Can we please stop using imgur. 1) Vogons has image hosting. 2) The UK can’t see imgur any more. 3) The fact that imgur would rather revoke UK access than comply with child safety online says all you need to know about using their service.

Assuming that the image shows repeated corruption then it’s likely dying memory, easily replaceable if you can get the right RAM chips.

As for Ti, all non-MX Geforce 4’s are Ti, from 4200 through 4800. No issues with either my 4800SE or 4400 in 98 or ME.

paradigital wrote on 2025-10-06, 17:03:

Can we please stop using imgur. 1) Vogons has image hosting. 2) The UK can’t see imgur any more. 3) The fact that imgur would rather revoke UK access than comply with child safety online says all you need to know about using their service.

Assuming that the image shows repeated corruption then it’s likely dying memory, easily replaceable if you can get the right RAM chips.

As for Ti, all non-MX Geforce 4’s are Ti, from 4200 through 4800. No issues with either my 4800SE or 4400 in 98 or ME.

I would if I could. I don't know if something has changed with Vogon's file hosting, but it's proving a pain to upload my pic. Even after compressing it down to 2MB, I keep getting this...

But I did forget about imgur being blocked. I'm using a VPN, so it completely slipped my mind. I've always used it as it's been a convenient alternative.

Do you mean the GPU's RAM? Isn't that soldered on? I have no experience with that. But thanks for suggesting the 4200 and 4800. I wasn't aware of those. I'll see if I can find some.

Hmm. Sadly there don't appear to be many options on eBay UK from what I can see. Or they're quite pricey. The one I have my eye on is a 4200, but as I say, it's only 64MB. I mean, it should still be enough, right? Also, I presume there's a recommended driver for the Ti series? I know with the past two cards, it's been a bit of a pain finding the best optimised driver.

If you can boot from CD or floppy drive, you can try video memory stress test CE. This tool will tell you if your video RAM has errors. CD version is the first link at the top of the page, the floppy version is at the bottom of the page. Extract it and go to the VMTCE folder, this is the direct boot version that doesn't need Windows.

A GF4 Ti 4200 should be relatively cheap as it's a very common card. Last time I checked the price range was around 15-25$, but holy crap, the prices have skyrocketed recently. Seems that 40$ is the new normal. That's the most I would pay for that card though. Be patient, wait for auctions instead of buy now prices. I'm using the 64 MB version, so far didn't run into any game that needed more.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-06, 19:50:

If you can boot from CD or floppy drive, you can try video memory stress test CE. This tool will tell you if your video RAM has errors. CD version is the first link at the top of the page, the floppy version is at the bottom of the page. Extract it and go to the VMTCE folder, this is the direct boot version that doesn't need Windows.

A GF4 Ti 4200 should be relatively cheap as it's a very common card. Last time I checked the price range was around 15-25$, but holy crap, the prices have skyrocketed recently. Seems that 40$ is the new normal. That's the most I would pay for that card though. Be patient, wait for auctions instead of buy now prices. I'm using the 64 MB version, so far didn't run into any game that needed more.

Awesome. Thanks for the reassurance and for linking that utility. I had no idea that was a thing. 😁 I'll add that to my collection of utilities. And good to know 64MB is plenty. 😀 I'll see if I can snag that 4200. Or if not, I'll wait and stretch the funds a bit to get one.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-06, 19:50:

If you can boot from CD or floppy drive, you can try video memory stress test CE. This tool will tell you if your video RAM has errors. CD version is the first link at the top of the page, the floppy version is at the bottom of the page. Extract it and go to the VMTCE folder, this is the direct boot version that doesn't need Windows.

A GF4 Ti 4200 should be relatively cheap as it's a very common card. Last time I checked the price range was around 15-25$, but holy crap, the prices have skyrocketed recently. Seems that 40$ is the new normal. That's the most I would pay for that card though. Be patient, wait for auctions instead of buy now prices. I'm using the 64 MB version, so far didn't run into any game that needed more.

Yep. Jiggered. Only got to stage one and it proceeded to list hundreds and hundreds of errors. ^^;

Ooookay. Plot twist. Decided to run the test with the Riva TNT and that's producing nothing but errors, too. 😮

Or is that normal behaviour whilst it's running the test...?

Huh. The Windows version of the test gives totally different results. Thankfully that says my Riva TNT passes with flying colours. Guess I’ll need to test the GeForce 4 again but in Windows.

Yeah, sadly, the Video Memory Test isn't a reliable way of finding out if it is the memory for definite. It most likely is, but I can't find out. The floppy/DOS version gives me nothing but errors for both cards. The CD/Windows version says my Riva TNT is fine. And I'm not able to test the Geforce 4 with the CD version, because once I install the drivers, Windows fails to boot. And it doesn't recognise it at all if I don't install the drivers or boot Windows in Safe Mode. 🙁

Very strange indeed. I can tell you that tool is definitely legit, I had several cards with the typical graphics glitches that indicate bad memory (dots and vertical lines). They all showed errors in the memory test and passed after the chips were replaced. I'm wondering if your system could have other problems that indirectly cause these errors. Do you have a different system to test the cards in?

