Stretched polygons in games

[nten]

Sytem details
500watt Liberty from enermax
biostar tforce 6100-939 motherboard
4gb corsair value mem
athlon64 x2 toledo
2 seagate baraccuda 80GB sata 3Gb/s
1 sony DVD reader
1 offbrand DVD dual layer writer
wireless nic
sapphire x1900xt

Windows XP pro
newest bios for video and mb
newest omega drivers

In games that stress the system (oblivion, darkstar one, even stronghold 2) I get wildly stretched polygons that take up much of the screen. Sometimes they are attached to the center of the screen.

Lowering the res makes it take longer for them to pop up, and eliminates it in some games (dark messiah demo).

Turning on the windows xp /3GB flag in the boot up ini changes the nature of the problem to texture glitches that constantly shift. This causes the texture glitches in games that don't normally exhibit the stretched polygons, but also prevents darkstar one from crashing to a hard reboot.

I've tried cat 6.4, cat 6.7, a custom cat 6.5 for nvidia mb probs, and this omega driver.

So does anyone who was bored enough to read this far have any ideas?

 

[F1N3ST]

Yur card is overheating,did you overclock it?

 

[wolfram]

I agree. Your card is overheating without a doubt. Radeon X1900 cards tend to run hot, especially those sapphire cards, because they normally use a low-end cooling solution.

 

[nten]

The tray tools (and CCC) both indicate temperatures well within range while artifacts are present (60s C). I've had the case off with a house fan blowing directly onto the card to keep it around 50 and to cover any hotspots that aren't self monitored. No change. I've heard of people running in the 90s celsius with no difficulties. Even one fellow who blocked the exhaust port and had no trouble at 110! He wasn't even getting restarts which is what most people had been reporting with overheating. Also I've turned off overdrive which is the upclock in 3d apps right? So I've effectively underclocked it with fans blowing in from every angle and no change. Is it possible it got too hot while I wasn't in the room at some point and this is damage?

Something I forgot to mention. If I alt-tab out and back in, even for a fraction of a second, the errors are gone. They reappear as soon as I turn around. Its like its only got room for so many polygons before going nuts.

 

[PhilC2005]

Sounds/Looks like some sort of memory problem IMO.
I would suggest running MemTest86 and see what that says.

Its a wild guess but the change caused by your boot flag seems to point to it.

 

[nten]

Thats what I thought too. So I ran memtest86 for several hours, nothing found. It seemed to just start over after an hour or so each time. Is there a way to get it to check video ram?

 

[wolfram]

I think there's no way to check Vram
What about CPU temp?

Also, just a question: How many amps does your PSU have on the +12V rail? (yeah, I know it´s a good brand, I just wanna know )

 

[nten]

I don't have a good app to tell, but the omega driver utility is saying something on my MB is 127! That can't be right can it?

 

[wolfram]

I don't think so. Maybe that temp is measured in Farenheit, not Celsius. Google for everest ultimate edition, it should give you accurate temps.

 

[SvB4EvA]

Ive had the same issuses with a 9800 Pro. Are you getting any corruption in Windows yet?

Edit: Oh... I just looked at your screen shot. ATI says the memory on my card is fried. Check this one out http://users.rcn.com/svb4eva/WoWScrnShot_080706_163628.jpg

 

[nten]

Could be fried vram, dunno.

I forgot to mention, the enermax liberty 500w has two 22a 12v rails. A single rail would be better but I couldn't find any that had modular connectors.

The cpu is around 33-36 celsius according to everest.

 

[wolfram]

You have a great power supply, and very good CPU temp. We can rule that out.

Maybe it's time to contact Sapphire, tell them your problem. But I think you need a RMA

 

[blitzkrieger00]

...

I have this same exact problem. Nten, I have figured out a way to stop almost all the artifacts, but its not a real fix, just something to do till we figure this out. When I run my games in window mode I don't have any problems with artifacting accept in a few games like HL2 for some reason still artifacts but it fixes the issue other more taxing games like GRAW2 or Oblivion. I play ALOT of games and this bothers me that I have to run them in window mode and I would like to get to the bottom of this issue.
If anyone could help that would be excellent.