Artifacts with Asus 9280 on Asus Mobo running Halo

[chris_y2k_r1]

Hello All,

Not too long ago I purchased an Asus V9280TD video card. I had only used it for about a month before noticing some nasty artifacts, only when running Halo.

I am running an Asus A7A266 Motherboard with a 1.4 Athlon
CPU. I have 768 megs of DDR all of which runs under the instruction of Windows XP Pro. I am getting artifacts all over the place with Halo. I returned the card to Asus to be repaired once. When I got it back it was fairly stable (with the occasional) artifact for about 2 weeks. Now I am getting display corruption at an ever increasing rate. The problem never truly went away. I only notice it when playing Halo, although I would image any program the pushes the card would result in such a manner.

I should note that my motherboard does not support 8X AGP, it's only capable of a max of 4X agp. I don't think this is the cause but I figured it would be worth the mention. I gathered that running the card at 4x would just make it appear to be a little slower. And aside from that before this card I had a GeForce MX 440 (I think that's the correct info - It's a Gefore 64 Meg Titanium Nvidia 8X AGP Card) and it was fine.

I've been reading as much as I can get my hands on about this card and I have found one interesting point; the affects of which (If any) I cannot quantify. The particular card is 'optimized for Direct X 8.1 where as Halo required 9.0.

I had an AGP Geforce MX440 card (Another Titanium Nvidia chipset) in the computer prior to acquiring the Asus card and it rans with no problems. It would not however, run at the level of detail and with all the options that the Asus card offers. For example I can only run the game an 1024x768 with decals off, specular off (They are not available options with the 440)

I have attached a picture of some of the distortion/artifacts, anyone have any thoughts? Is this definitely hardware (I think it is)? As I said the card was much, much worse and when I got it back from Asus there was a huge difference - Little to no artifacts.

Oh, I am running the CPU overclocked a little but I have backed it down and it made no difference. I am running the FSB at standard speed but once I figure this sh*t out I plan to tweak it a bit but not much.

Please be aware that watching movies or running my Playstation emulator produce no visual problems at all. Everything runs quite kosher with the exception of Halo, although I have tried no other games that required Direct X (I don't own any other games to be honest :D )

So I guess what I am asking is:

1.) - Does it sound like a hardware problem to you guys as well? Or could it be something else.
2.) Any suggestions are welcome.
3.) Is anyone else running the Asus V9280TD?
4.) What are the expected differences of runnig a card at 4xAGP vs 8xAGP?
5.) Where should my appeture sizes be set for:
a.) 64 Meg Cards
b.) 128 Meg Cards
6.) Are there any programs that would help?


I think that's enough for now! Thanks in advance!!

Chris :t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Any chance of attaching a screen-shot?

Recently there have been problems with dissapearing textures in Halo with certain Ati driver versions. As such i woudl advise you to download the lattest (Catalyst 4.5) drivers from www.ati.com and see if they resolve the issue. If not try getting hold of another D3D based game (even if its just by downloading a demo) and see if the problem occurs there, that way we can rule out wether or not it's a problem specific to Halo only

--Jakk:t

[chris_y2k_r1]

Some screen shots...

Tearing:

[chris_y2k_r1]

#2

I will install another game and see what happens. By the way, you mentioned ATI Drivers but the chipset is INvidia?! Is it me or you? ;)

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Originally posted by chris_y2k_r1
#2

I will install another game and see what happens. By the way, you mentioned ATI Drivers but the chipset is INvidia?! Is it me or you? ;)

It's me ;)

Try updating the graphics cars drivers anyhows as well as the motherboard drivers, but i doubt thats gonna fix much.

Next thing is to disable ALL overclocking on the system and reset everything to default for tesing purposes. Next up check all cooling/fans are functioning properly and that teh card is inserted properly. You could also remove the case panel and have a household fan blowing cool ait into the system to see if its a case of bad ventilation.

the AGP appature wont have anything to do with this, though it should be set to 128/256 depending on your system.

Similarly AGP 8x shoudl not be an issue as long as both the card and the motherboard support it, though again, for testings purposes try runnign at 4x for now (8x is only marginally faster anyways)

--Jakk:t

[jamil5454]

Looks to me like the card is overheating. That's what my MX440 looked like when I forgot to put on thermal paste.:rolleyes: I agree with Jakk, although getting the latest catalysts and mobo drivers couldn't hurt.

For example, I recently bought Deus Ex: Invisible War for PC (awesome game btw). It ran extremely slow and crashed when loading the second level. So I patched the game to the latest version and still gave me the problems. It took me a while to figure out my motherboard drivers were the culprit. The windows generic driver for my Via KM266 chipset weren't cutting it. I installed the Hyperion 4.43 (the 4.51 are optimized for newer chipsets) and voila, the game ran awesome. Before, I had to run it at 800x600 with everything on low, now I can run it at 1024x768 with everything on high, and even 4xAA. That's pretty good considering the awesome graphics of the game and my system (athlon1800 & 9600pro).

Anyways, you may be wondering why I just told you that story. Don't worry I am too.