Got no idea how to go about it, but the first thing I'd do would be to test the VRAM on those cards. If there's no utility to do it, there are loads of environment variables to control how the Voodoo2 works. Perhaps it's possible to isolate a faulty memory module by disabling their corresponding memory area one by one?

Just out of curiosity, is there any difference if you swap the cards?

I'm not home right now, but I'll give swapping a try and report back. It was working fine in 1024x768, but just recently starting showing the artifacts. No changes to the system were made. Since it only occurs at 1024x768, I'm curious if something is wrong with the framebuffer.

When I was testing temps on my V2's a few months back (wow, it's been about half a year, amazing how time just fast forward when you aren't thinking about it), I noticed that both of my cards jumped an average of 6-7 c. When I jumped to 1024x768. That was only the GPU's and controller chips I checked. I didn't check RAM or vrm's but would assume they jumped up a bit as well. Try putting a fan over both cards and see if active cooling prevents or delays the issues. If it does, I'd say one or both cards may need to be rebuilt or replaced due to age and thermal damage. If you see no effect from active cooling the problem is more than likely something else.

I would test the cards seperately, just to find out which one is faulty. Stress test them one by one with 3dmark or something at 800x600 and see which one artifacts.

Maybe a faulty ram chip on one of the cards, or simply a bad connection. Once you know which card it is you can always try to fix it with a heatgun/oven (a bad connection might get fixed that way).

I swapped the cards and still achieved the same results at 1024x768. Individually, one has slight texture problems. For example, in Quake II there are purple dots on the player's hand. In the Novalogic series of flight sims, the same card performs normally.

The whole set-up is in an old Antec 900 case. There's a cutout on the side panel for a 120mm fan which blows directly over any expansion card. The fan has a fan controller attached to it and I put it on its highest setting when running a 3D application.

Is using the oven/heatgun advisable? I read a post, from here, were someone attempted to use a heatgun on a TMU and it appeared to make the artifacts worse for them.

Don't try to use a heat gun or oven on any electronics unless you know how to do it with minimal risk. If you have to ask about it, it should be avoided until you practice with stuff you don't mind losing.

The whole point of those methods is to ensure all solder points are good mechanically and electrically. The idea is to heat the whole board or specific area of a board to the point that the soldered joints will melt and reflow back into position and then s fix what might be a bad joint. Problem is the heat needed to attempt this can kill some parts and you need to know what is safe and what will met. Oven and heat gun methods are for lost cause boards that you have little choice other than the trash can.

You would be better off buying a $40+ solder reflow tool on eBay and practice on some junk. Then try to reflow the parts on something like a V2 one at a time.

the Monter 3D IIs I have, one artifacts due to heat after a few minutes, but with a fan near it works well,
the second never artifacts but... it freezes after a few minutes, adding cooling doesn't change this behavior... so I think Voodoo 2s can have all sorts of weird hardware problems unfortunately, having 2 together makes things more complicated,

Kodai wrote:

Don't try to use a heat gun or oven on any electronics unless you know how to do it with minimal risk. If you have to ask about it, it should be avoided until you practice with stuff you don't mind losing.

The whole point of those methods is to ensure all solder points are good mechanically and electrically. The idea is to heat the whole board or specific area of a board to the point that the soldered joints will melt and reflow back into position and then s fix what might be a bad joint. Problem is the heat needed to attempt this can kill some parts and you need to know what is safe and what will met. Oven and heat gun methods are for lost cause boards that you have little choice other than the trash can.

You would be better off buying a $40+ solder reflow tool on eBay and practice on some junk. Then try to reflow the parts on something like a V2 one at a time.

Also, those cards are from long before the ROHS directive came into the picture. Should be leaded solder on them, which is far more ductile and doesn't get crystalline/grainy the same way the early lead free alloys did. I really don't think cracked or cold joints is the issue here.

Edit: By the way, the memory modules on those cards are TSOPs I guess? Those are far less susceptible to the mechanical stresses induced by thermal expansion than BGA packages modern GPU:s comes in for instance.

kaputnik wrote:

Also, those cards are from long before the ROHS directive came into the picture. Should be leaded solder on them, which is far more ductile and doesn't get crystalline/grainy the same way the early lead free alloys did. I really don't think cracked or cold joints is the issue here.

Edit: By the way, the memory modules on those cards are TSOPs I guess? Those are far less susceptible to the mechanical stresses induced by thermal expansion than BGA packages modern GPU:s comes in for instance.

I highly doubt that there is a bad solder joint. If anything, a component is failing due to age and heat. It could also just be the goofy nature of V2's as some dont like working with other cards. I would also recommend installing the cards in different slots and with an empty slot between them.

By the way, I have tested my SLI setup. I thought both VGA outputs work simultaneously. I was wrong. 1 card (master?) works ok, the 2nd card shows interlaced garbaged image... In all resolutions.
Is it the correct behavior?

Gamecollector wrote:

By the way, I have tested my SLI setup. I thought both VGA outputs work simultaneously. I was wrong. 1 card (master?) works ok, the 2nd card shows interlaced garbaged image... In all resolutions.
Is it the correct behavior?

Yes, as long as they work individually, you should be fine.