serious problem with radeon 9800 256mb

i have a radeon 9800 256 graphics card alls been well for the last year or so untill last month when i was playing bf1942 i noticed all the graphics were messed, eg. little triangles all over the place vehicals look like they have metal plates all over them and the background is all patchy this is only from a distance when i move closer all seems fine, i have even reduced the quality of the game to the low settings and its still the same and when i play the sims 2 etc its also the same.. i have installed the new drivers done a system restore and all else i can think of, is there somthing else i need to do... thanks for any help ...

 

will do mate thanks , could a card suddenly go slightly faulty ,and if i try it on another machine and its fine what could it be i mean ive installed new software sure, but nothing i can think of to make it do what it is thanks again..

 

This sounds like corrupted video card drivers to me. Does your comp crash frequently or has it randomly rebooted recently?

I'll start noticing texture corruption on my 9700 Pro when I'm in a game at times and it reboots usually due to overheating but anyhow, it rarely, but sometimes, seems to corrupt the video drivers. I re-install them and everything is back to normal.

The only exception to this is that sometimes the game files themselves are corrupted and thats what's causing the corrupted textures. So a game re-install may work.

I'd try what ddp said, if you have another machine for quick reference, just throw it in that one and see. If not, just re-install your video card drivers.

 

hi thanks well what ive done so far is reinstall the drivers from the ATI website theres 1 thats 28mb that made my computer start in safe mode so then i installed the 21mb driver it installed fine but the problem presists.. now i was going to reinstall bf1942 but its the same for the sims 2, vietnam , and pirates of the caribbean, so i didnt think it was worth reinstalling them... the games run smooth just the textures all to pot even on the lowest settings, like i say the closer i zoom in or get closer to an object everything seems fine but when i zoom out its all shapes and colours

 

Strange that the newest driver would make you start in safe mode? There's only one driver, the catalyst (which I'm not sure of the newest version). I'm assuming you have XP, so there should only be one choice for a driver. Unless you don't get the control panel.

Make sure that you uninstall your old drivers first. As in, go to control panel > add remove programs > find the ati display driver and click "remove". It will make you restart your computer, and when windows restarts, just install the new driver that you have.

 

hi again well the first 1 i downloaded i needed to have some netframe or somthing installed and the control panel was seperate it put a shortcut on the desktop for it ,but i couldnt activate the tv out port. but the 21mb driver had everything i already had and it seemed to install ok ive even uninstalled everything ive put on scince the problem started ran tune utilities do clear up the crap that was left..
now it seems fine on the older games like stronghold etc its only on the games where it seems to need alot of graphics like bf1942 etc.. so is it possible for a grapics card to loose (power) or whatever its called

 

hi i suppose thats all i can do is test in another computer, see what happens i hope it is the card so i dont have to format or anything.. it dosent stop or slow the games its just anoying.. so this video ram once its gone its gone or do i get it back some how, or is it a new card ill have to get if so should i get the 9800 again or will i need somthing better

 

Tell us what happens as far as you putting it in another computer.

Hey, ddp, do you think corrupted direct x files could cause that?

What version of direct x are you running, anyway?

 

hi im running direct x 9.b ill let you's know what happens when i try in another machine