Maximum PC

My pc is hooked to my 42" plasma and my 26" HD monitor. It's run very tight for 4 years but the past few months something has changed.

I am getting single line ripples across the 42" every 5 minutes or so while playing HD tv and movies. I thought there was a loose connection between the DVI to HDMI connector that goes to my vid card. I tightened that up and it made a difference but still getting the ripple just not as much.

My rig is on practically 24/7 but it's not just surfing the web, it's decoding HD video pretty much all the time. My pc has all of my tv shows and favorite movies all in HD, no commercials, don't even watch cable any more. Was hoping someone had been in the same situation and could give an educated guess on what is crapping out. I think it's the video card, it's 4 years old and has worked very hard all 4 years. It's a Radeon 4890 (they don't even make the 4 series any more) HD w/1gig ram on it.

It's that time to do a brand new build but I owe a bunch of cash and can't get to it until the spring so I gotta make my current rig last. Does anyone here agree that the problem most likely lies with the vid card? Thanks.

I guess it's like a small shift of a line of pixels that seems like a wave going down the screen. Skinny and like I said when I tightened up the HDMI cable to the DVI/HDMI connector, it seemed to help.

I notice it on my 26" HD monitor when I bring up an HD picture and scroll thru it, same kind of "ripple" appears. It's not hugely noticeable but it's there. Since it's there on the monitor and tv I guess it's the card since they are both hooked up to it.

Knowing I was to keep this rig longer than planned I replaced the PSU with a brand new 750 from Antec so the card should be getting plenty of power.

I'm just fishing, hoping a member out there was in a similar situation and a vid card replacement did the trick.

Have you tried to update the driver for the card? If you are thinking about it, try loading it this way it works for me every time:

Download new driver.

Download and install Ccleaner which we will use later.

Shut off the anti-virus (very important)

Uninstall driver via the control Panel app. Say no to reboot.

Find and delete the AMD/ATI folder holding the old driver and empty the recycle bin.

Now run the registry section of Ccleaner.

Reboot the pc and cancel the popups

Shut off the anti-virus (very important)

Install the new driver and reboot as required.

If it was a bad driver install causing the rip before and it is gone now, you are good to go. If not, it

sounds like a bad vid card to me, replace it with one of these if you can swing it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150613

Nasty

Thanks a lot for the reply.

I was thinking, when I have problems like programs not running right it usually gets fixed when I calm down the overclock on my CPU. I have my vid card overclocked with a Catalyst program so I shut that all down and am running everything stock speed and it seemed to have helped a lot.

It still is happening but not near as much as it used to. Gonna try an update the vid card drivers, I think I can do it thru the Catalyst program. Let you know what happens.

If it happens on both the TV and computer monitor, then it's doubtful it is them. And if you've used the same HDMI cable, or you replace it, then it's probably not the cable. I'm doubtful it's a software issue, unless the last thing you did before this started was update your video card drivers. Check the manufacturer's release notes to see if this is a known issue, or just revert the drivers to a previous version you knew worked. If it goes away, then it might be a new bug in the driver set.

So it's most likely a refresh issue...but what is causing it? If it's not electro-magnetic interference, and don't rule out the RAMDAC, even using a digital DVI or HDMI connection, as all the video card's signal and frame buffer still go throug the RAMDAC (they just bypass the DAC portion), the culprit will most likely be within the video card itself.

Consider bumping the voltages of your video card up a bit see if that helps, and if not consider testing with a different video card.

I guess it's worth mentioning when my CPU is overclocked, I get errrors when I try to unzip stuff which goes away when I restore the CPU to default settings.

Like I said the system is 4 years of all the time HD decoding. Where do I go to bump the voltage for the vid card? Is that in BIOS??

This is most likely from memory and timing errors...most likely could be fixed by upping CPU voltage.



You will find it in your BIOS. Depending on the video card, there might be a software utility you can run to manage it as well.

Couldn't find the voltage for the vid card straight away in BIOS. Any clues?? Any recommendations on the voltage for my CPU?? It's an AMD Phenom II 955 3.2ghz Black Edition.

edit - just looked it up and stock volt for the 955 is 1.35 so I will bump it up to 1.40 and see what happens.

