SPCR

Guys,

I need some help. My video card is crapping out on me. I had a Zalman on but was get artifacts, so I put the orginal heatsink back. Now is having the same problem w/ the oem heatsink. I try resetting it still the same thing. The artifacts are long horizontal rectangles made up of verticle lines.

Any idea what is causing it? Could some of the thermal past that might have gotten on around the chip be causing this?

Thanks

It sounds like a bad card to me. I just RMA'ed one for a friend that experienced artifacts like you are describing.

Before you changed the heatsink the first time, were there any artifacts under any 'normal' conditions?

I can't RMA it. I don't even know what happen to the receipt. After resetting it another time, it seem to be better but still there.

Hello:

Is there any chance a video BIOS update would help?

What brand is the card?

Most manufacturers do not require receipt for RMA. I know this is true of AMD, MSI, and ATI.

Visiontek, BFG ....

It's a Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb. The orginal heatsink had a lot of paste on it and it got on some of the exposed resistor (?) on the GPU. I'm wonder if that has anything to do with it.

I have also run ATI tool on it and got worse as I underclock it. It would not pass the artifact test running into problem in 0.01 secs.

Bad card.

This is almost definitely caused by a damaged memory module. Really, your only choice is to RMA it.

As far as that goes, you have two options:
1) Get an RMA from wherever you bought it
2) Get an RMA from Sapphire

The Sapphire 9800 Pro's are a pain to take the heatsink off of, because they don't use the standard heatsink mounting pins that all other companies use. They are not compatible across either, so don't bother trying to replace the pins you most likely crushed with ATI brand ones.

If you bought this card as an original 9800 pro, then it's a bad card.

I have a 9800 SE (4 pipes) running @Pro (8 pipes) using Omega drivers to open the 4 additional pipes. The artifacts you described is well known among those who try to run 9800SE@Pro and fail. This is due to imperfection (or yield as they called it) of some GPU produced in the same batch. GPU that perfectly passes QA test will go to Pro, the one that does not 'quite' pass will go to SE and ATI drivers will allow only 4 pipes to be used on SE card - although physically they are the same.

Edit: You might also want to check GPU-HS contact. R9800 GPU is not totally flat (concave) and doesn't have any heat spreader on it. That's why most of manufacturer put a lot of paste on it to ensure that there's no air gap.

I'll see if I can RMA it. I don't recall when I got it but I hope newegg has the record. It's been several months so I'll will have to go through Sapphire.

Thanks for everyone's help.

You should be able to get an RMA from Newegg.

One good thing about newegg is that they keep their records of transaction back to when I first join. The bad news is that I should have RMA it about a two month back when the issue first started because the card is about a month over the warrenty period.