Artifacts = death?

While playing WoW today my screen lagged a bit, and the top half had artifacts (some vertical lines) for a few seconds, and then returned to normal. I rebooted right after it happened and things have been fine since.

What I want to know is if artifacts are always hardware related, and if this is a strong sign my s about to die. Or if other things like software or drivers can cause artifacts.

I had WoW minimized for a few hours and was watching youtube videos on battery life, something I don't normally do, then proceeded to continue playing WoW by "un" minimizing it. So I hoping some drivers or software just went a little nutty, but idk.

I don't overclock and my temps are always great...I went through a lot to get good temps because my old laptop with an 8600m gt failed from heat issues. My GPU temps never go above 75c, even under max use. I usually idle around 45-50c and browse around 53c.

 

If these artifacts are continuous or appear many more times then it is a sign the video card is failing, otherwise just relax. I had very few instances in my old laptop where I saw artifacts, yet my laptop is still good and working.

 

Hmm alright. I ran furmark for 30 minutes and everything was fine, no artifacts or anything. I've also been playing WoW almost nonstop since it's happened with no problems.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2640/furmark000011.jpg

From what I understand it's possible for software/drivers to cause artifacts but it's unlikely. The guys at hardocp forums think my laptop will soon die =(

 

Your card isn't in the range of those affected by the bad bumps IIRC, so I wouldn't think that the machine will die soon. Given that you did say the one "odd" thing you did was have WoW minimized, it's entirely possible that could have caused it. Minimizing a full-screen app can cause some strange effects at times. Do you have one of the RC Flash 10 players, where there's hardware acceleration for the videos? That could also have caused some strange memory issues causing your artifacts.

If your card was on it's way out, it would do that more often, and especially in something like furmark. I think the guys at HardOCP are just being overly pessimistic.

 

Try other (preferably more graphics-intensive) games. My own laptop is more than 3 yrs old and I've had some instances of artifacts on some games, and it's still going strong.

Another reason might be overheating. Check the vents, make sure they're not clogged. But it's unlikely, since it was fine with furmark.....

 

I played games all day again today and things were fine. But when I was browsing the corners of my screen did something funny, like a flash. I'm ready to believe the cards dying.

Is there anything I can do in this situation? anything to make it last longer? any companies out there offer extended warranties that can be gotten after 90 days of purchase?

 

There is a chance it's your screen is going to fail, not your 9800M GS, do you have an external monitor at hand? If you do, use the external monitor instead of the laptop screen and see if you get similar problems on the monitor.

 

Hmm, maybe the 9M series was deffective too...

 

AFAIK the 9 series is fine.

 

It's baking time!

 

Only times I ever saw artifacts on my screen were back when I had stock clock settings for "throttle" and "2d" mode and when I overclocked too high. Otherwise I've never had artifacts on my display.

 

9 Series is allright..

but OP , it looks like ur GPU or screen is failing.. try an external monitor first.. if u don't get any , then its ur GPU... but seriously , with the temps ur getting , ur GPU should be ok...

if it is GPU problem , it is baking time

 

I can tell you for a fact , that 2 weeks after recieving my Sager, below, the card, a 512mb 9800 GTS, went bad ! I had it replaced with a 1GB 9800GTS .

1+ years and everthings ok. But , I will say this..............I owned an HP DV9035, with a 7600go that went bad, after 18 months, making a total of 2 Nvidia cards that have failed on me so far. I take care of my gear and "EXPECT" components to last a minimum of 3 years ,which I don't believe is unreasonable, before failing !

One more Nvidia fail and Im turning to the Dark Side and going with ATI !

 

I'm really disgusted with nvidia. My previous laptop had the 8600m gt which failed after 1 year, and now my 9800m gs looks like it's failing. Pathetic.

Then again, I've been playing WoW all day again and not a single glitch or artifact. I really don't know at this point.

 

Data is not the plural of anecdote.

Does anyone have actual, hard data on failure rates of ATI vs. Nvidia? I think Nvidia cards are just more popular in laptops, particularly in the ones that sell really well (HP sells a bajillion laptops per year, and some of their lines in previous years had under-par cooling, so it's no wonder so many of them had failed Nvidia cards!).

(NOT an Nvidia fanboy or anything, not by a long stretch! Just trying to steer the debate back to the realm of rationality, where this scientist finds himself most comfortable.)

(oops, now we're off topic... sorry!)

 

You are correct about NVIDIA cards being more prevalent in laptops, but I still get the feeling that ATI is doing better in terms of the Mobility failure rates.

As for their desktop cards, certainly not. NVIDIA desktop cards, particularly the old 8800 series (not 320MB and 640MB series) were pretty much un-killable. Whereas a lot of the X1000 series and HD 2000 series failed, or had bad overheating problems. The HD 2900 PRO ran hot, sucked up a massive amount of power, and underperformed quite often.

 

I agree with the esence of your argument. Obviously the lack of data makes us go to the anecdotes to try to draw a line.

At least I can say in this forum there was a huge number of failure cards for the 88xx series. Specially the 8600m GT and followed closely by the 8400m GT model. Mine hasn't failied.

The are two interesting facts about that case:
1) the reports in this forum was for a range of laptop lines and brands. The predominant brands were Dell and HP.
2) Last year in june or july I found a recommended update in Windows Update (Vista) for the 8600m drivers. it was labeled as urgent. I don't remember what happened exactly in the update.

And back on topic: those failed laptops starting by showing artifacts very frequently.

 

after the 8600m fiasco, and the admitted high failure rates (nvidia wouldn't admit to it but several of their OEMs did) its only natural for those who have been spurned by the series to look for similarities in later series like the 9xxx series which is a rebrand.

 

Alright, I think I may have found the culprit.

I found this online, is there any truth to it? Because, if so, that's EXACTLY the kinds of problems I'm experiencing. Flickering, color changing...usually when minimizing or maximizing games.

And I just ran memtest 86+....420,000 errors in 5 minutes. So my ram is definitly bad. and memtest by default tests system ram right?

SO I'm right to assume replacing the ram will fix my problem?

 

Ok, I am not expert here, but what windows system do you have? As far as I remember memtest86 worked only up to windows xp.

 

I'm using windows 7, and ran the memtest 86+ boot disc.

I'm going to test each stick individually now.

 

OK, tested both sticks. One came back bad, one came back good.

I'm running on only stick right now. hopefully i don't get any problems.

 

Bad memory is bad memory.

It matters not one whit how it is detected or how the failures manifest themselves.

 

Yeah but is it uncommon for graphical distortions to be the problem when ram goes bad? I always figured bad ram = BSOD.

So far so good though

 

same here.. quite a weird problem... but hope everything works out for u...

 

depends on how your video driver and the graphics chipset uses the memory