Radeon 9550 256mb. Corrupted Graphics

[Kahoopla]

Hi, I am using a Radeon 9550 256mb Graphics card on a dell optiplex GX270. I have a 250Gb Primary Sata II drive and a 250Gb Slave IDE, 1gb DDR Ram (333mhz) Windows Xp Pro with service pack and .NET 2 installed.

After installing the graphics card, anything that uses 3d graphics is corrupt, there seems to be blocks of pixels over some of the graphics, and I can forget about loading a game (Civ 4 for instance) as its just a lot of red dots. Even the icons on the desktop have corrupted pixels all over them.

I have updated the motherboard bios to the latest one, and the graphics card bios. I have tried reducing agp to 4x and turning off fastwrite.

The only thing that seems to make any difference is reduding the hardware acceleration, but as you can imagine this also makes playing games impossible as they wont load without 3d acceleration.

I have also put the card on a Intel 865G motherboard with the same results.

Any help and tips would be greatly appreciated.

[tigger]

whats the cooler on the card?.and can you monitor the temp,does the heatsink feel hot to the touch?.is it overclocked?.

[Kahoopla]

No idea what the cooler is, how do I know, It does have 2 huge blue things attached to either side of the card. Its not a heat problem I dont think as it did this from a cool boot first time I ever used it. Basically as soon as I installed the drivers this happened to my graphics. No its not overclocked, just standard install, drivers from the ati site. I have ATITool 0.24 installed if you need any info from that.

Just opened the pc and it has ZALMAN written on the two huge blue things (which I think are something to do with the cooling system)

[Kahoopla]

I will say that when I bought the card I was told it was a Radeon 9600 with Dual Heatpipe VGA Cooler ZM80D-HP, however when I installed it the stsyem identified it as a Radeon 9550

[magibeg]

And where did you buy this card from? ebay :laugh:

[Kahoopla]

No, I dont live in a country that has ebay, but thats hardly the point, thanx for the insight by the way, its always nice when morons come on to offer thier help, really appreciated!!

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=16136 this is the cooler

[magibeg]

Well the reason i asked is that in the event you bought it from ebay the guy might have flashed a 9550 to a 9600 and sold it to you. And the pixels and blocks seem to point to that you may have a dead card on your hands so you should probably work on returning it instead of fixing it.

[Kahoopla]

Well I think I'll try my hand at fixing it first if you dont mind, and if anyone knows how I can identify the card so I can download the correct bios for it that would be a help.

As I said, any "help" would be appreciated. :rolleyes:

[magibeg]

Did you buy the cooler you have on it seperately?

[Kahoopla]

No the cooler was already on there, and if the card is bummed, then the card is bummed, but I would like to try my hand at fixing it first, and as it works for everything but 3d apps, I dont think its knackered, works fine for playing movies ect on the tv and such like. Just some grotty graphics on the pc monitor.

[magibeg]

Have you downloaded ati tool yet? If so it could probably tell you a great deal about your video card. Did you try reinstalling the catalyst drivers?

[Kahoopla]

Tried reinstalling, updating, and rolling back the drivers. Yes I have the ati tool, however, while I am a hugely expierenced hardware enginneer, I have very little experince with graphics, as most/all my expeieince is in a office type working enviroment and there is usually very liltte demand/usage of graphics cards. So most of the information the ati tool gives me means very little.

[magibeg]

Thats ok, open up ati tool and click on settings. And tell me what it says beside chip name. Also just for curiousity sake could you also tell me its current temperature and run the 3dview with ati tool to see if its distorted.

[Kahoopla]

Already have run the 3d view, and yes its very distorted. Can see the image, its just very pixelated

Settings are

Catalyst version 5.5
Device ID 4153
Chip Type RV350
Memory Size 256mbMemory Bus width 128bit
Active pipeline 4
Default GPU Clock 250.00 MHZ
Default Memory Clock 200.00 MHZ


Any other info needed?

