Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

[Calchaqui]

It's an old cusl2-c black pearl, vio at 3.7v, oced CPU, ti4200, ran fine for a couple of months, now having all kind of ascii in bios and DOS, windows runs fine. memtest ok, prime95 ok. Same thing happens with a 6200agp, could be BOTH CARDS dont like 3.75v VIO (nvidia cards used to love high VIO) or maybe cpu is responsible for ascii evrywhere>

[mariushm]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

It's usually bad ram on the video card or corrupt video card bios or damaged gpu chip. Nothing to do with cpu.

[Calchaqui]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

It's usually bad ram on the video card or corrupt video card bios or damaged gpu chip. Nothing to do with cpu.

I really doubt about the card itself (i tested with a ti4200 n' 6200) both same ascii artifacts, i really think it has to do with the high Vio (almost 3.8v), what do you think?

[mariushm]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

most video cards have voltage regulators on them. But by all means, why are you even asking if you get 3.8v instead of 3.3v or whatever it should be?

Fix the power supply then... what do you want me to say.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

It's an old cusl2-c black pearl, vio at 3.7v, oced CPU, ti4200, ran fine for a couple of months, now having all kind of ascii in bios and DOS, windows runs fine. memtest ok, prime95 ok. Same thing happens with a 6200agp, could be BOTH CARDS dont like 3.75v VIO (nvidia cards used to love high VIO) or maybe cpu is responsible for ascii evrywhere>

Likely bad solder joints on the video card, sounds like that second hand Radeon 9800 Pro I got back in April, 2007.

-> Yep, sounds like the video card.

And, IIRC, I have another Radeon 9800 Pro that I haven't tested yet.....

[Calchaqui]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

most video cards have voltage regulators on them. But by all means, why are you even asking if you get 3.8v instead of 3.3v or whatever it should be?

Fix the power supply then... what do you want me to say.

the overvoltage is needed to keep 133@2-2-2-5,7 timmings , sorry i didnt tell you. im gonna try another card, long life Romania!

[luke10050]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

yeah it sounds like a gpu problem, my 8600M GS did that to me before it failed. a good reflow seemed to fix it

[Calchaqui]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

All of you were right, bad video card i think, maybe overheating cause it takes a couple of hours to show artifacts (or minutes gaming)

[luke10050]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

is the fan siezing or something?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

Does it sometimes go away after reseating the video card to come back later on?
My Radeon 9800 Pro did that until I chucked it.

And I would sometimes see it look better when moving it around when in the AGP slot when on.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

Bad GPU, bad VRAM or bad solder joints?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

Bad GPU, bad VRAM or bad solder joints?

That's what it looks like.

[Calchaqui]

Re: Garbage ASCII in bios/DOS, always means bad agpcard?

I think it was overvolted agp bus someway overvolted the gpu or memory and cause that.