Glitchy Graphics w/ Radeon 9700 Pro

[Lujan]

Hey all... thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

I run: 3.1 GHz, 2GB Ram, Radeon 9700 Pro (128 MB)

BF2 worked fine on medium and high settings, then I had issues with my comp (cooling the CPU) that lead me down the path of messing with my BIOS and other settings before realizing that it was indeed my CPU.

So now when I run BF2 I get very laggy, glitchy graphics- my ping will be fine but the framerate will be horrible and I'll see random planes of a texture blocking my view along with random changes of hue (things will become very yellow or whatever). My HUD will blink on and off and audio will eventually garble.

I've lowered settings all the way down to mostly low and medium, 1280x768 resolution. I'm not sure what stats I should provide; here are the ones that come to mind.

I've got Cat.10 drivers
AGP is set to 4x in the BIOS
AGP Aperture size is set to 256 MB
SmartGart AGP is set to off
desktop is set to 1200x1600 60Hz; game is set to 1280x768 60Hz


I noted the discrepency b/w the SmartGart AGP and BIOS AGP settings; but apparently SmartGart think 4x is unstable because when I try to change it it switches back after the necessary reboot. (Upon changing it says that it will check for system stability and switch the settings back if it needs to.)


I'm at a loss and would appreciate any help! Thanks!

[BurnTheWeed]

Maybe the video card is overheating? I had to RMA my 9700 because of a bad fan.

[Lujan]

Possibly; how would I check that?
What is RMA?


I also noticed the "hey morons, include this information in your post" thread pinned up top- I'm not at my home PC right now but I'll get the dxdiag posted here later today.

[Lujan]

Ok, apologies for not posting this initially. I'm on my way out the door for the weekend and am somewhat rushed so sorry if I left anything out; let me know and I'll get whatever you need early next week. I'll be checking the boards from other comps until then.

Like I said, I have Cat 10 drivers; I use the mobo (MSI PT880 Neo)integrated audio (AC '97); all those drivers are up to date. I can list them specifically if needed. My PSU is 500W.

My dxdiag is here: http://fodlujan.homestead.com/files/DxDiag.txt


Thanks again!

[BurnTheWeed]

Possibly; how would I check that?
What is RMA?


I would first try to reinstall the drivers. Then see if you get the artifacts in other games. Maybe shutdown the computer for awhile (let it cool down) and then see how long before the artifacts reapear.

RMA= Return Manufacturer Agreement, basically you ship your card back to ATI and they will fix it for free (minus initial shipping) as long as the card is still under warranty (ATI has a 3 year warranty on most of it's cards).