The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    M6811: Mobility Radeon 9600: Graphics Corruption

    Discussion in 'eMachines' started by blahages, Apr 3, 2005.

  1. blahages

    blahages Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Okay, I'm having a slight problem with my video card. ATI Mobility Radeon 9600. It happens mostly in Doom 3, but it isn't limited to that. It gives these strange black specs all over the place. And, in some areas, blanks out part of the screen. Now, it doesn't do it with another game I installed. That was Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit II. That game plays perfectly.

    I installed ATI Tray tools today, and opened up the overclocking tab, and it ran this "Artifact tester," which brought up a little graphic display of a rotating plane. That has the corrupt black marks as well.

    Here are some screenshots I took of them:

    http://blahages001.cjb.net/Gov/Video/index.htm

    It only does it when the graphics are moving. If nothing is moving, it's fine.

    I looked all over the internet to see if there were similar problems with the card. I couldnt' really find any. I did find one, but it said:

    From http://doom.neoseeker.com/DOOM_3/PC...ems_and_fixesa/

    Quote:
    The most common problem here is either a damaged video card or some components overloading/overheating. In this case I'd recommend checking your video card, CPU, memory, and PCI/AGP bus to make sure they are running within spec. Most importantly: an overclocked video card can result in corruption of this type, and the same can be said of System or Video RAM. Try restoring these to defaults and see if you the problem persists.

    Also, check to make sure FASTWRITE is disabled in motherboard BIOS and/or SMARTGART (found in ATI display control panel).


    I disabled Fastwrite, because that was enabled. Still didn't change. As far as I know, the clocks aren't overclocked. I checked, and it says they are correct. It's a brandnew laptop, too, so I wouldn't think it would be.

    I just got the computer yesterday. I ran Doom 3 on it then, and it had that problem. I formatted it and installed XP Professional (had home), and different drivers. I tried the Omega drivers, and I tried the ATI drivers. No change.

    EDIT: I looked around more, and it seems to be doing it either only on things which require OpenGL, or more so on OpenGL programs. I have no idea why. I have opengl installed, version 2.0.4, which came with the Catalyst 5.3 drivers I have installed.

    I also tried like I've seen suggested a few times on here, and underclocked my Video card by 20Mhz. Even tried farther. No difference.

    Also, what are ";Artifacts?" I keep seeing it here and there, and I ran the thing that says "Scan for Artifacts" on "ATI Tool" and it shows this:

    http://blahages001.cjb.net/Gov/Video/artifacts.JPG

    It stays in the area of 1,400-1,500 artifacts on that program.

    I just tried installing 3DMark03 a few minutes ago, and the stupid thing told me my Mobility Radeon 9600 doesn't support compressed textures. That's not true is it? Is that what could be causing it?

    I just tried Doom 3 again, and if you play it for a while, it still remains. It's like the textures arent even there sometimes. I was playing it, and when some guy was talking to me, you could see their teeth through their skin in some places, where you weren't supposed to. Or, there would suddenly be a whole in their head or a wall, and whatnot.

    But, it's not always bad. In some cases, when there are either no moving graphics, or very little, it doesn't do it. Like, this for example:

    http://blahages001.cjb.net/Gov/Video/good.JPG

    EDIT:

    Okay, I installed 3DMark03 yesterday, and tried to run it. It said that my video card doesn't support Compressed Textures, which is completely wrong. I downgraded the drivers from Catalyst 5.3 to 3.10. That fixed the problem with 3DMark not loading. But, my issue with Doom 3 still remains.

    I started thinking about all of this, and it seems to be only happening with OpenGL-based programs. I'm not sure if this is totally true, but it's more common. Particle Fury and Doom 3 are OpenGL based. Both of these have issues. NFS: Hot Pursuit II, I think is DirectX based, and works fine. 3DMark is DirectX ,based, I believe, and after I downgraded the drivers, it worked fine, too, except the test called "ragtroll," which had a little bit of a problem with the corruption.

    I wondered if reinstalling opengl would fix it. When I had Catalyst 5.3 installed, opengl was version 2. I installed Catalyst 3.10, and opengl went to 1.4, so it's changed, and the problem still exists, so I'm clueless on how to fix the issue.

    Any one have any ideas? Thanks.
     
  2. Learux

    Learux Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    8
    Messages:
    181
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Sorry no idea. I can only answer your one questions. Artifacts are specs on the monitor caused (usually) by hardware running out of spec.(overclocked).

    They usually appear as tiny dots, and it is very obvious that they dont belong there.

    Downclock a bit or get better cooling will usually fix this.

    P.S: Did you install your chipset drivers?

    Learux
     
  3. stylee

    stylee Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    73
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I would suggest to try the latest Omega Drivers.. OmegaDrivers.net.. They just realeased a new version, and are suppose to release another new version on Saturday.. Give those a try and see what happens. I had the black weirdness happening in Doom3, but it just went away. I quit the game when it was doing it, ran regcleaner and a couple days later tried again and all seemed to be good. 3dMarks03 works without a glitch. Hope this helps soom.

    Stylee -
    M6809 • WinXP Pro SP2 • Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.1ghz • 7200rpm 60GB • 4200rpm external 80GB • 512mb pc2700 • Radeon 9600 @ 418.5/216 • 3DMark2001 11442 • 3DMark03 3010 • AquaMark3 25751
     
  4. ReverendDC

    ReverendDC Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    19
    Messages:
    744
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    GPUs are a luck of the draw endeavor. Some will run things it has no business running. Others overheat at the first sign of trouble.

    I would update all drivers. If this does not help, contact eMachines. You might have a faulty GPU.

    Just to give you an idea, Stylee has his GPU oc'd to 418.5/216 with a oc of the CPU. I have no oc of the CPU, but my GPU is oc'd to 424.5/219.25. Mine is running perfectly stably, but other systems with the same GPU cannot even come close to this level of oc'ing.