Graphics card overheating or ...?

[[DnC]]

So I encountered a problem with a few of my recent acquired games, namely Medieval 2: Total War, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

I'll start with MTW2: Only on the campaign map after a while I'll see particles flickering about only on the sea textures, not on land. Apart from that I have no problems.

NWN2: After a while it'll start to flicker particles and later on even small to large patches flashing about in different colours (purple, white, green, red etc. etc. - not just one colour at a time though, a mixture). If I put certain settings off or downgrade them it'll be less of a problem, but the game looks horrendous that way and the problem is still not entirely solved, just lessened and delayed. The thing is the game runs just fine with all those flickering and flashing things FPS-wise.

SCDA: Textures start flashing such as Fisher self, sometimes entire surfaces start flashing. Some places worse then others. In one of the early levels where you are in the arctic the sky is filled with black flickering particles at the beginning of the mission. Apart from that no particles though. Haven't played much of it since. SCDA was the first game where I had these problems and it was my first acquisition of the three by the way.

I have no problems with Oblivion for example, which is also a relatively new game and cpu intensive. Perhaps it's just a driver problem with some of the latest games? I sure hope so. I tried going back to an earlier driver but it all got messy and didn't solve the problem. It uninstalled some graphics card hardware along with the display drivers which were the ones I uninstalled. I figured it would install them if I'd install the older drivers, but no it did not.

Setup:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
- 2x 2GB Memory Cards (Kingston)
- ASUS NVIDIA 7800GTX TOP 256MB (93.71 drivers)
- Soundblaster Audigy
- Windows XP (SP2)
- DirectX 9.0c

I have a SLI motherboard (forgot what it was called), but only use one graphics card. I've read on the NVIDIA forums that people with SLI configurations (those that do use 2 GFX cards) have similar problems as I have. Makes me go hmm... Perhaps not just with those using 2 cards? And the problem is bigger then that?



Also, someone mentioned it could be due to overclocking the graphics card. Setting it (back) to normal specs solved the problem. He mentioned a presale-overclocked or in other words overclocked by the manufacturers graphics card. Mine is overclocked by ASUS. You can look it up at the ASUS site (can't seem to get on it myself at the moment).

My card runs at 486MHz/1350MHz (actually it shows 2700MHz with Coolbits, but I think it's just doubled somehow or so? Confused.), while the normal 7800 runs at 430MHz/1200MHz. However I'm afraid of downgrading being a complete novice at tweaking and doing something wrong. I read this card couldn't be overclocked anymore or something. Perhaps I can't downgrade either without a problem? I can have misinterpreted or forgotten what was being said however, considering it was a while back before I bought this card.

Much appreciated if someone could help me out here.

PS. I have no tearing or rubberbanding problems, just this flickering/flashing thing.

[LeftEyeNine]

Does taking a restart solve your problems temporarily? I mean when you take a restart those flashes and flickerings disappear for some time but hit back eventually ?

[[DnC]]

Restarting the games or my pc? Well in both cases yes!

[caravel]

It could be heat related. The graphics card heatsink and fan could be full of dust and dirt. Try giving that a careful clean. What you're describing is known as artifacts, usually caused by having the memory clocked too high. The problem could be down to bad airflow in your case or in the the room where the PC is operating.

[LeftEyeNine]

If restarting temporarily solves your problem, then it's time for you to do some cooling with the folowing alternatives:

- Get a case with better cooling,
- Get a new VGA cooler,
- Lower your video card's core clock values through either the overclocking software that your manufacturer provides or by Riva Tuner (I doubt you'll prefer this way, though)

[AussieGiant]

Hi DnC,

I second LeftEyeNine comment.

Your first stop in trouble shooting will always be to reset hardware to stock speeds. Until you do that you will never know.

The same way you OC'ed is the same way you would bring the card speeds back to their original settings.