Green/purple lines in LCD (Laptop)

Hi..

I´ve a Acer 5920G with 8600GS 256mb, suddendly when watching a youtube video on fullscreen the image got green/purple lines and the laptop block. Rebooted and even in boot the image was green/purple (lines or blocks, or dots) sometimes i get BSOD.





I know i´ve to buy a new MXM graphic card, but i dont understand this:

-One time i rebooted the laptop the image was fine! I started to watch a 1080p youtube video (to stress the graphic card) and after 5 seconds again with BSOD and green/purple lines. Rebooting/swtich off didint fix it.

-I took off the card, put it very near a 40W lamp to heat it up for 15mnts (based on oven trick eheh).. let it cool down, put it on the laptop, it start working fine even with 3min 1080p video. 20 mnts later, i start a PC Game to stress the card, not even last 10seconds...the laptop freeze and green/purple lines.


Can anyone explain why the card 80% of the times have green/purple lines, and the rest of 20% works fine until i stress the card?

Thanks.

 

Does the laptop get hot? If it does it could be an overheating problem, since it seems to work fine for a while before it starts to malfunction. Another thing to consider would be unstable clocks if you did any overclocking.

 

Sometimes it works fine, but even after a cold boot (without AC or battery for an hour) it can boot with purple/green artifacts (80%). The temps of the card before this started to happen was around 85º full load when playing..high but not critical (i guess).

I changed the thermal paste and temps are +- 60º (not full load). If the temps were the problem, shouldnt work ok after a cold boot?

About overclocking, cant be sure if the previous owner overclock it (i own the laptop for a week and a half ), but i didint do any overclocking.

 

Looks like your GPU or GPU memory overheated and started erroring out like that. Perhaps that's why the previous owner sold it :-/

 

Definitely something wrong with the components, most probably the graphics card since it does boot first, then the lines show up..ur gonna have to have to replace the GPU..In some cases, if the chip frequently gets overheated (meaning before you applied new paste) the chip suffers damage which makes it malfunction even if the temps are better (after you applied paste)..So it could be that the paste was applied a little to late if the laptop was already overheating with the previous owners usage.

 

I've seen similar stuff happen to 8600m GT in a brand new laptop, but only on cold boot. It went away after Dell replaced the videocard.

 

Do the same lines appear on an external display when you hook one up?

 

I thought on replacing the thermal paste when i got the laptop, next time that will be the first thing i would do.

Unfortunately this is a 3 year laptop (Warranty its up to 2 years)..the "funny" thing is a graphic card MXM new is almost the price a new laptop motherboard..

When this problem started i hooked up in my 22" LCD and the green lines also appear. Now most of the times Windows start in VGA Mode because it says the graphic card have a error 43 it wont use it.


Most probably is a RAM issue ( http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html) i dont know if a graphic card uses RAM in a linear way:
-It only needs to use 30mb of ram, it will only use the first 64mb ram module (the card have 64*4) or if distribute the ram consumption for all ram modules.

Is there a way to limit the RAM usage of a graphic card? Maybe with some luck i could block the graphic card using the bad ram module. I dont mind using a 8600gs with 64mb of ram

 

I was about to say your probably looking at ram, its getting memory errors due to heat damage is most likely the problem. Theres no amount of heat gunning the card that will bring it back, all heat gun does is reseat the chips and sauder so it makes proper connections. But if the chip or the ram has heat damage nothing will repair it. Replace the video card or just buy a new lappy , 3 years is about the right time anyways for a new one. if it still works fine just messing around in windows give it to a relative or use it as a media server lappy and push shows to a big screen or something. Or see if you can find a broken lappy with the same model GPU and replace it, could be a cheap alternative.

Edit: Try looking in the bios for vram options, that said if the memory location that is damaged is within the 64mb you will still get the error.

 

This is a known Nvidia defective GPU issue.. Pretty much all 8400/8600/9600 mobile GPUs were affected. It has something to do with the soldering material they used in these lines of chips, apparently they all prematurely fracture and thus brick the laptops. Also these "pixel / line artifacts" consistently appear in laptops with these defective GPUs before the GPUs fully fail.

There was a HUUUUGE international class action lawsuit against Nvidia about it a few years ago.

 

No.
You card does not likely need to be Acer specific.
They are hard to find at the right prices
http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...600m-gt-ati-3650-asus-9800m-gs-260m-more.html

I offer lower prices because I flash the vBIOS to rebrand them from the HP 8530w. But you can probably do this yourself. fx 770m are being sold even lower than 80$ now

Probably your best bet:
502337-001 Refurb HP 8530w ATI 256MB Graphics Card | eBay

Make sure to tell them you will not accept the card if it is not exactly as pictured.

No.


....Actually if you were to rip off the modules it might work but don't do that because it would be totally pointless.

What you can do is lock them to the lowest clocks, or basically mess with the timing a lot... there may be a frequency which is still stable...
Find a guide on vBIOS modding and flashing, then copy the lowest performance mode into all the others with Nibitor.