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Pixellation on Gainward 7900GS+, not faulty

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I have had returned to me the above card, but after testing there end there was no pixellation of any kind, which has made me confused as when I used it there was little pixels on any images, even in these forums or any image I saw elsewhere.

Now as this is the case I am left thinking that it might be something else in my system that might be causing it. I tried 3 different driver versions, 2 official ones and 1 beta one, and they all came back with the same result. Tried 3D Mark 05 & 06 and it just came with a blank screen.

If not the graphics card then what could it be? :(
 
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What is the maximum volts I should set for my AGP card in the BIOS? Maybe the pixellation is caused because it is set too high?
 
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I had a look in the BIOS and the voltage was set to 1.55v, have now put it back to 1.5v. Could that slightly increased voltage have caused the Gainward to have pixels on all the images I saw?
 
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Yes I did RMA it to OCuk, and then they sent it back to me saying that after 3 hours of benchmarking etc they couldnt find any pixellation problems with the card at all, so it looks like I am stuck with this card now whether it works correctly in my machine or not. Im just hoping that it is to do with the voltage settings or another component, it must be if it worked perfect on OC's test machine. :(

Im not sure what else to try. Before I got it back I did the usual like using Driver Cleaner and then put that card in and start afresh, first with the Gainward VGA drivers, and then a few different Nvidia drivers, both showed the same symptoms, and as for 3D Mark 05 & 06, they didnt even start, just froze before the 1st test!

Does anyone know what im doing wrong? Could it be something to do with the 2 molex connectors I am using? Does it matter what 2 spare molex's I used to connect the card up?
 
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Will have some posts of the pixellated images sometime tomorrow.

Does anyone have any ideas on what it could be before I do that?
 
Soldato
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The 2 molexes should be seperate rails from the PSU, and have nothing else attached to either of them. Your HDs, DVDs and fans have to share the other two molex's (I think the Tagan has 4 seperate 12v rails?)

You said the pixels were on images in 2D screens, is it only images that are affected? Do you ever see any pixels during boot up, or on parts of the screen that isn't an image?
 
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How will I know what 2 molex's will be separate from eachother, maybe that something I have been doing wrong or would that matter? Having had a look, the 2 molex's I was using to power it seemed to be adjoined to the 2 hdd molex's, maybe it wasnt drawing enough power?

Looking at the Tagan, there is a special molex coloured blue with VGA cable, which is the one for normal AGP, with a special clear plastic insulation around it. Shall I use that as one of the 2 molex's, or just 2 normal molex's?


Was going to see what it was like on the 3d imagery by using 3D Mark, but with both 05 & 06 it just crashed the computer before the 1st test started up.
 
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I plugged in the card earlier, and have encountered a new problem now. When it comes upto the Windows XP splash screen, with the green moving bar, it moves for a few seconds, freezes and then the computer reboots all over again, and it never gets any further than that.

What could that be a result of?
 
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Im only o/c'ing my 3.2 by upto 3.36 until I get a more useful cooling solution for it as I only have stock cooling for the time being. Im pretty sure if I put my 6800GT card back in it will boot up without any problems. If it does, then I know that its this card at fault, or maybe my choice of molex connectors?

Its a shame that I dont have a PSU with a PCI-e cable, which might sort this problem out rather than using Gainwards 2 molex to PCI-e connector.

Im getting my IT guy over soon to put some things inside my machine. Maybe I should get him to connect the card and the power connectors at the same time, as I could be doing something wrong I dont know im doing?
 
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See if you can get ahold of another PSU, maybe from a place that accepts returns. I'm almost willing to bet that if you tried another PSU, like a PC Power and cooling high end PSU, the card would work fine. Don't quote me on that, though.... (even if its just the connectors causing the problem or the PSU itself...)

Note: 1.5v / 1.55v AGP will have no effect on "pixels" or anything. Actually if you're using an i875/i865 chipset, the AGP voltage is directly linked to the northbridge voltage (1.65v can help CPU overclocking at very high FSB speeds). You gain 0% overclock on video card, though, as the vGPU has its own voltage regulator, but you can possibly blow the card out as the AGP circuits themselves get 1.65v. I would not go above 1.60v, ever....(unless you're using a PCI card, for instance...)
 
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