artifacts/snow on game intro movies with v9999

[evad]

Got a new asus v9999 (Geforce 6800 vanilla, 128mb ram) in january. Installed it, upgrade from fx5600. ran fine, no problems in 3dmark and HL2, until strange artifacts and snow in splinter cell chaos theory with SM3.0 on.
weirdest though is the snow, white, yellow, red, green dots in the intro for x2 the threat and now star wars empire at war.
the lucasarts logo movie that plays at the beginning gets these artifacts and then either hangs, crashes to bsod, or rarely it goes through to the main menu of the game. then its all fine. the game runs without any problems - until a movie has to play, like the "galaxy far far away" bit.

in x2 if i turned off antialiasing in the startup menu i got no problems. in splinter cell chaos theory if i turned off sm3.0 i got no problems. empire at war doesn't have any options, safemode makes no difference.

X3 reunion doesn't have any problems, AA on or off.

obviously, latest drivers, earlier drivers, clean install, etc etc all has been tried. even got the card RMA'd cos i thought it was faulty, and they sent me a new one. exact same problem with the new card.

Power supply is a 400w qtechnology (not qtech) one with 18amps on the 12v rail. the molex connector to the graphics card is not connected to anything else.

i've tried a lot of things, except putting it into another pc because i don't have one, and replacing the psu. if someone has any ideas of how to test this without buying a new psu, or any other info at all, would be much appreciated.

many thanks

 

[bourgeoisdude]

"empire at war doesn't have any options, safemode makes no difference."

No options? Go to video options then choose "Advanced...". Plenty of options. Also I will assume this is AGP? Don't underestimate the importance of updated AGP drivers for your system board (Intel cpu boards may call it chipset drivers...VIA has their 4-in-1 driver). After updating the driver, COMPLETELY UNINSTALL and reinstall the video drivers. I put that in caps so you would not miss it, not because I'm yelling or I'm angry. Let me know how things go.

 

[evad]

Thanks for the info bourgeoisdude, i hadn't thought of the agp driver. yeah, it is agp, i didn't think to include some specs earlier:

Athlon 64 3500+
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
1GB Corsair Ram
Asus V9999 (6800 vanilla, 128MB DDR RAM)
400w Qtechnology psu w/ 18amps on +12v

I just reinstalled the GART driver, 4.6.3, same as before but reinstalled it anyway. I completely uninstalled all nvidia drivers and reinstalled em all, gart, and display, cleaned out the old drivers using NFR and Driver Cleaner Pro.

Sadly, same problem. I really got no idea what to do now. Other than start replacing parts starting with the PSU then the motherboard. But there's no cash for that sort of thing, I need this setup to last at least until the very end of this year.

Once again, any help or any light anyone can shed on this would be damn useful.

 

[Lan]

Ugh the dreaded snow artifacts. I had the EXACT same problem with my 9800 AIW when I tried Doom 3, Quake 4, or anything modern.

It turns out that for me (and probably for you as well) the problem was heat related. I bought an aftermarket heatsink for my card and made sure the video card got clean air getting to it, and the problems went away.

I was at my wits end before I finnally figured it out. Check your temps and try to get cooler air to circulate more in your case and especially around your video card. Let us know how it goes.

 

[evad]

yeah lan, i thought the same too at the beginning but after a few days or work i doubted it. reason being:

1) temps never exceed 60C
2) got a large 120mm fan front intake, and a 120mm fan blowing out the back plus a 120mm on the underside of the psu transfering hot air out the psu
3) tried it with the case off and blowing a desk fan into it
4)it happens instantly, as soon as i start the game in the opening logo movies, not after time as is usual with overheating.
5)only on some games i get the weird artifacts. doom 3, quake 4, hl2 all work fine with absolutely no problems on high settings with aa and af on, no overheating at all.

at wits end

i dunno what to do with it now

 

[Lan]

I know, it happened instantly with me as well. I tried all that as well before I conceded and bought a new heatsink fan combo. For my particular card the stock heat sink was not adequate enough for what the game was pushing the GPU to do. *shrugs* The choice is yours on if you do it or not, but it won't hurt, and it might even solve the problem. Good luck, and please post how everything goes.

 

[evad]

well if nothing else comes up i guess i'll try that first. a new aftermarket heatsink/fan is probably cheaper than getting a new psu or motherboard. I just find it strange that it only happens on some games, and in some cases not even in-game, just on the opening movie.
argh its very frustrating