You could also repeat the test a couple of times and log the results to a file (there's an option for that in the launch menu). Do the bad memory locations change with every run or are they always the same? Are they the same for both cards? If they randomly change or are identical between cards, it could point to other problems.

The Geforce 4 MX is so cheap that repairing it wouldn't make much sense anyway, but if all of your cards produce memory errors, that's something you should investigate before buying a new one.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-07, 04:25:

Very strange indeed. I can tell you that tool is definitely legit, I had several cards with the typical graphics glitches that indicate bad memory (dots and vertical lines). They all showed errors in the memory test and passed after the chips were replaced. I'm wondering if your system could have other problems that indirectly cause these errors. Do you have a different system to test the cards in?

You could also repeat the test a couple of times and log the results to a file (there's an option for that in the launch menu). Do the bad memory locations change with every run or are they always the same? Are they the same for both cards? If they randomly change or are identical between cards, it could point to other problems.

The Geforce 4 MX is so cheap that repairing it wouldn't make much sense anyway, but if all of your cards produce memory errors, that's something you should investigate before buying a new one.

Sadly not. I thought my main PC's motherboard might have had an AGP slot, but they're that old now, they don't. Though it does still have a single PCI bus. I can run the test again under DOS with the TNT and see if it happens. Let it run to the end and record a log. I believe that option is ticked by default anyway.

But no, I agree. It's not worth repairing. And I don't think it cost much anyway. *Checks* Yeah, I got it the end of last year for £15. But even if it could be repaired, I wouldn't know where to begin. I have no experience with soldering/unsoldering etc.

I'll post the log from both tests - in Windows and DOS.

Looks like it's going to take all day. It's been at it for over 3 hours and is currently on 8 out of 20. Over 471000 errors.

Use old MATS from DOS : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pFuLL … kJDv4TiJKE_GWNw

agent_x007 wrote on 2025-10-07, 15:33:

Use old MATS from DOS : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pFuLL … kJDv4TiJKE_GWNw

Thank you. I also managed to get one called TestVRAM and a version that supports the Riva TNT models.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-07, 13:18:

Looks like it's going to take all day. It's been at it for over 3 hours and is currently on 8 out of 20. Over 471000 errors.

You could just run it for 5 minutes or so and exit, or limit the memory size that it's going to test to 1024k. You would still get a log file that you can analyze. It would be interesting if simply every memory address, starting from offset zero, throws an error in your case.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-07, 17:31:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-07, 13:18:

Looks like it's going to take all day. It's been at it for over 3 hours and is currently on 8 out of 20. Over 471000 errors.

You could just run it for 5 minutes or so and exit, or limit the memory size that it's going to test to 1024k. You would still get a log file that you can analyze. It would be interesting if simply every memory address, starting from offset zero, throws an error in your case.

I'm not sure if the floppy/DOS version has that option, does it? I remember seeing it with the CD/Windows version.

It's on step 18 of 20 now so I may as well let it finish. I am wondering though if the DOS/floppy version isn't able to run the test right...? Or maybe with this particular card? That what I'm getting is a false negative. Again - the results are vastly different when I run the CD/Windows version.

It's in the extended options menu, I believe. Do DOS games run on that card? Does it boot into safe mode or with the standard VGA driver installed, and does it then have glitched graphics? If it still runs with glitches in DOS or Windows "dumb mode", but crashes once the Nvidia driver loads, then that would point to faulty memory chips or broken memory traces.

Though I must say that of all the faulty cards I had so far (no NVIDIA among them), they would always at least allow me to boot to the desktop and only crash later when the GPU became involved.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-07, 18:02:

It's in the extended options menu, I believe. Do DOS games run on that card? Does it boot into safe mode or with the standard VGA driver installed, and does it then have glitched graphics? If it still runs with glitches in DOS or Windows "dumb mode", but crashes once the Nvidia driver loads, then that would point to faulty memory chips or broken memory traces.

Though I must say that of all the faulty cards I had so far (no NVIDIA among them), they would always at least allow me to boot to the desktop and only crash later when the GPU became involved.

Is that in the utility’s menus? I haven’t really seen many options. This is for my Riva TNT at the moment, which is supposedly fine. But DOS games run on it. Windows boots up, it boots up in Safe Mode, and no glitchy graphics. It’s just this utility in DOS is listing thousands of errors despite the Windows version saying it’s fine.

The GeForce 4 however does give glitchy graphics. Mainly on the Windows logo screen and on text in DOS. Once the drivers are installed, it doesn’t boot into Windows. It hangs during boot. Stops doing anything. But it does boot into Safe Mode. I’ve noticed before the drivers are installed, or in Safe Mode, that there’s loads of yellow vertical lines, which I don’t think I’ve seen before. Haven’t tested any DOS games though.
The DOS version of the video memory test reports the same kind and amount of errors as my TNT. I just can’t run the test in Windows.

Shite. Decided to stop it as it was getting beyond a joke. And it doesn't look like it even made a log file. I can't see it anywhere. >_<

So I'm just going to go through the Windows/CD version, get the log from that, and then run a couple of other utilities instead. See what they say.