Choppy graphics on my ATI 9800

[markalroberts]

Hi,

I've had an ATI 9800 for a while, and when I play games for more than
about 30mins, the graphics become choppy - bits of texture appear where
they shouldn't, it becomes quite hard to see what's going on sometimes
(but the game keeps playing ok).

When I bought the card, the fan noise really annoyed me, so I put a
Zalman heatsink on it. I'm wondering if this is the problem? Or could
it be something else overheating?

Is so, is it possible to have a completely quiet, reasonably powerful
graphics card??? Can anyone suggest a really quiet fan to assist the
zalman?

Many thanks,
Mark.

 

[First of One]

Possible culprits:
1. Overheating
2. Memory leak in driver
3. Some incompatible AGP setting

1. Run the artifact checker in ATiTool; it can heat up the card better than
most games.
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
2. What driver version are you using? Try something newer like Catalyst
5.12.
3. Install AGP drivers for your mobo, if you haven't done so already. If the
problem persists, disable Fast Writes and drop AGP speed to 4x in BIOS.

 

[Sleepy]

Hi,

I've had an ATI 9800 for a while, and when I play games for more than
about 30mins, the graphics become choppy - bits of texture appear where
they shouldn't, it becomes quite hard to see what's going on sometimes
(but the game keeps playing ok).

When I bought the card, the fan noise really annoyed me, so I put a
Zalman heatsink on it. I'm wondering if this is the problem? Or could
it be something else overheating?

Is so, is it possible to have a completely quiet, reasonably powerful
graphics card??? Can anyone suggest a really quiet fan to assist the
zalman?

Many thanks,
Mark.

Its almost certainly overheating Mark. Newer drivers from 5.6 onwards have
been notable for running cards hotter so if you're using a recent driver one
possibility is to go back to an older one - the 4.12s have a good rep for
stability. Alternatively use a fan. Get a large case fan (large generally
means slow spinning so its quiet) and fix it so its pointing down onto the
card like this T (the upstroke is the card and the crossbar is the fan.
Ive done this using brackets from a hardware store. It also cools the whole
card and I did it to get a nice overclock out of a fanless card.

 

[Mark]

You wrote in thusly:

I've had an ATI 9800 for a while, and when I play games for more than
about 30mins, the graphics become choppy - bits of texture appear
where they shouldn't, it becomes quite hard to see what's going on
sometimes (but the game keeps playing ok).

When I bought the card, the fan noise really annoyed me, so I put a
Zalman heatsink on it. I'm wondering if this is the problem? Or could
it be something else overheating?

Is so, is it possible to have a completely quiet, reasonably powerful
graphics card??? Can anyone suggest a really quiet fan to assist the
zalman?

Also check your power supply voltage and the physical power connection
from the power supply to the 9800. When I looked at my power connection
to the card, the supplied ATI cable, which just happened to be beige in
color, was actually showing signs of burnt brown plastic.

 

[markalroberts]

Thanks! Actually, I changed my driver to the most recent Catalyst, and
the problem seems to have stopped. Or perhaps it's just colder
tonight!?