Asus P5Q-E and Random pixels during boot

[Harblar]

Hey all!

I just put together a new system for myself a few days ago.

C2D E8500
4gb of OCZ Reaper ddr2 800
Asus 9800gt video card
on a P5Q-E board

The problem I keep encountering is a random white pixel noise and flickering during the boot. This only occurs at random. Sometimes it boots just fine. Once windows loads it always goes away and there are no artifacts what so ever.

Anybody got a clue as to what maybe causing this? As I said, it's random and doesn't seem to effect windows, so I can live with it, but it does annoy me!

Any suggestions you could offer would be most appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Automata]

to the forums!

The only time that I've seen characters get messed up in the BIOS or during POST is if the video card's memory is severely damaged.

I'd suggest checking out the program "Furmark". Run it full screen at the highest resolution. Let it run for a few hours or so and make sure it doesn't crash or get artifacts.

 

[Evilsizer]

its either your PSU is having problems or the GPU is bad. the only reason for pixel problems is lack of power the video card or bad power. Then you have to consider somehow the GPU core or memory is having issues with either to much or not enough voltage. which could be from bad voltage regulator or caps on the card are failing for some reason.

 

[Nebulous]

Yup. I would bet the video card is being underpowered.

 

[jayfella]

+1 vid card underpowered. experienced that myself.

 

[Harblar]

Thanks for the replies.

I ran the furmark test for a while and at 1680x1050res and 4xMSAA and was getting 24fps and no artifacts, so I'm guessing it's not the video cards problem.

Do you think it's an issue with the PCI-E power cable or an Issue with the MB?
Are there any BIOS settings I might look at tweaking that could give the card a little boost? I tried taking the PIC-E Sata voltage to 1.6 in the bios. Not sure if this has anything to do with the vid card, but either way it didn't seem to work.

As I mentioned earlier, the pixelation continues through the windows loading bar and then disappears when the windows vista circular flag graphic pops up. Is it possible that windows is causing the PS to boost the PCI-E power back to a normal level?

 

[Evilsizer]

vista is tapping into the 3D portion of the video card.... as anything in 2D even pixelation is GPU related... no voltage in bios will fix a bad gpu or voltage regulation on the video card.. its still possible the power supply is the issue. have you tried a spare power supply?

 

[Harblar]

vista is tapping into the 3D portion of the video card.... as anything in 2D even pixelation is GPU related... no voltage in bios will fix a bad gpu or voltage regulation on the video card.. its still possible the power supply is the issue. have you tried a spare power supply?

Unfortunately, This is a new sys build. I have other PS's, but none with a PCI-E 6pin connector. Any bench marks I can run that focus on 2d performance. 3d seems fine... I've been running furmark for a few hours now with no trouble. If I can eliminate one or the other as the cause it would save some time in shipping and exchanges.

 

[Evilsizer]

well if you have a psu with no pcie 6pin connector. the vidoe card comes with a adaptor to plug into 2 4pin molex connectors. to test 2 just try to go into the bios, there isnt much you can do to test 2d.. its not as hard on the gpu as 3d is, since 3d mode runs higher voltage for the higher clocks. then the gpu does have a issues when in 2d mode...

 

[Harblar]

well if you have a psu with no pcie 6pin connector. the vidoe card comes with a adaptor to plug into 2 4pin molex connectors. to test 2 just try to go into the bios, there isnt much you can do to test 2d.. its not as hard on the gpu as 3d is, since 3d mode runs higher voltage for the higher clocks. then the gpu does have a issues when in 2d mode...

Heh, Guess I should actually look at All the cables in the box... Not that it did any good. rebooted 3 times with no prob... 4th time, pixels and flickering. Guess I picked a crap card.

Thanks for the Help. And Now I'm off to new egg to initiate an RMA! yay...

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

to the forums!

The only time that I've seen characters get messed up in the BIOS or during POST is if the video card's memory is severely damaged.

That may be caused by a cracked PCB on the video card.

 

[Automata]

That may be caused by a cracked PCB on the video card.

Entirely possible, but the memory was toasted on that thing

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Entirely possible, but the memory was toasted on that thing

I remembered getting a used Radeon 9800 Pro in April, 2007 and it started off fine in 2D, and then when just wiping a HDD with a wiping utility, the video suddenly corrupted! Then after I rebooted, the BIOS screen had squares, blinking coloured letters and numbers!

It sometimes went away briefly after I reseated it. Made me suspect a hairline crack somewhere.

 

[Automata]

I remembered getting a used Radeon 9800 Pro in April, 2007 and it started off fine in 2D, then the BIOS screen had squares and blinking coloured letters and numbers. It sometimes went away briefly after I reseated it. Made me suspect a hairline crack somewhere.

Honestly, that sounds exactly like the issue with my 7800gt. It got the infamous "card is not plugged in" error when logging into Windows, so 3d was out the window. Let it sit for a long time, got a 8800gts 640 when it came out. Got the 7800 back and attempted to fix it. Turns out there were two capacitors that had literally blown themselves apart and oozed all over the board. Cleaned it up, replaced the caps and it ran like new

When it had the bad caps, you could (while running Furmark/ATITool) touch the card and it would instantly lock up and crash the computer, artifacts everywhere.