Jelly beans on my screen

[xsrossiter]

Hi,

I have a problem that I think has to do with the DDR 128 ATI Radeon
9800 Pro card in my 5 year old system (Dell Dimension 8200, XP Pro
SP2, 1.25 GB RAM).

When playing DVDs or video files there are vertical lines spaced about
1/2" apart of what look like alternating 1/4" wide red and green jelly
beans. If I reduce the viewing area to about 1" h x 2" w they
accordingly shrink and then eventually disappear; not an optimal
solution.

Any other program displays fine across the whole viewing screen of a
22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070 at 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz. I have
reinstalled the drivers, tied different resolutions and refresh rates,
taken the card out and cleaned the contacts and slot. Physically the
card looks fine, the fan works, etc.

After putting the card back in for a short while the viewing of movies
was fine but I suppose as the card warmed the same problem came back.
My guess is that one of its chips dedicated to processing video has
bit the dust and I need to get a replacement card. Other than video
related programs the display is fine.

Thanks for your help everyone, Steve.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Hi,

I have a problem that I think has to do with the DDR 128 ATI Radeon
9800 Pro card in my 5 year old system (Dell Dimension 8200, XP Pro
SP2, 1.25 GB RAM).

When playing DVDs or video files there are vertical lines spaced about
1/2" apart of what look like alternating 1/4" wide red and green jelly
beans.

That looks like a RAM fault, possibly thermal.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[S.Lewis]

That looks like a RAM fault, possibly thermal.

<snip>


Given that the system has RDRAM/Rambus memory, it's possible. I'd
personally run extended system diags just to see if it would spit out any
errors.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

<snip>


Given that the system has RDRAM/Rambus memory, it's possible. I'd
personally run extended system diags just to see if it would spit out any
errors.

I was thinking of the RAM on the graphics card, not motherboard RAM.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[S.Lewis]

I was thinking of the RAM on the graphics card, not motherboard RAM.

- Franc Zabkar

The diags would test the GPU as well.

 

[Flasherly]

What media player app are you using? Try a different one with a different
rendering mode (the open-source Media Player Classic has 4-5 different
rendering modes). Maybe the artifacts will not show in some modes.

Yep - poor encode, mismatched codecs, settings and players, any number
of things that go bump in the night with video. I've an OEM chipset
ATI 9800 and an older Saphire RADEON 8500, both running large HDTVs,
that do fine for most anything thrown at them in the way of video
encodes. All but for MKV 720p/1080p BluRay, larger encodes, which
tend push limits on AGP and sub-3Ghz systems.

 

[xsrossiter]

Can you recommend something that would work? Thanks.

 

[xsrossiter]

I am going to take the card out again and reapply thermal paste to the
gpu and heatsink, maybe that will work. I thought once the chip was
acting up it was over but hopefully just bringing down the temperature
is all it needs, Although the fan isn't going at high speed like when
the card has been chugging away at some graphic intensive job.

 

[S.Lewis]

Can you recommend something that would work? Thanks.
Any chance you have your (Dell) Dimension (bootable) Resource CD around
anywhere?

If so, you can boot to that disc and run any manner of individual or full
system quick or extended tests on the graphics card or on all components.

?

 

[xsrossiter]

I do and in the meantime I ran something called Check It Diagnostics.
By passed the video and graphics tests, by its perspective, but during
The DirectDraw Test the dotted vertical lines were present in the
display.

 

[xsrossiter]

Make sure Fast Writes is enabled in both the motherboard BIOS and ATi
SmartGART control panel. This is necessary for DXVA to kick in (don't ask me why).

I couldn't get the SmartGart panel to show up when clicking on the
icon (or on the exe file itself), even after doing a Repair from the
Add/Remove Software Control Panel. I do get a number of extra ATI tabs
on the Display Properies dialog Settings -> Advanced tab, but nothing
that mentions Fast Writes. Thanks.

Are you using the latest CoreAVC codecs?

Not sure but I'll go and find out.

 

[Flasherly]

Make sure Fast Writes is enabled in both the motherboard BIOS and ATi
SmartGART control panel. This is necessary for DXVA to kick in (don't ask me
why). Are you using the latest CoreAVC codecs?

Having a look at CoreAVC, and for a .5M filter - coreavc1650 scanning
clean off a file server, and still getting some judder with CoreAVC at
720p. A64/3Ghz/8500 - haven't tried it on the 9800/Duron 2.4Ghz.
Both large HDTV flatpannels. No hitch registering it to GOM Player
(1st choice, though I've also 5 or 6 other players). I've got
SmartGART, thankfully - included with OMEGA OEM drivers, no longer
ATI, for 1368x768 native support. Not sure if I can set the
appropriate Fast Writes, will have check the BIOS next time --
SmartGART "grayed in" Fast Writes. May be a hang-up, or not. That's
as far as I can get for now.

Sure are a lot of hoops to jump through. Not usually my style (had it
these days with the milti-meg CODEC installs, like ACE), but this
looks to be the bone-of-bone to pick for a non-game imposition from
BluRay 60 <> 24 frames. Nice reference stuff for getting the best of
the best to test against (I can live with a little judder, though -
and sound is OK, not bad considering it's an 8500 Radeon, ancient as
the hills).

Hey, guy. . .least to mention, thank you, sir, for the clues.

 

[GMAN]

<snip>


Given that the system has RDRAM/Rambus memory, it's possible. I'd
personally run extended system diags just to see if it would spit out any
errors.

The ram on the vid card, not the computer!!