Video Output Garbage/Breakup

[jdavis37]

I've been chasing a gremlin in my system but this morning had a new one.. first problem in 3 days...

Does anyone know what would make the video on screen start to break up.. sort of like the green pixel look in the movie the Matrix. It looked like a bizaare screen saver... the screen just started breaking apart into mush, almost as if the screen display were breaking apart into its rgb components. Power to the system was still on, the mouse still worked though I could not read anything in order to gain access to my video settings etc. On boot up all is happy again for now.

What would make a video display do this? Software or hardware?

Thanks
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Athlon 700
MSI MK7Pro Motherboard
128 MB Pc133 Micron Ram
2 20.5 Gb IBM 7200 rpm drives
Matrox G400 32Mb Single head video card
50X EIDE cd rom drive
Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card
Plextor 4220 SCSI CD Burner
SB Live Value sound card
Foltron 300W Power Supply
Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card
Matrox Power Desk 6.20.028

No conflicts in the IRQ listing though I have noticed the IRQ assignments made on screen following boot up are different than those listed inside windows

Also I just lowered my refresh rate to 75 Hz though have been running for 9 months at 85 Hz

My PC is 10 months old and had no problems til about a month ago then had intermittant system lockups, where all lights on front panel were lit, pc screen black ( or frozen with frozen mouse ) and time for hard boot. That problem MAY have been caused by 2 large speaker magnets in a subwoofer assembly but not sure.

[Rob M.]

If this is a one-time thing, don't worry about it. If this keeps happening, lower your agp setting to 1x.

[jdavis37]

After having my system built last February I sort of went brain dead with the details as was a happy camper. Thanks for the AGP information. I had forgotten about the earlier problems some people had with AGP at 2x in Athlon systems. Next dumb question is am trying to remmeber where this is set at. Thanks.

PS I wouldnt be worried about it after 1 time but added to the other problems I've been having am not sure the 2 arent related.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

jdaavis37,try using the mtstu300 utility to change to x1 AGP. find it here http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/dr.../ftp_util2.cfm

[Rob M.]

If you want to really test out your stability, try running q3radiant for a while. I can't even run it at 1x, after a little while my system just locks, same as when I run at 2x.

I don't think you even need quake3, although I may be wrong. Just open the demo map and start making curves..

[ayoub_ibrahim]

well if he needs a stability test program, he could also try the on from this recent thread http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/010010.html

[Rob M.]

The one mentioned there is for cpu stability testing, the problem here (from the thread title) is obviously video card.

[jdavis37]

Thanks for the threads.. I will run the cpu stability test tonight while I sleep.

The problems with my PC could be anything, not just video. The video problem that led to this posting was the wierdest thing I have ever seen and it has not happened again. But it may or may not be related to other problems which I have had though those too now seem to be gone. Nothing like random intermittant problems to drive you nuts! Thanks for the help thus far and keep them coming!