Argh Artifacts

[Massacre]

Hey

Im running a Radeon 9800 in a Gigabyte ga7n400-L. Im getting some screwed up graphics in windows etc. Gaming in counter-strike 1.6 is alright, apart from the missing squares on all entities and warped text. The other screenshots are pretty self explanatory. Everything is fine in windows, apart from some icons not showing.

http://www.gpforums.co.nz/attachment.php?s=&postid=3978220 is what i mean by the missing icons etc. Desktop backgrounds, webpages, videos (without sound) and images are fine.

Is there any software which i can use to report the GPU temps? Im pretty sure its not a Videocard ram problem, since the issues improved when i reapplied some thermal grease to the core a few days ago. I have tried changing around my system ram, taking the video card out of the socket, attached is a picture of my video card with the new cooler i purchased on it.

[DeXtORB]

is the Video Card Oc'ed? and did it happen b4 you replaced the cooler?

[Massacre]

No its on stock settings. What actually happened in the beginning, was my system was running all sweet, then my monitor finally decided to crap out. 2 weeks later i get a new screen and my pc doesnt power on. I took everything out of the motherboard, put it all back in, pc powered on except there were bits missing from the letters on the POST screen ie the ->B part of the letter B, would be missing a pixel every few pixels down the part where the arrow is pointing (if ya get my drift ;)). I found that setting my graphics to 16bit color would remove most artifacts. Playing in Source was unplayable, jagged models etc like the screenshots above. I had enough, so i decided to narrow down the problem. I reapplied some thermal grease, and my problems declined, but the color depth was reversed. Now running in 32bit color in windows works better than 16bit color.

At this stage i dont have another computer to test it in, but im banking on the fact that its a video card related problem, since each alteration i make to the cooling seems to have an effect. A mate thought it could have something to do with the RAMDAC.

16bit color.

[Massacre]

Ive also noticed that I dont get any artifacts registering when running ati-tool's artifact scanner. It does display "artifacts" but it says no errors for xx seconds and keeps going, i had it to 2 minutes. I dropped the clock speeds down, and i reached 80 for the core, and yeah i did notice a difference, about half the amount of discoloring on the screen.

Side note, this started after i got my new monitor. My previous monitor's VGA cable was losing signal, thus some color tones would be missing. Maybe this could be a contributing factor?

[Massacre]

Underclocked to 78 mhz core

[Hellraiser1981]

Hmm, that sucks

My first thought looking at the above screenshot "Bad DAC"

If atitool doesn't report artifacts, but artifacts appear, the DAC (Digital Analog Convertor, also called RAMDAC) is screwed up (ATITool scans the video memory for artifacts, not the screen output). Try reflashing the bios on the card, if that doesn't fix it, check for any silver paste smeared on the card. (arctic silver is somewhat conductive)
All else fails, Put the stock cooler back on and RMA the card.

One thing that seems strange is the problem started with a new monitor. If the monitor input circuit is messed up, it might draw too much current from the signal outputs of the video card, witch could fry the DAC (RAMDAC). Try the monitor with a vid card you don't care about and see if it gets fryed. Also try the 9800 with a different monitor.

[geeman74]

that happened to me with my 9800xt after i put a waterblock on using as5
didnt know what was causing it so i removed it cleaned it and used white paste
put a bigger than normal blob on the core stuck the waterblock back on and it ocd better than it ever did no more artifacts