video corruption (a question for the hardware-savvy)

This might not be a problem specific to SL but SL tends to always make it appear. What I'm getting is some very severe video corruption over my whole screen (which can be seen in the attached screenshot). Not just textures (though it corrupts them too) but over the whole UI, Windows, etc.

Now I can usually run my regular windows apps without this happening.. but once I start up SL it all goes haywire like this, this flickering, colorful corruption over everything. If I exit SL and switch my desktop resolution back and forth it clears it up.

Anyone have ideas about what might cause this sort of thing?

I'm not very hardware-savvy, but my theories are:
- Insufficient power supply (or power supply is beginning to fail): Mine is 200 watt, but I recently discovered that ATI recommends a 300 watt for this video card. The odd thing though is that it has run for nearly 2 years without a problem like this.
- Video card is simply dying or defective

I'm using an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (128 vram) - i've tried both the 4.10 official ATI Catalyst drivers and the recent Omega optimized drivers.

My other specs:
Pentium 4 - 2.5 GHz
512 megs RAM
Windows XP

The comptuer is a Shuttle XPC SB51G (mini-PC), Shuttle FB51 mainboard

Thanks in advance for any ideas on this.

I don't think it's your power supply. Try downgrading your Catalyst driver. I use an ATI 9600 XT and only have problems with the newest drivers.

That's a good point - I'll add that to my list of things to try. Thanks

Well I've now tried downgrading to the 4.9 driver, which worked well before. Still having the same issue, so I don't think its a driver issue.

I have seen that distortion before. I bought a 9800 all in wonder once. When I installed it my desktop looked like that. I troubleshot it for a week, before realizing that it was just a bad one. Might want to just swap it out if you can.

Yeah I've tried many things now and I think the card is just hosed. I've taken the card out and I'm using the wonderful Intel on-board graphics now until I decide what to do (which means no SL for now sadly). Thank you for the advice on this Alex.

that kind of direct video corruption is more than likely caused by the card's core over-heating. I've seen it a few times and most of them were that. There was one instance where a card had gotten a static shock by someone and looked like that, but it was persistant across EVERYTHING including jus dos screens and the windows desktop as well.

If its just happening in SL what you really have is a thermal problem. If possible, the easiest thing to do is probably just add any additional 80mm fans yer case can have (they usually have a mount for them in the front, and another one in back, that often are left empty, and generally run ya $5-10 and should help yer whole system get ridda excess heat.

Abit more complicated, if that wasn't possible, would be to replace the actual GPU heatsink/fan itself with something abit more robust.

Zalman in particular has a line of unbelievably giant heatpipe heatsinks (with 1300+ square centimeters. alone they're quiet but if yer case isn't getting good ventilation they won'y help much.. they do pair them with a rather large fan though as an option and in that case i've run my 9800 pro just about room temperature, even with SL going

sounds like a peltier junction... i have a peltier i threw together with a thermoster on my cpu and gpu... when the thermoster reaches a certain temp, the peltier kicks in and sucks the heat out of the CPU or GPU... i don't overclock so there's no real risk of it needing to be used but it's there just incase...

Yeah, the screenshot definitely looks like some physical damage to the card... last time i saw something like that was on a 13 year old SVGA card from an old 486... the corruption wasn't as apparent on that system and i found that replacing the vram was enough to fix it...

I'd say it's probably something in the ram of the CPU, either it got overheated or it somehow decayed... i never use ATI, but only because they ripped me off three times in a row... otherwise they typically make good cards, or at least did when i still used them but that was years ago... still, i've heard nothing but complaints about ATI's compatibility, but this looks more to be a hardware damage issue than poor driver coding... sorry

This is definitely worth testing with the help of a low-power card borrowed off a friend, or at a pinch purchased --- fortunately the low power ones are very cheap.

I'm not sure what the equivalent is from the ATI stable, but nVidia's 5200 series sell for around US$50 and are entirely fanlesss --- that tells you how little power they require. I'm sure ATI have an equivalent fanless range. You'll almost certainly find them on eBay too at even nicer prices, since many people will be trying to dispose of them after upgrading.

These fanless cards don't have much graphics umph either by the way --- I can get at best 20-23 FPS by winding the range of visibility down. That's still a million times better than getting screen corruption though.

nothing so complex

its jus a giant block of aluminum about half again the size of the video card, cut in half, and joined around the back with a heat pipe

don't bother buying a testing video card

a 400w power supply can be had for that same $50
200w is so amazingly woefully inadequate i'm suprised it even boots. Yes you should replace that supply ASAP.

While a 5200 might not have a fan, it does require a 300W power supply. I learned this first-hand when I bought a 5200 for a friend as a birthday gift so that she could get into SL, only to get periodic "blue screen of death". After much wrestling with drivers, I called nVidia's support line, and was told that the 250W PS was the cause.

- Ace

Blimey!!!! Thanks Ace.

This begs the obvious technical question of where is the power going, because it sure as hell isn't being dissipated in the tiny fanless heatsink!!!!!

In that case, Eltee's suggestion is by far the best --- upgrade the PSU to a beefier one. It's a bit messy, but well worth the effort.

Thanks very much Eltee, Myra, Morgaine, and Ace for the replies and input. I've pretty much already given up on the card at this point. Unfortunately the Shuttle small-form-factor case limits my tinkering options. Adding fans / extra cooling if it is a heat issue is not really possible because of the size of the case - there's no extra room whatsoever. And the highest rated power supply for this model is 250W - its not able to accept standard-size PSUs. The weird thing about the PSU theory is that I've looked on a popular Shuttle XPC forum and seen that many people out there are running ATIs like mine and even heftier cards on their stock 200W PSU just fine. And mine has worked fine for about 2 years. So I think maybe my issue is more of a hardware failure thing rather than lack of juice.

I think I've decided that rather than throw more money into this 2 year-old computer to make it work with outdated hardware - I'd rather put it toward a new machine entirely. If I could swap in a new Geforce 6600 GT (i'm done with ATI!) with no troubles I would.. but that is not feasible with this machine.

Thanks again for the input - it is appreciated.

aah nice yeah i've been workin with shuttles for awhile.. pretty good machines, within their limits. I'd prolly reccomend a cheapie holdover card for now rather than be stuck with the intel stuff

yeah shuttles do have the mini psu's tho they have gotten much better in the last several generations of them.

another quick thing to try is switch the video card power plug lead with the cdrom one, they'e in about the same area, and it could jus be the lead to the card on that wire thats gettin flakey

Yeah I've mostly liked my Shuttle aside from this problem. The new P series (SB81P is what I'm looking at buying) have a 350W PSU and totally redesigned cooling system. The inside looks a lot roomier too.

I've already tried switching the power connector around with other available ones in there, but still the same problem. Oh well - I think I'm done with it anyway. Every time I put the card back in / pull it out I'm afraid of screwing something else up. I'm not very comfortable with messing with computer innards unfortunately.

Devyn,

I am glad I could help somewhat. I wish you luck on your new purchase!!!