Radeon 9000 Pro AGP Flashing

[Phipli]

So after my card warms up it starts to artifact as well - a sort of fine texture of yellow and blue dots over the whole screen. Very odd.

What happens if you modify the ROM to down clock the VRAM speed a little?

 

[croissantking]

What happens if you modify the ROM to down clock the VRAM speed a little?

The ROM I’ve used sets the VRAM to 250MHz, and the VRAM is rated at 3.6ns/275MHz. So it’s already clocked conservatively. Don’t you think it’s more likely that one of the chips is bad?

 

[Phipli]

The ROM I’ve used sets the VRAM to 250MHz, and the VRAM is rated at 3.6ns/275MHz. So it’s already clocked conservatively. Don’t you think it’s more likely that one of the chips is bad?

I didn't know how your VRAM was rated sorry, if it is faster than needed it shouldn't be that.

Although my current video card project has some VRAM that is not performing at its rated speed.

 

[croissantking]

I didn't know how your VRAM was rated sorry, if it is faster than needed it shouldn't be that.

Although my current video card project has some VRAM that is not performing at its rated speed.

I put the card back in my PC and restored the original BIOS - the same corruption is there, works fine at cold boot - symptoms appear after 20 mins and get progressively worse.

So it’s just a dud card.

 

[croissantking]

The seller was nice – they refunded it and let me keep the card.

Screenshots attached. I wonder if it's more likely VRAM or the GPU.

 

[Phipli]

The seller was nice – they refunded it and let me keep the card.

Screenshots attached. I wonder if it's more likely VRAM or the GPU.

Time to start pinching components between your fingers and see which components change the artefacting. Try with both a static screen and some simple motion.

 

[Forrest]

Don’t electrolytic caps on video cards eventually go bad?

 

[croissantking]

Don’t electrolytic caps on video cards eventually go bad?

They do… both @Phipli and I noticed ‘shimmering’ (like a sort of noise) on our Radeon 7000 PCI cards’ display output, that recapping fixed.
I’d be surprised if bad caps caused something like the extreme corruption I’m seeing on my R9000, though.