# My graphics is going crazy



## LizardKing (Apr 20, 2011)

Really fucking crazy. Continued scrolling results in something akin to a blue and white snow crash. Outside of Firefox, everything else looks normal.

I can barely type this as every keypress makes things more and more distorted until it eventually looks entirely like noise. Alt-tabbing back resets it back to normal, and then it slowly degrades again. So far this has only been an issue in Firefox, but some icons in other windows are starting to degrade as well. I've had no graphics issues in games so far. 

I just downloaded something so I can check the temperature, and it's showing up around 80Â°C (176Â°F), which is higher than I thought, but unfortunately it's always been rather hot as the back end of the card is almost touching my (passively cooled) northbridge heatsink, which probably doesn't help.

It's a GeForce 9800GT, and about 3 years old by now. Last updated the drivers a few months ago, though I'm not sure if I'm using the latest as I had some problems with the most recent ones. I don't have any spare graphics cards, unfortunately, as this was a replacement for a broken one.

Any ideas?

Edit: Restarting Firefox didn't help. Restarting windows now.

Edit edit: Good so far, but even after cleaning out the dust and shit it's already at 66Â°C


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## Sarcastic Coffeecup (Apr 20, 2011)

That seems quite problematic. I doubt it has something to do with temps. I'm thinking a virus could do this.
Double check your pc for viruses.


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## LizardKing (Apr 20, 2011)

Sarcastic Coffeecup said:


> That seems quite problematic. I doubt it has something to do with temps. I'm thinking a virus could do this.
> Double check your pc for viruses.


 
I find it unlikely that a virus would go to such lengths to announce its presence. It would be akin to a burglar parading around as a 1-man band and then shitting on your bed while you sleep. I could run a scan anyway, but the conditions under which this problem appears deems it unlikely.


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## Sarcastic Coffeecup (Apr 20, 2011)

Maybe it's just a prank-virus to piss people off. who knows.
Or if your pc has slowed down, your cpu might be overheating


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## elenawing (Apr 21, 2011)

That screenshot is beautiful in a crazy seizure inducing way...

Do you have a desk fan or anything that can blow some cool air at your computer? It certainly sounds like it's struggling to keep itself comfortable. Go round the tower and see where the heat is building up, if possible try and give it some space in that area (again, if possible). Improving the air flow even a little bit can help. also check your background processes to check your computer isn't working overtime for a background program that shouldn't be on


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## CerbrusNL (Apr 21, 2011)

I believe this might be a videocard hardware problem. Do / did there problems only occur when browsing, or also when playing a game, for example?

I've had a pretty similar problem a while back, and managed to fix it by tossing my card into a oven:
http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/88800-Hmmm-I-think-my-Desktop-s-dying...

Basically, what was happening to my card: the repeated heating and cooling of the solder on the card, made it brittle. Tiny hair cracks appeared, With a scrambled screen as result. Baking the card melted the solder ust enough to reconnect the cracks. My card's working likena charm, ever since.
Looking at the age ofnyour video card, and the quite significant temperature differences it's undergone, I think you might have a similar issue ar hand, here.

Any way, let me know if your screen gets messed up again!


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## Garfang (Apr 21, 2011)

mate its not a virus  there are two issues , or your drivers Crush and you had to restart your PC , or your Hard Drive starting to fail or your graphic card is starting to fail as well. But honestly its the drivers that crush and with restarting your computer may fix the issue till the next time.

I advice you to do this, Uninstall your graphic drivers  then run Driver Sweeper to clean your computer of any driver miss data and then do a fresh install of the newest driver. =)

also try lower your temperature with more Fans or keep you PC clean. 80 is too much , 66 is a bit too much as well. My Graphic card is Geforce 460GTX and i have 37.0 C =S


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## LizardKing (Apr 21, 2011)

elenawing said:


> That screenshot is beautiful in a crazy seizure inducing way...
> 
> Do you have a desk fan or anything that can blow some cool air at your computer?



I've actually had it like that for the past month or so since the card actually started underclocking itself for a few minutes at a time during games when it was overheating. I think the combination of warmer weather & extra hard drives blocking the airflow is not helping.



