and wipe your hard drive.

During bootup, press Fn+F12.

Wait for it to stop the preliminary scanning.

Go to the "Symptom Tree" and scan specifically for "Video Corruption".

Make sure to write down any Error Codes that come up.



My computer is artifacting as well. I ran the diagnostic and it said there was a failure to read/write to video memory. So I just quoted the Error Codes to Dell technical support and they are sending a technician over tomorrow to replace my graphics card. Next Day support indeed.

Btw my comp is artifacting in the BIOS (so I know it's not software related), therefore I don't need to wipe my HD.

 

Not sure if it was overclocking or not, but 680 is really freaking high for that card. That's 41% core.

 

680 for core?? Wow. That's really killing the GPU! I've never heard of anyone going that high on the 8600M among all the tests I've seen. The highest I've heard is at 650 the very most. Which is my settings and some other laptops here. Anything more than that it artifacts with yellow poker dots on screen.

May I know what's your clock speed for your Memory at? It should be no more than 530 the most. Any memory speed higher than that it artifacts for 8600M DDR2 in general.

I admit, I had artifacts, but wasn't alot, just small yellow dots on screen with my ATI Tool scan. Sometimes, artifacts don't really get detected by ATI Tools while scanning, so it's important to look out for yourself too. The moment I see some small ones, no matter how minute they are, I immediately reduce the speed until I see no artifacts.

Also, did you scan for artifacts after you did the overclocking? You need to as far as possible. There's nothing wrong OCing, but the goal of OCing is to have the highest possible speeds without any form of artifacts (no matter how small or large they appear to be) or heat issues and the OC should last you for more than 3 to 4 hours at least playing games without errors. There should be none of these issues. I ran Crysis on my 1720 for 3 hours (LOL long) and there was nothing on screen. That's my idea of a successful GPU overclock.

But yeah on the topic on the thread, based on the screenshots you gave, I've seen that BF having texture problems, so can't really pin point if it was due to OCing, but since you mentioned that the problem persists 20 mins in the game and it affects other games as well, then yes, I'll take a stand and say the overclocking and VRAM heat might the cause.

Oh yeah, its good that Cthulhu pointed out, run a diagnostic test, helps to see if your card is damaged or working still.

But anyways, if you have the chance to get your mobo or your entire replaced, I'd say do it immediately. Good luck and... oh yeah, thanks for the rep point. Appreciated it.

 

Like SFoH was saying, it's likely the 680 core that did it in.

 

May be the card is already gone.Send it as soon as you can.

 

My heart dropped when he said that. 680 core? Oh man....

100th post, yay!!!

 

He's right about 175.80 being great OC drivers though, mine's running artifact free at 615/515, and at cooler temps than I had with 174.74. Don't think I'll go any higher than this though.

 

I'm just curious, does setting a very high overclock cause any permenant damage even if it's applied for a short amount of time? Like 15 seconds? I'm wondering because there was once I was wondering if nTune was even overclocking my GPU or not, so I pushed my clocks up really high, my screen instantly blanked out, and I restarted.

 

It could cause permanent damage. I suggest not doing it again...ever.

OC'ing is a black art

 

Well I will be whiping my hard drive within the next few days and also run dell diagnostic tool. It is interesting I now look back and my gf pointed out that I had artifacting before minor although still even when I unboxed the notebook.

I decided to send it in with this list of other issues


1.Stuck pixels on the right of the screen (already complained about)

2.Microphone Jack Does not function and never has

3.Annoying sounds through the headphone jack always. It sounds like this (youtube link)

4.Hard drive is ticking loudly (hard drive failure is close any day could be a year could be tommorow)

5.Creaking noise left of the media buttons when ever typing (wont notice without VERY big hands like mine) (aloready complained about)

6.Artifacting when ever I open a game no matter how old or new it is regardless of settings drivers etc. (means the game is going crazy google "artifact gaming" for pictures)

7.Power cable loose when ever plugged into the back of the notebook and requires no movement of the laptop when operating it plugged in or it plugs out

Try to demand a full system replacement since the issues are ridiculous and 7 of them!

Only problem Is I have a final paper for a course which is due in 2 weeks minus a day so I will try to finish that on the notebook before I send it in.

Thanks for everything everyone.

 

Jlbrightbill@ That's a decent speed and it's good that you don't have any problems with it. Mine's set to 650/1300/530. So far no artifacting has occurred ever since (Been using these speeds for about 4 months) and no way I'm planning to go any higher. In fact, I feel like downclocking by 50Mhz to give it a break. The temps also remain at constant 60 on full load. But I always reset to defaults when I'm not doing any GPU intensive tasks.

No it won't happen so fast, probably an hour, or the very least about 15 mins or so. The chips can clock way higher than it can, but not for long until the chip tires out and something happens in less than an hour. But I can't give a direct answer as I have yet to see such a thing occuring. Also, Ntune doesn't remember your OC settings, you need to do it manually after every boot.

Anyway I would suggest leaving it to where your clocks did fine the last time. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Just remember to reset to default when you're not gaming or doing anything GPU intensive like I said above.

If that's the highest a GPU can go, then leave it. I would suggest not to experiment with the clock speeds too much, if you have hit the limit to where it can handle, then that's the best it can do and no more; or you'll hit into more problems like you mentioned your screen getting blacked out and other fuzzy problems on screen. Whether if it was drivers, or the GPU itself, just play safe and down clock abit.

And yes, OCing is black art. It is, it really is. It's not something that can be done by any inexperienced individual. I am also careful to what I'm doing and the direction to where my 1720's GPU is heading to. So yeah, let's all be humble to where our GPUs can handle, and be proud that you own a notebook, and it still works according to your command.

Anyway by the end of the year, I'm replacing my 1720 for a better build, so I hope dell gives a notebook with a single GTX card configuration, and I'm happy. I don't need any OCing on that beast.

By the way X2P, good luck with your notebook repair. We've done all we can to help, and it seems you have other problems with it too, so I'm hoping to hear it gets sorted by Dell successfully especially your GPU.