Is my x800pro going bad? Strange artifacts on primary display.

[degrub]

reminds me of an IBM punch card...LOL

Sorry, i know that's not helpful. Hope you get your drivers sordid.

[Nuno]

Even with DX emulation, you are still using the drawing engine of the GPU. Usually single or multiple bit memory errors show up as sparkling/twinkling pixels on the screen, or can also look like striped/blocky pieces in the case of larger block transfer errors. From what I've seen, my guess is that its a drawing/rendering engine failure in the GPU during a BLIT function.... either that or your DAC is toast.
Any chance you can try it with a digital LCD to rule out the dac?

No, as I said it started happening on the VGA head (primary) It works just fine on the secondary with a DVI -> VGA adapter, that I´m using as primary, as a workaround.

But it only does it when starting 3d apps, even with RGB emulation. In the desktop it´s fine, playing video is fine, and it doesn´t show up when capturing with printscreen...

Any ideas how to test that BLIT function?´

PS: Direct draw test on DXdiag doesn´t show any artifacts...


PS: it only happens in 2d when using DirectX emulation. Using other software engines, like software rendering in Blood 2 and Quake 2 doesn´t show any artifacts. I suppose these engines also use the 2D part of the GPU, right?

[rylan]

Not sure on how to test specific functions of the GPU, unless you can get a hold of ATI's internal diagnostic programs :P
I'm not entirely sure how that chip splits up its rendering and output stage between the two heads. The Quake2/Blood2 3d engine is using openGL if I remember, right? So its sounding like one of the DirectX function calls that uses a particular part of the GPU is causing the problem.
Either way, you should still get RMA the board, and throw in a temporary card (even an old PCI one just so you can use your computer) while waiting for yours to come back.