AGP slot might be bad?

[stantheman1976]

If this is the wrong place to post this, sorry. Yesterday the power in my neighborhood was off for several hours. When it came back on there were numeropus power spikes and surges, but the whole time my computer had never been turned on or. Even the power strip that it's plugged into was off. Wehn I turned my computer on last night I noticed that my display seemed to be shaking. I have an ATI All In Wonder 128. I thought it might be my monitor at first, but I hooked the monitor back up to my onboard adapater and it displayed fine, so I made the assumption that my video card had gone bad. The card is only 1 year old though. I went and got a new ATI 256 card today and now it seems to be doing the same thing. Is my AGP slot bad? Has anyone ever had anything similar happen? I really don't think the power could have affected either one because, like I said, the power strip was turned off, so no juice was going to anything while the power was fluctuating. Please, if you guys have ever heard of anything like this I need some advice bad.

[redwudz]

A AGP slot could go bad, though that's not common. Has the AGP card been removed and replaced a lot?.

It seems a odd coincidence that the card 'went bad' the same time as you were having power problems. If the onboard video wasn't working, I would say a bad power supply or a failing motherboard, but that seems a little unlikely.

I would pull out the AGP card and blow out the AGP slot with some canned air, then inspect it with a strong light. Also check the contact 'fingers' on the new card closely and see if you can see the faint marks from the socket on each connection.

And not to forget the software end of things. Uninstall the AGP driver for the card and reinstall it, just in case of driver corruption. Check your video card settings in the Control panel and see if anything is out of spec. there.

And this question would be better in the Computer forum. Moving you.

[stantheman1976]

The 128 card is the only card that's ever been in that slot, so it hasn't been removed often. Nothing appears wrong on the software side of things. All drivers are showing up fine. I'm trying to think of other things that it could be. There shouldn't be any heat issues. I have an exhaust card sucking heat directly away from the card and 6 other fans in various locations keeping the whole case cool. I'll clean the slot well tomorrow and see if anything looks screwed up.

[ROF]

Was the computer on when the power failed? When you turned it back on did you receive the notice about windows being shutdown improperly and that one or more of your discs must be checked for errors? Did you allow this run it's course? Were there any errors reported?

[stantheman1976]

No. The power wwent off while I was at arok. I turn my computer off every morning before I leave and flip the main switch on teh strip it's connected to. The power came back on about 6:30pm and there were still fluctuations for about 30 minutes. I knew this because the lights in the house were fluctuating. About 8:00 I turned the computer back on and that's when I noticed it. No error messages or drivers showsing any problems. Everything works fine except the display shaking. It's not happening as bad as when I first noticed. It's shaking just enough for you to question your eyes and wonder if it really is moving or not.

[thevoelk]

Check your RAM also. It's shouldn't make it "shake", but bad RAM can cause video issues.

[stantheman1976]

Last night my RAM was reading as 448MB instead of 512 also. that was strange. Well, today it reads fine. I popped the old card back in and now it seems to be fine. This is pretty f***ed up if you ask me. That's what I love and hate about computers. They are powerful and can do amazing things, but are moody as hell sometimes and give you nothing but trouble.

[stantheman1976]

I'm at my wits end about this. It seemed ok for a while, but now this is happeneing again. If I take the ATI card out and hook up the onboard graphics things are fine, but the measly 8 or 16 megs on board don't allow me to do a whole lot. It's not the card. I can say this for certain because I bought a new 256 MB ATI card and it did the same thing after I wiped the HD and installed it. I was told before that it might be electrical interference from speakers nearby or extra fans inside my PC so I took out what extra I had and moved the tower so it is isoltaed and put any speakers on the other side of the room. I'm close to chunking this thing and buying a new PC.

I noticed witht eh onboard graphics the monitor uses a lower display timing. Can that be changed? I can access the function, but it won't let me choose a diofferent rate.

[stantheman1976]

5 minutes later and I think I hay have it. The display rate was at 80 Hertz refresh rate. I changed it in Windows to 60 Hertz and it seems to be working now.

[jagabo]

The missing DRAM is caused by the onboard video. It doesn't seem to be automatically disabled by the presence of the AGP card. Check your BIOS for a setting to disable it.

60 Hz refresh is pretty low. You'll see some flickering. You should shoot for 70+.

[stantheman1976]

If I go above 60 it starts flickering again. I know I should be able to go much higher, but I'll take what I can get at this point.

[jagabo]

I think the two problems (missing DRAM, shaking) are related. Disabling the onboard video controller may fix both.

[stantheman1976]

Is the onboard not disabled by having the card installed? How can I disable it then?