Video card artifacting

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Sun May 16, 2004 10:04 pm

My video card, ATI FireGL is artifacting. I'm not overclocking it, but I have replaced the stock heatsink with an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer. The trouble is, I'm not entirely sure that it's cooling the processor properly since I'm getting a lot of video card artifacts. Right now, they just look like blue shadow that passed over them.

Is there anyway I can make sure that it's the GPU that's causing the problems? If it is, what can I do about it? The ACVGAS is on about as tight as it goes (though there seemed to be a shim around the card that didn't look removeable. Can it be removed safely?)

Thanks

Spod · Post by **Spod** » Mon May 17, 2004 6:58 am

Could the shim be preventing good contact between the chip and the heatsink? Early 9700 Pros had that, not sure if/when ATI stopped doing that. If that's the case with you, what you need is a good thickness of thermal compound to bridge the gap. You could try to remove the shim, but you're very likely to damage the card beyond repair.

If you want a neater solution, you could try removing some of the heatsink to create a hollow for the shim to fit into, meaning that it can reach the chip despite the shim being there. Arctic Cooling may redesign their VGA Silencer this way eventually anyway - Zalman did when moving from their ZM80 heatpipe cooler to the ZM80a model - but you may be able to modify yours. I won't try to describe how, because I'm not sure how to do it, but I'm sure it's possible with the right tools and skills.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon May 17, 2004 8:24 am

This may very well be my problem. The FireGL that I have is a first revision card. Rev#: A01.

Man, just when I thought I was done dremeling things down.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Mon May 17, 2004 10:23 am

If you can be sure you won't crack your GPU, you could try removing the shim. However be very very careful, tightening the back bracket probably WILL crack the die, i heard radeons were especially prone to cracking - thus the shim.

I put my silencer on my 9700 (with the shim) with an insane amout of AS plus a very tight bracket - screwed down the thing slowly, alternating between the screws, taking about 5 mins to tighten the two screws. If I remember correctly, you played around with the back bracket to make it fit, so check that first.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon May 17, 2004 11:34 am

The plastic brace has a third point that presses down at the midpoint between the two screws. I suspect that the lack of that pressure may be the cause of my problems. First, I'll see if an extra helping of Ceramique doesn't help.

If that doesn't work, I'll grind down the plastic brace until it fits.

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon May 17, 2004 3:59 pm

sthayashi, if you're not using the brace now, how do you have it mounted?

The back brace, with its central pivot, it very important to mounting the AC-S properly. When you tighten the brace down, it flexes the card slightly. (watch carefully and you can see it) That flex, though small, helps to reduce the impact of the shim offset. The offset is only 0.023", so it doesn't take much of a flex.

Pull your AC-S off, and see if you've got good squish of the TIM underneath.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Mon May 17, 2004 6:24 pm

First, I'll see if an extra helping of Ceramique doesn't help

Definitely! And also check the mounting with a flashlight.. as Rusty points out, you might have uneven pressure somehow.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon May 17, 2004 8:46 pm

Well, I've now done just about everything I planned. I filed down the heatsink a bit where it was touching some pins that it wasn't supposed to.

I applied extra Ceramique. That probably didn't help too much because it looked like it was making decent contact (at least according to visual paste autopsy).

Finally, I cut out the little button bit that presses down at the midpoint between the screws, and inserted it into the brace. I'll take a picture tomorrow and post it.

The strangest result occured. The colors were all perfectly correct (hurray). But when Windows loaded up, there was artifacting. Which I thought was strange, because it didn't artifact in POST. Here's the REALLY weird part. I changed resolutions to 1024x768. It cleared it up. Then I switched back to my original resolution, 1600x1200, and there was no artifacts. What on earth would have caused that?

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon May 17, 2004 9:09 pm

Hmm.

Bizarre driver issue maybe? That's my best guess. It could also be something unusual like a bad DVI connection, or even a monitor issue.

Try loading the card up, running 3DMark or somesuch, just to see if they come back. If they don't then you can eliminate overheating as the issue.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Tue May 18, 2004 9:28 pm

3Dmark03 ran well enough without problems. Sadly, I appear to get what seems to be a lower score than I was hoping, but no artifacts turn up. At 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA, I ran out of video memory, but I don't think that's significant.

Oh, and I promised pictures of my mod, so here is everything but the actual mod:
http://www.twolf1300.net/sthayashi/SPCR ... brace1.jpg
http://www.twolf1300.net/sthayashi/SPCR ... brace2.jpg
http://www.twolf1300.net/sthayashi/SPCR ... brace3.jpg
These first three is what's left of the plastic brace. You can see where I've cut something out. The part that I've cut out sits under the metal brace in the next two pictures.
http://www.twolf1300.net/sthayashi/SPCR ... ireGL1.jpg
http://www.twolf1300.net/sthayashi/SPCR ... ireGL2.jpg
You won't actually see knob I've cut out, because I took these pictures before I did the cutting. But with just the metal brace, the clearance from my CPU heatsink is about half a centimeter. With the entire plastic part from the previous pictures, it was too big, but with the little knob, it fits just fine, and it seems to work.