Just to check in with the nice people that helped me out.

Push voltage to 1.40 on my CPU and a very small % on my northbridge, southbridge but could not find where to bump volt to my vid card. Noticeable improvement. I did a slight overclock on the CPU and it held up when I unzipped a large file, no errors. Still getting a line or two across my screen but it's few and far in between.

Would like to add volts to the vid card and if anyone has an idea on how to do that. I have an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe mobo with the latest BIOS flash, all 4 cores unlocked.

Look in the Catalyst Control Center for Performance>AMD Overdrive, enable both AMD overdrive and Graphics overdrive>Click on Configure Graphics Overdrive>check Enable Graphics Overdrive, scroll to the bottom for Power setting.

Nasty

I use the Catalyst program all the time but there is no place within it to increase voltage to the vid card. I can increase performance sure but not the voltage.

Well, when I overclocked my CPU and was getting errors, they were fixed when I increased the vcore. I am hoping the same will come true for my GPU. That Catalyst program allows me to overclock the GPU but does nothing to allow me to increase the voltage for the GPU.

I am downloading right now a promising program called MSI Afterburner which appears to be a pumped up version of Catalyst. I can easily increase the voltage of my vid card's GPU, memory and even monitor their temps very closely.

I'm like 90% there right now, the lines in my tv's screen don't appear that often and this MSI Afterburner program should be the key to tighten everything up. Fortunately, I'm NOT using my original 4 year old PSU but my recently purchased Antec PSU and I only need to get to say May when I can build my brand new rig.

It is good to hear you are CPU stable. As for your video card, one important thing to remember about this is that if your video card was running fine before, and you didn't change anything, and increasing the graphics voltage fixes it...then chances are there is either something wrong with the power being supplied to it, or perhaps the electrical components on the video card have "worn", so to speak - check for blown/leaky capacitors and anything that looks "odd" on the actual PCB...even loose components.

I'd still see if you can borrow a friend's card and do a swap out and see if that in anyway helps it. If it does, then chances are you do have a faulty video card and if you can't live with the anomaly, then consider replacing it.

Well, the Catalyst program overclocks the card but there is no way to increase the voltage to the card to help make it stable.

I tried the ASUS program with the registry tweak I found on the net but I can't get it to work. I can tweak stuff just like the Catalyst program but nothing with voltage.

You need to do it from within the bios. If you don't have an option, then you won't be able to do it reliably or without risk (beyond the risk of raising default voltages).

Was reading about the Catalyst software and discovered it is based on the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5. I blew out my SSD so had to install Win7 on one of my rotating drives and never got around to installing the Framework.

Downloaded and installed and so far everything looks right on. I still get this line but it's much, much smaller and a lot less frequent believe it or not I think it could be the HDMI cable. It plugs into a DVI converter out of the vid card and I must say it the connection seems quite loose. I wrapped the cable around an external drive to create tension and force the cable to press into the adapter and the pic definitely improved. Like most problems it's a combination of a few things. I should be okay until May and my new build.

...so spring for a new HDMI cable, they are cheeeeep today...you are going to need a new one for your next built anyway.

Try the DVI cable from your vid card to the TV and see if the line goes away. If it does, it is either the HDMI side of the card going south or the cable is bad. Yes, one function of a card can go bad and the others will work.

Nasty

Wanted to end this thread with a big thanks to all that helped and I figured out what caused the lines to appear.

I did 3 things all at once but I am pretty sure I know which helped the most. I swapped vid card outputs, replaced the 4 year old HDMI cable with a 1 year old HDMI cable but what I think did it was something I did by accident.

I reached behind the tv to plug in the HDMI and I plugged into the HDMI port that is BELOW the original port that had been used for 4 years. I truly believe using the brand new port or.....not using the old port made the lines go away. I mean not even a little line or nothing, perfect picture.

A Captain Obvious solution...good work! It's a good point to try different ports when you are changing cables out. I once troubleshot a component video issue with my Wii...thinking it was a crappy cable, exchanged it, until I realized that my component IN was the problem.