VOGONS


First post, by brassicGamer

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Hi folks. There are probably better places I could ask this, but you lot are very knowledgeable when it comes not only to old hardware but also generally outdated stuff. Yes, Vista era isn't quite 'retro' yet, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I've seen some video corruption issues in my time but never this:

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It's a Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 4850 1GB running on a Gigabyte board with a Q9550 CPU and 3GB PC2 6400 RAM. The card has recently been purchased from eBay (to add to a Crossfire setup) so I'd like to establish the cause of the corruption prior to leaving feedback for the seller. It was all running fine until I'd installed a bunch of updates to Windows. I have not yet downloaded the video driver (hence the resolution) because I wanted to update the OS first. This happened following a restart during those updates. I had already installed drivers for the chipset, LAN and audio.

Not only was there the pattern you can see, but there was also a lag of about 5 seconds between input and screen refresh so it's really weird. I felt the card and it wasn't running hot. I fully expected the corruption to remain present upon restarting because it looked like a hardware issue rather than software, but it cleared and booted back to a normal looking desktop upon restart. I then ran the video RAM stress test included on the UBCD and did 3 runs with zero errors.

Does anyone have an explanation? Thanks in advance.

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Reply 1 of 6, by Jade Falcon

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I'd install the missing video drivers if you have not done so already

Reply 2 of 6, by agent_x007

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Other than cracked solder under VRAM/GPU, I guess it's either PCI-e slot (dirty/busted) or MB doesn't like this specific card.

Crucial thing is to install drivers.
If Windows doesn't even log-in to desktop - card is probably dead (oven-o-therapy could make it work).
Check how it runs in other PC (before doing anything else).

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Reply 3 of 6, by brassicGamer

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Cheers guys. Fingers crossed it's software and not hardware.

Check out my blog and YouTube channel for thoughts, articles, system profiles, and tips.

Reply 4 of 6, by MrMateczko

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Vista - there's your problem 😀
Is there any corruption when you enter BIOS? If there are, then it's dead, and only oven might help for a short while....it will break again, I've been there. The whole oven stuff is just temporary, even if it might work after like 2 years, it WILL break eventually.
If there is no corruption in BIOS, my sarcastic remark about Vista might not be that far from the truth...

Reply 5 of 6, by brassicGamer

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I've got 3 of the things: the one I bought when new, the 2nd I bought last year to play with Crossfire, and the one I bought most recently. I thought that was the one I was using here but turns out it's not (I know because the new one is 1GB). Just before I removed the dodgy one, it displayed the same symptoms and then refused to output a signal by the time it got to the desktop. I think it's a dud, or the VGA port has an issue because when I put the newer purchase in the system, it worked 100% fine. It was also detected automatically by Windows and installed the driver, something that never happened with the other card after a number of opportunities.

I'm confused because I tested the dodgy one extensively so I don't know what's happened. Could be an SMD part with an intermittent connection or something because it definitely looks like hardware corruption to me. Maybe a bake would fix it. I'll have to investigate further...

Check out my blog and YouTube channel for thoughts, articles, system profiles, and tips.

Reply 6 of 6, by meljor

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It's allergic to something, take it to a doctor.... 🤣

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