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Old 05-09-2011, 02:47 PM   #1
J_Szucs
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ATI Radeon HD 3850 problems


I have a dual boot setup with windows xp and opensuse 11.2 (fglrx, kde plasma desktop) systems, motherboard: asrock 4coredual sata2, VGA: ati radeon hd 3850 AGP.

Xp has been used for gaming and has not been allowed out to the internet since 2006, and everything worked fine during those years. Except that we felt some deterioration of 3D performance of the ATI card in the past months.

About the time when the xp system was allowed out to the interned for the sake of an online game, the ati card has begun to behave strangely: the plasma desktop was not recovered after blanked-out idle states, it just showed up for one second, then the screen remained blank. We had to reboot each time this has happened (it only happened after staying for longer time in blanked-out screen).

So far only linux has been affected, but things worsened yesterday: now it concerns xp and linux, too:
- 8 pixel-wide coloured vertical stripes appeared on the boot screen (including grub and suse splash screens, too),
- and xp will not boot in normal mode (complains of some infinite loop in ati2dvag)
- linux boots up, and the vertical stripes disappear once the kde plasma desktop is loaded, but:
the mouse cursor is followed by a square comprised by 8x16 short black lines
scrolling in firefox blanks the firefox window area, but the underlying content can sometimes be revealed by moving the mouse cursor over the area
scrolling in konqueror does not blank the window area, but after some time konqueror freezes
glxgears shows only rubbish instead of the gears.

Have you ever heard of the above symptoms? What can be the culprit? Hardware problem, maybe dying ati radeon vga card, motherboard or PSU? Maybe just driver issue?

But, supposed that it is a driver issue (caused by xp or ati ccc unintentionally updating when the interned became available to xp), can a misfunctioning xp ati driver cause faults on the dual booted linux system, too?

Last edited by J_Szucs; 05-09-2011 at 02:59 PM.
 
Old 05-09-2011, 03:02 PM   #2
adamk75
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It's doubtful that it's a driver issue, particularly as it's effecting not only Windows and Linux, but apparently everything from the time the video card POSTs. First thing I'd do is make sure all the fans on the computer (including the video card) are clear.

Adam
 
Old 05-09-2011, 03:19 PM   #3
J_Szucs
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They are clean. I have just cleaned them some weeks ago. I am just curious: could a fan problem affect the system from the first POST by the card? Is it so fast to heat up?
 
Old 05-09-2011, 03:20 PM   #4
adamk75
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Sure, if a fan isn't functioning properly, the card could very quickly overheat.

If that's not it, it still sounds like some other hardware problem, then.

Adam
 
Old 05-09-2011, 03:35 PM   #5
J_Szucs
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I think it is not the temperature:

szucs@YODA:~> aticonfig --od-gettemperature
Default Adapter - ATI Radeon HD 3850
Sensor 0: Temperature - 61.00 C
 
Old 05-10-2011, 01:21 AM   #6
J_Szucs
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When running glxgears, the temperature tops at 98°C after cca. 10 minutes, so cooling may not be as efficient as expected.
I suppose that there are plenty of games causing higher stress and temperatures than glxgears, so the GPU might have even fried. But: is not there a protection that slows down the GPU before this could happen?
 
Old 05-10-2011, 03:41 PM   #7
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Yeah, I've heard of that sort of thing before, and seen it more and than once. Normally graphical glitches on bootup are due to card damage. AMD agrees-

Quote:
This article provides troubleshooting steps to help users experiencing display corruption during the boot up period before the Windows loads. This is referred to as corruption during the initial post stage of the boot up process.

Symptoms:

When starting, or restarting your system before Windows loads, users may experience any of the following issues:

* Lines
* Checkerboard patterns
* Flashing dots
* Giant triangles
* Graphical glitches
* Monitor flickering
* Fuzzy or blurred images
* Out-of-focus images
* Unstable images
* Noise on the screen


Cause:

This typically is due to a problem with the of the video card's hardware, such as overheating, or hardware damage; however corruption during the boot up stage has been known to be caused by other system components.

Resolution:

Since there is no software loading at the time of the boot up. A process of hardware elimination should be applied in these cases. Hardware swapping is generally used to rule out which component is causing the problem.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...orruption.aspx

BTW, follow the link, there is a whole list of things you can check (like moving the monitor conenction).

I had a look for the technical specs for the 3850, to see if ATI/AMD has listed the max temp. I didnt find it, so I'm guessing from the specs I've seen in the past and reviews.

The card should shutdown (or at least throtle a lot) if it hits critial temp, which is probbly in the 115-120C range. However, that will only happen if you hit the critical temp, running a few degrees under that will normally let the card keep running....and slowly cooking the card.

Glxgears artifacting ('showing rubbish' I would count as extreme artifacting), and other graphical problems with the OS loaded, deterioration of 3D performance, and windows freaking out over ati2dvag makes me think you've cooked it.
 
Old 05-14-2011, 04:53 PM   #8
J_Szucs
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Well, it looks like I did not clean it thorougly some weeks ago: airflow over the memory heatsink was totally blocked.
I think some part of the vga memory may have been fried because of that. I wanted to try some underclocking (if it would make any difference) but I could not: atitool or riva tuner would need the ati driver, whilst xp does not start in normal mode.
 
Old 05-15-2011, 03:29 AM   #9
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If you can get into 'safe' mode with XP then you should be able to do some video card underclocking the right way, not with single-use tools like atitool or riva tuner.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24...dding-flashing

Yes, yes, it says "The editing section applies to all ATI video cards except HD2xxx and HD3xxx cards as the software for editing the cards described in this article does not yet work with these cards." But as long as you get newer versions of the tools used in that article, it should work.

BTW, underclocking from the BIOS has the great effect of working with both windows and linux.
 
Old 05-15-2011, 07:37 AM   #10
TobiSGD
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Underclocking that card won't bring anything. It is just fried, replace it.
 
Old 05-15-2011, 09:39 AM   #11
cascade9
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Yeah, its probably fried, but hey...no harm in trying.

I've got cards with problems like that to work with some heavy BIOS underclocking.

Last edited by cascade9; 05-15-2011 at 09:40 AM.
 
  


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