MSI GF4 128mb problem

[Bjorg]

Here is the story: I just bought a used MSI GF4 128mb and tried it on my athlon 900, abit k7 motherboard, 512 mb ram pc133 and I had glitches even if I instaled 29.42_winxp from Nvidia (I run winxp). Worst, when I played recent games such as Warcraft3 or Army Ops, When I change the resolution, or I exit the games, I end up on a black screen and I have to either reset my pc or press power for a few secs. It then brings me sometimes to the safe mode menu after restarting.

I though to myself, I should upgrade and so I did, Athlon 1800xp, MSIkt333 ultra mother board, 512 meg ram ddr 233 mhz, I re-initialized my pc installed everything including updated bios drivers and , I still had the glitches and blacks. The glitches come ang go random, the blacks are a pattern that happens each time. By Glitches I meant green spots where they shouldnt be, spelling colors to the right same letters, etc...

On top of that, while my testing, I tilted gently my pc to watch somethin and the gf4 fan droped! I put it back in place. Is it possible this card was overclocked and is now damaged? Any suggestions on what to do? Do I bring it back to the owner and buy one for 1/3 more of a price?

Help!

 

[scamtrOn]

hmm... freaky problem you got there

try the only thing i can think of is to leave the case open and put a fan next to it. see if it takes longer for the glitches to take place. BTW make sure the heatsink has made full contact with the gpu and you are using some kind of compound between the HS and the gpu. if this fixes the problem well... its fixed then, but if not the only thing i can think of is a new card.

if you were going to buy a new card come back here and ask us so we can let you know where to find a good deal.

<font color=blue><b>Respect this man: <font color=red>Fredi</font color=red>
He is the one who beholds the power to "sig changing"

 

[Bjorg]

There is a white stuff between the fan and the card, I did not add any though. And my case is open as we speak and I see small blue dots spread all over the screen. They will most probably ydisapear when I leave this web page! Odd. I am considering bring it bak to get my 200$ usd (I am canadian). So whats your best deal on a gf4128bm if I got no other options?

 

[scamtrOn]

well did you try another vid card?

blue dots USUALLY mean dead pixles, which would be from the monitor.

<font color=blue><b>Respect this man: <font color=red>Fredi</font color=red>
He is the one who beholds the power to "sig changing"

 

[scamtrOn]

is that a 4400 or a 4600

<font color=blue><b>Respect this man: <font color=red>Fredi</font color=red>
He is the one who beholds the power to "sig changing"

 

[Bjorg]

4400, I had a radeon ddr64meg and my screen worked fine

I just notice that my bios wasnt set up correctly: primary vidoe slot: pci... I corrected this and havent seen any glitches yet, but still get black screen of death with recent games.

Any idea^ (glitches might not be corrected, I just havent seen any for 2 mins, but I am shure it helped)

 

[Bjorg]

I just ran 3dmark2001se and I got the same graphs error I got prior to modifying bios: serious spikes and graph bugs at starting at test 2. Now the blue dots are back . Oh and a last thing, the guy who I bought the card did run the 3dmark in fron tof me and got 10000, i got glitches and got 6000, the thing is, I upgraded to the same parts he had.......

I have a friend who has the same model of vid card, i will borrow it tomorow to test for shure.

 

[Bjorg]

Following the testing of an other msi gf4 128mb card (without changing my settings), it was running as smoooth as a baby's ass... I only manage to do 1 full 3d mark without bugs with the used one. The problem was the fan: the original owner had pulled it out to put cooling conpound on the processor underneath the fan, but the problem is the pins that holds the fan to the card are very cheap and wear easily, the fan even fell off by itself once!

So my only tip to you guys is, dont take the fan out ever, if you do so, replace it for a fan with better holding pins or just a better fan.

Thanks for trying to help