[magibeg]

Nope thats more then enough. That information all seems fine. The last thing you could do i suppose would be to flash it but i think that would probably kill the card for good. Its definately got the clock and memory speed of a 9550 though. You could underclock it to see if the artifacts go away but it would be a long shot. If you still have a warrenty on the card i think you may want to consider using it as it doesn't look too promising. It just seems strange to me that it only happens in 3d mode.

[aaronramsdell]

You need 9550 drivers, that is a 9550 if you are trying to use drivers for anything but a 9550 then that may be your problem, But that is a 9550 no matter what it was sold as. and the other poster kept asking you questions that you answered in your first couple of posts like the fact that you have atitool etc, I find it odd that he responded to you without having read your posts completley lol. good luck.

[Kahoopla]

Thanx for the post, the drivers I am using are the generic ones from the ati website, they are drivers generic for pretty much all thier graphic cards, so it wasn't like I was downloading specific make/model drivers. I am beginning to lose hope and accept defeat, and realise that maybe its just funked As I say I'm a pretty experienced hardware engineer, and while this doesnt really cover graphics hardware I've tried every trick in the book.

[technicks]

No, I dont live in a country that has ebay, but thats hardly the point, thanx for the insight by the way, its always nice when ''morons'' come on to offer thier help, really appreciated!!

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=16136 this is the cooler

We just had a big discussion about how to get along with eachother. Watch your language please. He just asked.

[Kahoopla]

OK, point taken, however its not appreciated when people come on just to make fun. Hardly helpful when people post cheap jibs. If you cant help, whats the point in posting, just to get you posts up?

[dolf]

My advise is to take off the cooler and to see the core with your own eyes. It should be RV360. If you discover RV350 it is different story. RV350 with RV360 BIOS will result artifacts in certain applications (it should be the same like R350 and R360). If you realy have RV360 see also the memory chips and tell us what is written on then (how ns they are?). 9600XT should have temperature monitoring (also Overdrive function with temperature monitoring whithin the driver). Is it present? The problem could be wrong BIOS (wrong memory timings for your on board memory), bad memory module (on board), bad pipe and of course heat issue. But if your card is flashed 9550 to 9600XT and the clocks are too high you should often see "VPU recover" message.

On 9800XT with R360 the core speed limit usually results in white dots and other artifacts (just for comparison).

There could be one last reason and it is the PSU.

Since you tried your card in other PC and the result is the same it means that the problem is your card.

Hope that the above will help you somehow.

[Kahoopla]

The Chip actually says

ATI
Radeon 9550

and some other stuff to small to read

The memory chips have Samsung 504 written on them

There is also some writing on the board

R96
R96DV

Has a circle in the box next to R96

Also

64mb
128mb
256mb

With a circle in the 256mb box

Cant see any RV numbers on the board at all, that help?

[technicks]

OK, point taken, however its not appreciated when people come on just to make fun. Hardly helpful when people post cheap jibs. If you cant help, whats the point in posting, just to get you posts up?

Yeah i know. There are many who only post nonsens. But that is the reason there are moderators who watching that kind of crap. When you notice this report it to the mod's.:rockout: :)

[technicks]

Did you already read any temps of your card?

[Kahoopla]

Temps? Tempertures? No, is says it doesnt have that option availible, but it has a very good cooling system, and does this from a cold boot, after the pc has not been on for more than 12 hours. Really dont think its a heat problem.

[technicks]

Did you had a Nvidia card before you got this Ati card?
I am asking because sometimes when there are old Nvidia driver files on your pc, it could result in problems with Ati cards.

[technicks]

Temps? Tempertures? No, is says it doesnt have that option availible, but it has a very good cooling system, and does this from a cold boot, after the pc has not been on for more than 12 hours. Really dont think its a heat problem.

Download this program.http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.php?pid=3&lang=en
Everest. It tells you all the info about you pc. Including temperature of your card , processor, HD.

No but when your cooler does not make good contact with the chip, then it could be that it's become overheated. Then every time you boot it is already damaged, so the temps do matter.
Did you check if there is thermal paste between the cooler and the chip.