graphical craziness.

[SYNAce]

Hey all.

I'm having an issue with my display when I'm running games and while I'm not a complete noob, I'm fairly close, so I thought I'd seek help from your collective wisdom.

Here are my specs of the rig I've been running for 2 years.
Asus PN5SLI
E6600
EVGA GF 7950
2 gig Corsair
XP

I was a bad person and allowed an excessive amount of dust to build up in my case -- I mean it looked like a haunted house there was so much dust. What happened was my two monitors dimmed suddenly, almost like there was a red filter over everything. As I began investigating, I opened the case and that's when I found the dustbowl. I blew some out with lung power and immediately, one of the monitors cleared up and so i took a can of air and cleared it out and everything was right as rain (or so I thought).

A couple days later, I went to play BattleField 2142 and started getting graphical anomalies. It looked like a haze was over the monitor and there were a couple of opaque rectangles and anytime an event would happen where I should get a blurred stun effect, I'd get a blinding wall of of white, pink, and blue pixels that would eventually subside. I also noticed in other games a loss of detail (I run everything at max detail). Here are some things I did:

1. Tried uninstalling drivers, cleaning out remnants and updating. Tried loading different drivers (Nvidia, Omega)
2. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game
3. Removed the card and reseated it
4. Bought a new graphics card (BFG 9500 GT) since i was planning on upgrading anyway (updated drivers)

Can't get the strange behavior to stop. I have, however, got it to change. The Battlefield graphics have at least returned to almost normal except for an almost imperceptible haze, but when an explosion happens or I'm killed, the screen goes dark and is covered by rows of white dots for a short period.

I thought the dust might have overheated the mobo and caused some damage, but I haven't noticed any other instability issues.

I don't know if the dust was the culprit or just coincidental, or if a Microsoft update I installed some time recently could maybe be involved. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for any help you can throw my way.

 

[Hefemeister]

Have you tried a different monitor to see if that is the culprit? I know mine just went bad and was getting some of the same types of issues you are.

 

[Nagasama]

check the cable as well. does it do it in any other game? does it do it only when you are gaming? have you tried running only one of the monitors?
it sounds like your cards ram is overheating/failing to me.

 

[SYNAce]

Well, i tried my other monitor and same issues. Checked the cables and doesn't seem to be the issue.

I figured it was time for a reinstall of Windows anyway, so had a faint hope that that might fix the problem (seeing as this had happened not to long after running some updates), but it didn't. I reinstalled Battlefield and noticed that a lot of the problems go away if I run it in 800x600 on my widescreen (can have everything turned up to max detail). The only problem I've noticed is occasionally when I turn sharply, the screen will flash white and I can only see my gun and arms and no environment.

As far as other games, I haven't reinstalled any yet, but I had noticed some loss of detail in the graphics.

I have no idea what's up.

 

[Peter.Cort]

download rivatuner and check the card temps idle and load. it might be that the card itself basically baked itself in the dust oven.

 

[SYNAce]

Well, I assumed the card had suffered some damage, so I already replaced it and same issues right after installation.