CerbrusNL said:


> I believe this might be a videocard hardware problem. Do / did there problems only occur when browsing, or also when playing a game, for example?
> 
> I've had a pretty similar problem a while back, and managed to fix it by tossing my card into a oven:
> http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/88800-Hmmm-I-think-my-Desktop-s-dying...


 
I remember that, and if nothing else seems to help, I may just give it a go.

After cleaning the oven so I don't end up with a greasy card.


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## CerbrusNL (Apr 21, 2011)

Hmm, do you happen to have a different computer around there you could plug your card into?
You can easily see if it's a hardware problem, that way. If it is, well, you know what to do 

Aside from that, the only possibility is a driver issue, I think. HDD issues don't generally have any effect on the machine's visual output. Not to mention it got better when underclocking the card, if I read that correctly.


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## LizardKing (Apr 21, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> Hmm, do you happen to have a different computer around there you could plug your card into?
> You can easily see if it's a hardware problem, that way. If it is, well, you know what to do



There's one in the loft, but it isn't mine, I have no idea if it works or not, or even if it has a CPU.

Edit: Found my precision screwdrivers. Took the whole thing apart, cleaned out the dustbunnies that were stuck inside the cooler, added some new thermal paste to replace the crusty stuff, repositioned the hard drives, removed one of them (it's only for the occasional backup anyway), and moved my soundcard to a different PCI-E slot that shouldn't block the airflow so much. Currently holding at 54Â°C with the side of the case back on. Hopefully it's stable like that, as I need the fan for myself :3

Editedit: 59Â°C. Cuntbuckets. STOP HEATING UP.


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## Garfang (Apr 21, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> There's one in the loft, but it isn't mine, I have no idea if it works or not, or even if it has a CPU.
> 
> Edit: Found my precision screwdrivers. Took the whole thing apart, cleaned out the dustbunnies that were stuck inside the cooler, added some new thermal paste to replace the crusty stuff, repositioned the hard drives, removed one of them (it's only for the occasional backup anyway), and moved my soundcard to a different PCI-E slot that shouldn't block the airflow so much. Currently holding at 54Â°C with the side of the case back on. Hopefully it's stable like that, as I need the fan for myself :3
> 
> Editedit: 59Â°C. Cuntbuckets. STOP HEATING UP.



yeah =) just get a new Fan for you System. 
And Harddriver failer can sometimes mess your Screen.  but OP problem is driver issue


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## LizardKing (Apr 21, 2011)

Just got nTune to check on the fan speeds. Seems it was running at 15% or something ridiculous. Changed it from auto to manual and whacked it up to 100% (I always have headphones on anyway so the slight noise is a non-issue)

It dropped from 61Â°C to 49Â°C within 2 minutes. 

Hopefully this was just an overheating issue. I certainly haven't seen it screw up since last night.


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## Garfang (Apr 21, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Just got nTune to check on the fan speeds. Seems it was running at 15% or something ridiculous. Changed it from auto to manual and whacked it up to 100% (I always have headphones on anyway so the slight noise is a non-issue)
> 
> It dropped from 61Â°C to 49Â°C within 2 minutes.
> 
> Hopefully this was just an overheating issue. I certainly haven't seen it screw up since last night.


 
good =)


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## FF_CCSa1F (Apr 21, 2011)

As long as your card isn't in the 90+Â°C region, overheating of the GPU isn't a problem. It's probably either the Nvidia solder issue (or other bad soldering in general) that's coming around, or some surrounding components are failing (power supply, card voltage regulator module.) I strongly doubt it's a pure software issue, at least.


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## Akau (Apr 22, 2011)

Well one thing to consider is that is it idling at 66c? I have a XFX 9800GT in my work computer and it idles at about 37c and it's a single slot cooled one. I got the 9800GT when my 8800GT blew up on me, but it wasn't really doing the same sort of things that yours was. I think I was reading somewhere that with the GF92 chip (the one used in the 8800, 9800 and gts 250) after a little bit of time they develop problems, especially if you game on them often and don't dust them out about every 3 months. 

