Tearing, artifacts, little green and pink dots on x800 Pro

[vinnyD]

I am not a high level graphics card user, so please bear with me. Recently I discovered that whenever I played a game (I noticed on Company of Heroes Single Player Demo) that I got green and pink patches of dots which my friends have told me are artifacts. The weird thing is that whenever I run ATI Catalyst Control Center, they go away, but it has to be left running while I play the game.

A few days later, I noticed I was getting slight tearing in the game, and horrible tearing in 3DMark05 while benchmarking. In Rome: Total War, this did not show up, but the artifacts did without the Control Center.

Today, when I was doing work on the internet, I noticed that there are now green and pink dots appearing sporadically in places like the Start menu and some pictures and black backgrounds.

I have had this same ATI x800 Pro 256MB AGP for at least a year and have never had this problem before. It was NOT overclocked when I noticed these problems, although it has been during the time I've had it. My friends told me that it might be overheating, so I bought a Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer fan for it, which lowers the temperature (from about 45C to 37C doing nothing) but the problem still persists.

Here are all the specs I could think of listing:
-ATI x800 Pro 256MB AGP
-450W PSU
-AMD Athlon XP 2000+ @ 1700 MHz
-768MB PC2700 DDR
-MSI KT880 Delta-FSR motherboard

I have not changed any settings and my setup has been the same the whole time I've had this card, except that I got the latest drivers when I noticed this problem, which was about one week ago.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[cleeve]

Unfortunately, if it's not overheating, it sounds like it's dying.

Sorry mate.

 

[Blacken]

*Gets the gun ready*

 

[FeareX]

After only 1 year? Thats fast for a video card.

Have you OC'ed it very much?

 

[cleeve]

If it's an ATI brand I believe it'll have a 3 year warranty.

 

[FeareX]

He OC'ed it, isnt his warrenty gone then?

 

[Blacken]

Not with driver sided overclocking if I'm correct.

 

[Nymous]

Before you give up on it try going back to some older drivers but I agree that it sounds like it's about to give up the ghost.

 

[OverDrive148]

I was cruising around looking for someone who has the same problem as I do, and this is the first person i've seen...although my graphics card is an X700 instead of an x800. Ever since I last played Crysis/Crysis Sandbox 2, i've been plagued by pink vertical line blocks and checkerboard green dotted squares on everything I do. I have lots of flickering going on when I boot up, and most of the time it either stays at the first screen that comes on when you turn it on (Gateway) and it wont do anything. Now after it gets through loading the beginning part (after about 20-30 times of turning it on and off after failed loading) the mouse will appear, then disappear, and thats it. It is loading like it would with the screen up but no screen. This probably has to do with when I first discovered that the jet engine sound that usually comes from the back of my computer stopped; I thought nothing of it and continued playing. The screen blacked out from whatever I was doing very often, so i popped open the case. Lo and behold the fan on the card died... I took the side off and put an oscillating fan on it (you know, a room fan) and it seems to have worked up until now. I'm just assuming that the card has overheated a few times too many and is on its way out? I have not OCed it or anything, strictly factory issue save the room fan on it.

 

[Dekasav]

You can't run video cards without actual fans.... That's a terrible idea, I think. You might've fried that one.

As for the X800, it sounds like it's dying. The X800's were made in...2004 I think, so they're getting older, and I've heard a lot about them dying, actually. I just dumped mine, and grabbed an HD 4670. Excellent card, and takes less power than the one you have. My suggestion is to just replace it.