How to tell if a video card is crapping out...

[T2A`]

I think my 9800 Pro is underperforming as of late. I can't really say when this started, but I've never conciously noticed this problem before so it must be new. I first noticed when I was getting large framerate drops around people in UT2004, which I don't remember happening. I can go from 120 FPS to 35 solely by having a few people in view. Now, framerates do drop a bit for most people around player models, but this seems a bit much. And by "a bit" I mean "way too." I've been living with it for the past couple of weeks but I think it's getting worse. Today I played the BF2 demo and tried putting all the settings on high and I got some seriously weird rendering issues. Whole buildings were disappearing and coming back depending on which direction I was looking, tanks were popping in and out of view, grass was jumping off the ground to float at eye level, players had bright blue artifacts on them, etc. At medium settings none of this happened. Tonight while trying to play UT2004 I was getting the same slowdowns around players, but in addition to that, I got a lot of thrashing and pausing. It was like I was taking a screenshot every time someone came into view only not as long a pause.

Not having any real technical knowledge about this I don't know what to do. My drivers are up-to-date, and as far as I know the card isn't overheating. I guess it could be; I haven't checked the heatsink fan yet (my roommate is asleep and checking the fan would require lights) to make sure it's still functional. But even then, because I know my case is warm (because Dell is awesome), I've had a 20" box fan blowing into the case whilst it's open, and it's been like this for as long as I've been at school since late August. The Dell BIOS is a total piece of crap so I cannot check actual temperatures of anything. I've had the computer for two years and a few months without issue, and this is the first time the thing has really started to piss me off. Basically what I wanted to know is if there's any other checks I can do to make sure the card is running up-to-speed. Is there some kind of test I can run that will give me a definite "Yes, your sh*t is f*cked up" like memtest for RAM? I wasn't planning on upgrading my computer until around the time the UT2007 demo comes out, but if my card is definitely messed up I have no problems dropping $150 on a 6600GT AGP to keep me gaming happily until then. I would prefer to not spend that money if I could, though, since I'll just be replacing it anyway a few months later. Also, I'm not even sure if it is actually the card, but the artifacts in BF2 lead me to believe it is. Can anyone help? :o

PS: Sorry for using so many words. :(

[KJAX]

See if you can borrow a card from a friend or something and swap it out with the 9800 Pro. It's really the only way to be sure.

[Rukee]

When VCs go bad generally they will either not work at all or throw artifacts up (abnormalities on the screen), I would say it`s prolly something like background programs or some sort of driver issue maybe between the MB chipset and the VC or DirectX or something. Or if you have the settings for the VC set to high, AA-AF filtering set to max that may give you some slow downs. Maybe restore the VC settings to default if there is an option.

[T2A`]

AA and AF are both off and the only settings I've changed are to put the texture and mipmap quality on performance to see if that made a difference. I just put on the Catalyst 5.11 drivers, so I'll have to play tonight and see what happens with those.

I did find out what those "pauses" I described in the first post were. I played a bot match before putting on the 5.11 drivers and I was watching my FPS display and every now and then it would drop to sub-30 and sometimes even sub-10 FPS for a very short period for really no reason. When it does this it feels like a hitch. It only did this with player models in my view. There was a period where it got extremely prevalent and I would run around with framerates between 5 and 20 for a second and then it'd jump right back to 80+. No idea what's going on, but I will test both UT2004 and BF2 on high details with these new drivers and see what happens. I should also try HL2 single player because last week I tried playing it and I seriously got a hitch every couple seconds. Turn, hitch, shoot at something, turn somewhere else, hitch, etc. :mad:

[Phopojijo]

When my (GeForce 2) went it was locking up my system and failing to draw polygons/not texturing some/whatever. Try uninstalling all your drivers and reinstalling to an older version.

[ALG]

See if you can borrow a card from a friend or something and swap it out with the 9800 Pro. It's really the only way to be sure.

Yeah try swapping with 36 for a bit.

[_Algol_]

Oddly, I've been having similar problems of late.....
....except w/ a 7800GT.

I'll load up a botmatch and start playing. Initially FPS rates, say, for DM-Goose2k4 are parked around 200. :D Rock on, right?

Now the bad part: anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes into the botmatch, FPS will drop dramatically with no changes in settings on my end. I.e.: we're talking about going from 200 FPS down to 40 FPS. Exit the game and relaunch, and I'm still stuck w/ the lousy framerates. Exit the game, reboot the computer, and I'm back to 200 FPS........for 2 to 5 min.

I'm trying to check obvious things off of the list:
1. This only happens during botplay; I don't experience this issue online (yes, I'm aware of the 85 fps online rate cap).
2. This only happens when I'm PLAYING: if I spectate a botmatch on my machine, FPS stays in the triple figures. If I join, FPS stays high for a couple of minutes, and then drops out again. Therefore I don't think it's a video card problem....
3. Using the most recent display drivers from Nvidia.
4. 550W Antec PS (don't remember the power per rail, but it's ATX 2).
5. Don't think it's spyware or virus. Don't think it's anything else running in the background....
6. Haven't reinstalled UT2004 yet, but have reinstalled the most recent patch.
7. Sure as heck haven't re-loaded WinXP.

So, if anyone has any ideas.....fire away. I suspect that it's a settings issue someplace...

PS: Don't think it's a Video Card heat issue....again, only happens during botplay, and my temp settings on the card are always in the green when I check the Nvidia properties.

[hal]

_Algol_, could be a heat issue. Does it happen with any other demanding games?

T2A, artifacts are typically video card related... either it isn't getting enough power (probably not the reason), the card itself is dying, or it is overheating due to a dead fan on the GPU or inside the case. Could also be something impeding the airflow. Those are all easy enough to check out.

Hitching could be a driver issue. Not just for your GPU, but also other components, like your sound card. It could be that you need to defrag your HDD.

[DeathBooger]

9800 fans are known to crap out after a few years of use. My 9800XT's fan crapped out after 2 years of use. Notice any new noises? The fan will make a whining/ grinding noise if it's going bad, open your case and listen.

[_Algol_]

_Algol_, could be a heat issue. Does it happen with any other demanding games?


Not as yet....I guess I ruled out GPU heat as a factor, but I haven't really ruled out CPU heat yet. It would figure that a botmatch would be necessarily more CPU-intensive than an online-match. I'll have to check out the temp readings on the CPU when I get home.

Thanks!

[_Algol_]

Okay, so running the utility that came w/ my Abit mobo, pegged my CPU temp around 40 C....

...but more importantly, I turned off "Mouse Smoothing", and "Reduce Mouse Lag". I must have forgotten to turn those off when I re-installed. Whoopsies: now I'm back up and running at high FPS.

That, or my CPU is running cooler this evening than yesterday...:eek:

Thanks.