Artifacting with 9800Pro

[SkullOmania]

I decided to experiment with the latest Omega drivers for the Radeon 9800 pro, but found them not to my liking. Once I changed back to catalyst drivers I started to get artifiacting. Ive reinstalled my drivers several times now, and rolled back to previous versions, but nothing seems to help. The artifacting doesn't present itself till I've been playing for about half an hour or so, but nothing I do seems to get rid of it.
Little help plz?

Comp specs (roughly)
9800 Pro 128mb
P4 2.54Ghz
1G DDR333 Ram
Asus P4SDX Motherboard
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Windows XP

[Vitter]

From what i've heard artifacting (in regards to the 9800Pro) is usually a problem of heat. Check your voltages and maybe add a fan.

[Rbstr]

Wehn you get artifacts it is normaly the memory or core making a mistake in the calculation, most often this happend to do Overclocking the Memory a bit to high without adequate cooling.

The way you stat it it defenently seem liek a cooling problem becasue its only in games after you have had time for it to heat up.

My sugestion is to turn OCing down in the memory a bit if it is OCed, or add memory heatsinks, and if not i would call ATI and tell them you get artifacts and want to know if they can get rid of then or will let you RMA the card

[SkullOmania]

I never intentionally altered the speed of my card at all, I can only assume that the omega drivers did and it did not return to normal when I went back to the ATI drivers. Assuming this is the case, does anyone know what my mem and core speeds for a 9800Pro 128mb should be?

[SkullOmania]

Okay, I just checked the ATI website and according to them my core spd should be 380Mhz and my memory spd 680! According to rivatuner my current spds are (and bear in mind I have not changed these from default) core: 378Mhz and mem:337.5Mhz. Does that mean I should double my mem spd? That seems like a pretty risky thing to do. Or is my card suppose to have a mem spd of half what is posted on ATI's site? And why would a slower mem spd give me the artifacting I've been seeing? This is all very confusing....

[Fragmatic]

Okay, I just checked the ATI website and according to them my core spd should be 380Mhz and my memory spd 680! According to rivatuner my current spds are (and bear in mind I have not changed these from default) core: 378Mhz and mem:337.5Mhz. Does that mean I should double my mem spd? That seems like a pretty risky thing to do. Or is my card suppose to have a mem spd of half what is posted on ATI's site? And why would a slower mem spd give me the artifacting I've been seeing? This is all very confusing....

Dude, your memory speed IS 680 :P It's DDR :P

[Electrofreak]

Omega drivers do not change the clock speed of your video card when you install them. Clock speed remains at default.

Like Rob said, if you are getting artifacts at regular clock speeds, something is probably wrong with your video card. This really shouldn't be a result of the Omega drivers, all they are is tweaked catalyst drivers, and don't really change anything about your video card. Did you attempt to OC your vid card at all? If so something might have gotten messed up. Also, check and see what your AGP bus speed is set at, it could be causing this problem if it somehow got overclocked, I'm not sure. Go into your BIOS and check that the AGP clock speed is set at 66mhz. Also, check to make sure that it isn't recieving more than default voltage.

[dscytherulez]

Hide this thread from RagingGerbil. If he does see it, prepared to get tackled Skull.

:)

[SkullOmania]

Well after a gruelling process of elimation I've determined what was causing the problem. My AGP drivers (SiS AGP drivers ver. 7.2.0.1140) seem to be the cause. Having said that, why would these produce problems, as they were bundled with my MoBo, and is there an alternative driver I could use?

[Electrofreak]

Latest AGP driver for the SiS 655 chipset is located HERE (http://download.sis.com/index_step3.php?product=75&category=5&x=7&y=15)

Heh, I'd heard of bad AGP drivers causing artifacting before, now why didn't I think of that when I read this thread...
:doh:

[Rbstr]

Man this is the first time i forgot to ask about Chipset tye with vidoe card problems, that was a big Doh!

[SkullOmania]

I have a sinking feeling that that's the driver thats been causing the problems, but I'll check it out anyway...

[SkullOmania]

...yep, those are the same drivers that I was using before. Anyone got any ideas?

[Electrofreak]

did u try installing them anyways? perhaps the ones before were just messed up / corrupted

[SkullOmania]

Yeah, I did install them anyway, after half an hour or so of play the world started getting these wierd coloured botches on it, kinda like the textures were designed in the eighties. Maybe I'lll just have to go through life without an AGP driver :(

[Rbstr]

man i'm sorry we can't help you more, i have nothing more to offer

[SkullOmania]

Okay, I've tried the above suggestions but haven't seen any improvement. I have, however, noticed something interesting about the nature of these glitches. It seems to have something to do with the loading of the textures. When I walk into the CC a base for the first time in a play session, I might see these glitches. If I minimize PS and then maximize it, they go away. Somehow when the scene is redrawn the glitches don't manifest themselves again. I still have no idea why this is, or why it only happens occasionally and only seems to occur after half an hour or so of gameplay. I can only assume the textures are somehow being corrupted when loaded to memory? Anyone got any ideas?

[Acaila]

Driver Cleaner is the program you need to clear out the alterations made by omega drivers which didn't uninstall properly and aren't compatible with your current drivers. Google it, uninstall properly using Driver Cleaner (directions are in the readme), install your drivers. If you still have artifacts, pull your card out and clean it properly (dust insulates and can dramatically increase heat). If you still have artifacts, uninstall and reinstall an older driver. If you still have artifacts, reinstall DirectX (reinstall windows basically). If you still have artifacts, your card is fucked, return it and claim warranty.