I don't know if this was mentioned, but maybe you might need to invest in a new case, something that has a front 120mm fan or something like that to keep fresh cool air running through the case. I had a friend that had SLI 8800 Ultras in his case and they would idle at 60c because his case had literally no fans in it. We replaced his case and they went down to 48c.

Hope maybe some of this helps. I wish you the best of luck.


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## CerbrusNL (Apr 22, 2011)

At this moment, all it's doing is heating up? No scrambles screen, and stuff like that?


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## LizardKing (Apr 22, 2011)

Akau said:


> Well one thing to consider is that is it idling at 66c? I have a XFX 9800GT in my work computer and it idles at about 37c and it's a single slot cooled one. I got the 9800GT when my 8800GT blew up on me, but it wasn't really doing the same sort of things that yours was. I think I was reading somewhere that with the GF92 chip (the one used in the 8800, 9800 and gts 250) after a little bit of time they develop problems, especially if you game on them often and don't dust them out about every 3 months.
> 
> I don't know if this was mentioned, but maybe you might need to invest in a new case, something that has a front 120mm fan or something like that to keep fresh cool air running through the case. I had a friend that had SLI 8800 Ultras in his case and they would idle at 60c because his case had literally no fans in it. We replaced his case and they went down to 48c.
> 
> Hope maybe some of this helps. I wish you the best of luck.



The case has 120mm fans at front and back. The biggest problem at the moment just seems to be the speed of the fan on the card itself; it keeps going down to 15% or even off completely. I've set up a profile to put it back to 100% when windows starts and whenever it heats up, and now it's mostly staying around 50c. 



CerbrusNL said:


> At this moment, all it's doing is heating up? No scrambles screen, and stuff like that?


 
It did briefly go a little weird earlier (the address bar screwed up for a minute or two), but it hasn't gone batshit insane since I cleaned it out.


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## Hyena (Apr 22, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> The case has 120mm fans at front and back. The biggest problem at the moment just seems to be the speed of the fan on the card itself; it keeps going down to 15% or even off completely. I've set up a profile to put it back to 100% when windows starts and whenever it heats up, and now it's mostly staying around 50c.



Ohh okay hmm, that does still sound a little weird to me though. when my 8800GT was dieing it would randomly bluescreen the computer, I looked at what it was doing in rivia tuner and the voltages would just be jumping all over the place along with the core clock and the shaders. It was really weird but I never had any on screen glitches. If it's speeding up and slowing down though it sounds sadly like your card might be getting on its last legs here. Sorry to hear, man. 

Might want to try and save up for a new card, or depending on the brand of the card it might be under warranty still so you might want to contact the card manufacturers technical support, but all this is assuming you have another card laying around you could put in your system while your 9800 would be away. When I sent my 8800GT in for a RMA (to be replaced) I was on an old ATI Readion X800XT for two weeks.


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## FF_CCSa1F (Apr 22, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> The case has 120mm fans at front and back. The biggest problem at the moment just seems to be the speed of the fan on the card itself; it keeps going down to 15% or even off completely. I've set up a profile to put it back to 100% when windows starts and whenever it heats up, and now it's mostly staying around 50c.


 
I don't quite see the point of that; as long as the temperature is reasonable (i.e, under 90Â°C for the GPU core,) the fan speed doesn't matter. If you're getting trouble when the card gets warmer than 50Â°C, you should start looking for a new card, as something is very wrong with your current one.


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## Akau (Apr 22, 2011)

Hyena said:


> when my 8800GT was dieing it would randomly bluescreen the computer, I looked at what it was doing in rivia tuner and the voltages would just be jumping all over the place along with the core clock and the shaders. It was really weird but I never had any on screen glitches. If it's speeding up and slowing down though it sounds sadly like your card might be getting on its last legs here. Sorry to hear, man.


 
That's weird. My card did something really similar to that, but would blue screen whenever you played a flash video. I bought my 8800 from XFX and they replaced it with a brand new 9800GT

To the OP I hope all goes well and you can figure it out. I'd agree with the post above though that you should probably save up for a replacement card. Having the fan at 100% all the time has to be pretty darn loud.


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