Texture corruption on new GTX280

[markham1970]

Hi all,

Just upgraded to a nice new BFG GTX 280 OC2 and everything fine and good in basic windows. Soon as i tried a 3D game however within seconds of starting I get badly corrupted textures all over the screen. Not crashing the game is still going but can't see/read anything onscreen. Have tried Oblivion, Guild Wars, Vanguard SOH and Second Life. SL isn't as bad as the others, but has a lot of snow and random glitches all over the screen.

Re-seated the card, checked power connections, upgraded to latest nVidia drivers same results.

I suspect the card is just plain faulty but anything i should try before returning? I think my set up even if a little dated should handle it:

M/B: ASUS A8N-SLIR v1.2
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+
MEM: 2x 1GB DDR2 SDRAMs Samsung
PSU: HEC 550TD PTE - 35 amps on the 12 v rail (18+17)
Driver 181.20 (Jan 2009 version)
DX 9.0c (5.3.2600.5512)

From what i've read i think the PSU should be just about ok, I don't have a lot else connected up to this, 1 SATA HD,1 DVD writer and a SB card. If it was the power I'd expect it just not to boot or blue screen, or could that cause what i'm seeing?

Any second opinions appreciated.

 

[hsetir]

Do those artifacts move with any object or are fixed?
If they move, it's more often than not weak psu. Sometimes it leads to freezing even in hd videos. If the artifacts are fixed, it's due to overheating or a bad chip. In later case you would have to rma it.

 

[hsetir]

Just checked, recommended amperage on +12V is 40A for gtx 280. Then yours is overclocked card. Percentage increase in power drawn is proportional to percentage overclock. Check how much is the voltage drop on 5v and 12v line
while playing. You can check in some friend's comp. I've had these issues in the past and in my case it came out to be weak psu.

 

[markham1970]

I have the old graphics card in at the moment, it's hard to describe but I'd say the objects are being drawn ok - I can make out the overall shape of the scene, but it's the textures being filled are corrupted. In guild wars as example there was a courtyard with a couple of barrels in middle, these could still be seen as shapes but were being rendered in a bright green colour. In Oblivion could bring up menu and see rectangular shapes where the words should be but just junk textures rather than words.

 

[festerovic]

Did you have an ATI card in before the upgrade? Maybe uninstall the driver you have, run some kind of driver cleaner, then reinstall driver. Check you have latest mobo drivers and maybe even a new install of directX 9.0

If you want to remove the possibility of PSU or overclock issues (for testing), try underclocking the card by 20-40%.

Just an afterthought, but I have had corrupted textures like you mention when I tried to force certain AA modes or other graphics options from Rivatuner or ATI tray tools that are "special". Like switching the AA style from box to edge detect, or choosing adaptive AA, or things like that.

 

[markham1970]

It was previously an nVidia but it may be worth a shot ... i'll see if i can try the underclocking too or perhaps just a much lower resolution as a test (was running at 1920 x1200 before). Thanks for suggestions will try in the morning and see how it goes. The more i think on it the more likely it seems i'm just a bit light in the PSU (re-checked packaging and it's quoting a 42A PSU minimum).