More display problems with my Alienware Area 51, running out of solutions.

[azuza001]

Ok, this is really starting to bother me. Long story short I purchased an Alienware cheap off of someone, machine seems to run great. Only issue is this display problem. Originally thought it was either the LCD screen dying, the Video Card dying, or maybe a bad wire somewhere in the machine. Now I don't know what it could be.

The issue now is if I go into the Nvidia control panal and have the brightness above 27% on the green channel I get red vertical lines all over any areas on the screen that are white. This includes the mouse cursor. If I bring it down to 27% or lower the effect go's away almost completly (99.9% of the areas now show fine). The only place it really shows up is on the mouse cursor.

Also, when booting the machine at the very beginning it shows an Alienware Head in the center of the screen and an Intel Icon/Image on the lower right. The Intel Icon/Image is white letters and the red lines are all over that too. This makes me believe it's a hardware problem.

If I boot the machine up using the Intergrated Intel graphics I get a different effect, this one effects both the white areas and teal areas. White has the red lines and teal has dark blue lines. Also there are random "pixles" all over the screen that are the wrong color that bounce around as I move the brightness under Intels control panel up and down.

I replaced the LCD and that didn't fix the problem. If I use the HDMI output on the computer the effect doesn't show up on my external monitors. The effect really doesn't show up when playing 3d games and the computer doesn't drop frames or overheat. I pulled both the processor and video card out, cleaned them off, and applied Artic Silver 5 to them, all that did is make the temps go down (always a good thing I suppose).

I'm running out of ideas, Google has been no help for me. What other part could be causing this issue? The Inverter? Or could it be something wrong with the motherboard itself? Any and all help would be appreciated.

Also, the effect doesn't show up on screen captures when I view the pics on another computer, so it's got to be a hardware related issue. I will try and take some pics and post them up if I can get my hands on a camera that won't make it look like total crap.

 

[CompuTamer]

How old is the machine? If it's under warrenty, send it back. That's a hardware issue for sure.

One thing you can try, check if the vBios can be flashed. If so, read up how to do so, and then change ALL the clock speeds to the same thing, disabling downclocking. I've had GPUs give artifacts cause they're clocked too low for the resolution they're pushing. My own 4850 is a good example. Would crash driving two screens at powerplay settings, but would work fine in 3D mode. Set all the clocks to the same, and haven't had a problem since.

 

[azuza001]

Hmm, I think you may be onto something, but not in the proper way. I just got done with a round of Left For Dead, and this time I used the Laptops monitor instead of the HDMI output. Everything went fine, never had any framerate issues. However when I dropped back into windows the red line issue was slightly worse than before. This is leading me to think that the video card is set too high (though why I am only getting it on the laptops monitor and not on the HDMI I am not sure). I'm wondering if I do a Bios flash with a lower clock setting on the video card if this would fix the issue. I'm also wondering if there is any way in Windows that I can "modify" these settings just for testing purposes. What do you think?

Also, what did the 9800 GT Mobility cards have the same "issue" of dying that the 8800's did?

 

[azuza001]

Hey guys, me again, sorry to bring this back up but I managed to snag a pic of my screen and what it's doing when I move the brightness beyond 27% under the Nvidia Control Pannel. Any ideas what could cause this?

Also, I noticed that the computer sees the card as a 9800GT but on the sticker on the card itself it says 8800GTX. So IS this a 8800GTX card that has a bios flash done to it, and if so could I Bios flash it back to an 8800?