GV-R685OC-1GD bizzare artifacts, black screen, goes out, comes back, very odd

[kevinhise]

Upgraded from a HIS HD 6770
Intel DP67BA
Intel i3-2120T
16GB of 1333 Corsair memory (I think, can't remember)
Antec 550 Basiq
Linux (Slackware 13.37-current) using the FOSS xorg Radeon driver

System boots OK. Start X which looks fine for a few seconds, then some artifacts start to appear....blocks of various colors, screen becomes garbled, maybe large vertical bars....goes completely black for a few seconds...then comes back and seems to be fine, except for some lines here and there that don't go away and look left over from when it "crashed" or whatever it did.

I thought the the whole system might have locked up the first time, but it doesn't and it seems to keep working OK after it's initial stumble. I powered off/on again to see if it did the same thing...ya, it does.

The HIS had a dead black "video off" DVI-1 output a week ago which made me worry that it was going to die...might have been a heat issue, as I've corrected a fan issue, but that's not what's going on here I don't think, as the system was powered off for a while before I turned it on and it works for a few seconds before it suddenly goes haywire...and then comes back.

I don't have Windows (except in a VM) so not sure what I can do about adjusting something via a utility or updating bios. Not sure what a Linux user does in these cases.

Thanks if anyone has any ideas.

I'm thinking the card knows it has a problem and clocks itself down or something. I've not done anything in the BIOS, in fact I reset the settings to "default" because I was having trouble getting it to boot at all...something about the USB ports on this MB that are flaky.
K

[Vezina]

Install Hardware Monitor and put a screen-shot with the temperatures -> http://www.cpuid.com/

How old is the Power Supply ?!

It can be an issue with the chipset in the CPU too.

You will have to test the video card in a working system as well.

[kevinhise]

The 'sensors' command says:

$ sensors
radeon-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +48.5°C

(which is 118.4F in the desktop widget gauge -- this is much cooler than the HIS card which ran at like 150F all the time almost)

There is something with the BIOS for this MB...the PWM fans will run for a while (a day? I dunno) and then stop until I reboot (I think, haven't tried it). They weren't spinning and then they were but now they're not again, so I don't quite understand that issue yet. The are coming out of the box is 94F btw. But I don't think the issue with the card is heat...currently the system has been up for 3 days:

$ uptime
 21:11:13 up 3 days, 35 min,  3 users,  load average: 1.02, 1.06, 1.12

...and the card has worked fine without any issues AFAIK (of course I haven't been sitting here the entire time).

The PS is maybe 7 months old...the system runs continuously but has awesome filter so it's dust free.

I'm going to upgrade the BIOS at some point if I can without having to be a Windows machine to do it, and maybe I'll think about new PS...I don't have anything but a single HD and the video card in the box...the card seems to work after it's initial "freak out" so I'm not as worried as I was when I first saw it. That was truly bizarre to watch!

Thanks for the reply and some hints...I appreciate your time.

I should youtube what it does I guess. Just for kicks.
K

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I would certainly update the BIOS to the newest version as soon as possible. If that still doesn't help I would be looking at the power supply for answers.

[Vezina]

kevinhise ,i have some advice for you.
Before updating the motherboard BIOS ,which seems to be necessary ,make the system stable 100%.
Get a basic video card or something the sucks very little power and test for system stability with Memtest.
You have a lot of strange things over there.
You could also reseat the CPU in the socket and reapply fresh thermal paste on it along checking if the CPU cooler fan rotates freely.

[kevinhise]

Some update:

I have not updated the BIOS, but I did figure out how to make the case fans that are controlled by the MB run, that being to set the control temp for them down lower...apparently by default they don't come on until the MB reaches like 80C or something, and the "don't go below 30% of max RPM" doesn't actually do anything...perhaps because the MB has no way of knowing just what 30% of "max" would be? I dunno.

But anyway, the fans (2) run (1140 RPM right now) and have for days (uptime says 2.5 days now), and the air being pumped out of the case is 91.8F and ambient is 73F.

I've rebooted the machine and it no longer does the odd behavior I cited earlier...nothing was changed physically, I only went in and futzed with the fan settings in the BIOS before rebooting. After a week of running without any problems I felt confident that I could mess with it some and see if it'd "do that again" kind of thing, and it didn't. So no youtube for now.

I did have the case open...maybe I bumped something in the right direction...reseated a card or something. Not intentionally though.

Oddly though, instead of running at 118F like previously, the card now runs at 152F which is sort of odd; it's pretty much like the other card (with a single fan). With the case fans running and the output temp of the box now 10 degree F lower, I don't know how to explain why the card is running warmer and "better".

I guess there's no way to monitor the PS utilization; like if it was being overloaded or not.

Maybe the PS is the part that doesn't like being 100F and was carking at that, although it's supposed to have a PWM fan that I thought would ramp up in RPM if it didn't like the temp.

Anyway, I guess I'm a "happy customer" now. I'm going to guess that my original issue with the HIS card and DVI-1 (actually both DVIs were black until I rebooted, but only DVI-0 came back) was something to do with a) heat, and b) the xf86 driver (OSS) not handling DPMS very well (which I've since disabled - again - a lot of people have trouble with it).

Thanks for everyone's input though. Appreciate your time. The next box I build that I intend for this kind of "always on" use I'll do a little more research into I suppose (heat, parts, ECC memory, power supplies, cosmic rays, whatever).

Regards,
--kh

[neomajic]

First, thanks for posting as I have a similar problem... that black screen on and off randomly.

I have this same card in a media machine that pretty much is for movies/tv internet. I am running out of the HDMI to a Flatscreen TV. At first I thought it may have just been something to do with running on hdmi because if I am watching tv or something on the internet when I change pages or flash changes a video it will flash black and then back on for around 1-2 seconds. Never thought much of it due to it hasn't caused and inconvenience.

I recently tried to break my ankle so I've been laying around more than normal and think that this is not a normal thing this card should be doing (I recently put this card in this machine) and the machine worked fine prior.

So with all that said, I was leaning towards a heat/venting issue from the patterns I see. Your post here is also pushing me in that direction. All drivers, bios etc is up to date and this is a bigger card than what I had in here before so it could simply come down to airflow. I'll repost as I find a solution. Just throwing my thoughts out there for anyone else with a similar issue.

Side note, in case this isn't the issue, anyone know if this card has lifetime warranty, can't find the box atm.

thanks