Broken display for games

[Treble]

I had a few minor problems in setup for FFXI, which I thought I might have ironed-out. When I started it today, though, both the Playonline software and the game itself had a broken, flickery display. I thought this may be connected to the install, but it also happens on all my games now.

I run games in 1024 x 768, so I tried the games in a lower res, to no effect. Thinking it was probably damaged drivers for my gfx card, I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them. This has had no effect either, and the problem remains the same. I may have done this wrong, though, so let me check:

• Entered SAFE MODE
• Uninstalled the drivers using SYSTEM > HARDWARE > DEVICE MANAGER
• Rebooted
• Installed the drivers successfully.

This is getting quite worrying now, so any help appreciated.

[yashiro]

What do you mean by flickery? and does this occur on your desktop too?
(It's very unlikely that your drivers have become 'damaged')

Check the physical connections and try changing the refresh rate and see what happens. (It may help if you told us what card/driver versions etc.)

[Treble]

I mentioned the 'damage' because I got a similar message when closing the Playonline app. It basically said some of the config might have been damaged as there was a problem. I didn't record the error message properly though, sorry.

Someone else on rllmuk mentioned the refresh rate, so I'll paste what I replied to him:

It's a GeForce 4 MX 440, and all the settings are the defaults. Refresh rate is set to 'Applications control refresh rate'.

It doesn't happen with my desktop. Wasn't sure what else to look at, but AVI and WMV files run fine. I also did a benchmark on my display using fresh diagnose, and it returned some results perfectly ok, although I doubt that helps. It seems to be confined to games only

Thanks for the help, btw.

[Treble]

Can anyone recommend a few good PC advice forums please?

[yashiro]

If its confined to games then its either a refresh rate or driver issue.

Re-install DirectX9.
Re-install the latest drivers.

Go into the Nvidia control panel. Find the panel mentioned by the you/other bloke. Set the refresh to 85Hz for 1024x768.

See if that works.

If not, do Start, run, dxdiag. Go into the more help tab, override.
Set that to 85.

Try running a game again.

[Treble]

I've done all of the above, to no effect. Got the latest DirectX 9(b), downloaded and installed the latest drivers for the card. Ran 'update driver' just in case it hadn't worked, but it had. Changed to 85hz; used DxDiag to change the settings to 85. None of that worked. Ran through the troubleshooter, and that advised lowering the Hardware Accelerator. Doing that, it is fine at this point, but any higher and it goes back to the same problem:



Obviously, it works at a crawl like this, so is no good.

[yashiro]

Have you ran the tests from the dxdiag applet?

[Spatial]

Sorry to hijack your thread Treble, but I thought it would be better to shoe horn my problem into this one rather than making yet another `PC cry for help` thread

I'm getting choppy displays when playing games too - I've had them for a little while and put it down to my hardware not being up to much, but now I've upgraded to a half decent rig its bugging me

Its almost like a refresh issue, where if action on the screen moves, theres almost a slicing action where portions of the screen are severed into sections. I've tried altering refesh rates ( my monitor only goes up to 85hz) and that makes little difference

Its only slight but noticable in Call of Duty and such if you stand at a static object ( ie:- infront of a wall ) and move the mouse left and right

Possibly the worst one is Medal of Honour Allied Assault where things are so choppy its unreal ( and very distracting ) Anyone got any ideas ?

System :- AMD Athlon 2.6, Radeon 9800 Pro, Windows XP, 512mb RAM

[Treble]

Have you ran the tests from the dxdiag applet?

Yes. DirectDraw is fine.
No. Direct 3D still doesn't work properly.

On the test, it says:

"Do you see the [example] box with Direct 3D written on it?"

And I do, but with the broken, flickering textures. You can only answer 'yes' or 'no' to it though, and there is no further troubleshooting here that I haven't tried.

EDIT - this was with the hardware acc set back to full, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to run the Direct 3D tests, of course.

[yashiro]

Very fishy. Could your card have acquired a hardware fault?
You seem to have done most of the right things to erradicate any issues - save a full format, re-install.

Maybe try another / older driver set?

Spatial, it sounds like you need to make sure Vsync is turned on?

[Treble]

Very fishy. Could your card have acquired a hardware fault?

Maybe try another / older driver set?

<snip>

Rolled back the driver, and it's made no difference. So that's two drivers (my original one and the updated one I put on earlier today) that it has failed with. Is it worth taking the card out, replacing it, removing all traces of installs and drivers and starting from scratch, or is there anything else I can try first? It seems unlikely that it's a hardware fault, although I suppose it's possible.

[yashiro]

Given the current situation you have little choice but to try your own suggestion.

If you have a spare vid card its worth seeing what that does in this PC.

[Treble]

Thanks for the help. My options after taking it out are:

A) Check the connections and reinstall everything

B) Smash the ****ing thing into a million pieces for making me waste 5 hours trying to solve the problem

[yashiro]

I see a spoonful of A followed by light sprinkling of B.

[Treble]

Last throw of the dice, in case this helps. Here are some screen caps of the problem:





These artifacts flicker around all parts of the screen at very high speed. Other games won't even load properly. All you see are some static, broken polys.