Failing AiW 9700 Pro?

drasnordrasnor Starship OperatorHawthorne, CA Icrontian
edited December 2003 in Hardware
Ok, I think I may have to RMA my All in Wonder 9700 Pro AGAIN. When it arrived and I installed it, I got these horizontal striation patterns (alternating light and dark) that move up and down the screen when playing CounterStrike and on my Windows desktop when my refresh is set low. It even shows up on my TV-out. Doing a screen capture can't get a hold of it. I tried replacing the VGA cable with a BetterCables Silver Serpent, which likewise didn't make the problem go away.

Any suggestions, or send it back? It reeks strongly of a cold solder joint somewhere on the card, but I'm leery about working on a card with 5 years left on its warranty.

-drasnor :fold:

Comments

  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Additional information:

    Playing games while listening to WinAmp now brings my system to its knees, whereas before I could multitask without any noticable loss of speed in game. The striation patterns are more pronounced at lower refreshes and resolutions (very noticable on my TV-Out).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Sounds more like a defective Motherboard to be honest.... no idea where to start though. You could try a completely different card for a while, but that may risk destroying that card if it is the motherboard...

    NS
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Well the thing is, after I sent back my original failed AiW 9700 Pro, I subsisted by using a GeForce 3 Ti500 for a few weeks. No problem with that card, but when I installed the new AiW 9700 Pro, heLLoo striation.

    The motherboard has been around the longest, too. It's gone from a GeForce 2 GTS to the GeForce 3 Ti500 to its current AiW 9700 Pro. I seriously doubt the motherboard has any problems.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    drasnor, what psu do you have?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    It's an Antec TruePower 430W. I don't have the lines off the top of my head, but right now AsusProbe reads 11.734V, 4.865V, and 3.2V for 12V, 5V, and 3.3V respectively. Vcore is1.44V.

    I've got an Asus P4T-E with a 1.8GHz Northwood P4 and 2x256MB Kingston RDRAM. This system is almost four years old now, with no stability problems.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    FYI the original AiW 9700 Pro worked fine for 6 months before it started crapping out in strange and bizarre ways. If you want to read a little about that, the only thread I can find is http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5148 .

    Is there anything in software that might be causing this?

    -drasnor :fold:
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Shouldn't be with those lines. Weird that 2 cards get's fubared though.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    I think so too, but they appear to have failed in a completely different fashion.

    Original:
    1) Lasted 6 months normally
    2) Displayed corrupted DirectX textures with blue/green stripes.
    3) Displayed vertical green columns in DirectX (imagine Matrix).
    4) Benchmarked exceptionally poorly in all major benches.
    5) Displayed purple/pink windows in normal operation.
    6) Problems could be screenshotted with Print Screen key.
    7) Couldn't pass dxdiag.

    ATI RMA replacement:
    1) Problem noticable right out of the box.
    2) Displays horizontal subtly alternating patterns of light and dark.
    3) Performs fine in benchmarks.
    4) Problem doesn't appear in screenshots.
    5) Entire monitor appears to flicker (it shouldn't).
    6) Light/Dark patterns vary depending on refresh and resolution. Raising both diminishes the effect, though screen still flickers.

    System worked perfectly with GeForce 3 Ti500 in 24/7 operation for a month while failed 9700 Pro was RMA'd.

    You can see where I'm dubious that my machine is killing graphics cards, right?

    -drasnor :fold:
  • SimGuySimGuy Ottawa, Canada
    edited December 2003
    Doesn't sound like a fubar'd motherboard at all. The P4T-E can deliver the required 1.5V for AGP4x operation.

    I'm inclined to say it's a RAMDAC problem. First, it doesn't show up in screenshots, which tells me the GPU is outputting correct information to the frame-buffer.

    Second, the performance of the card is fine, so there's nothing wrong with the memory, GPU or connection traces needed for sucessful 3D operation & data transport between vital components.

    So, all that's left is the VGA output and the RAMDAC. As a last resort, have you checked to make sure there aren't any bent pins on the monitor cable and that the monitor cable is free of kinks/breaks? If that all checks out, then I'm inclined to say it's the cards RAMDAC that's ****ed.

    RMA time. :(

    I think you're just having damned back luck :(:(
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Both monitor cords test fine, no kinks or bent pins. I'll fire off an e-mail to ATI and get their story.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • teflemingtefleming
    edited December 2003
    Just curious, does the problem replicate across various Cat's (3.7 / 3.9)? Does it replicate across reformats?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    It replicates across various Cats, but I'm not going to reformat my hard drive to find out about the latter. It takes friggin forever to get Visual Studio .NET fully configured with the platform SDK, DirectX 9 SDK, and nasm.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Well, ATI sent me an RMA number. I guess it's going back.

    -drasnor :fold:
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