Old video card ghosting - any way to fix it?

[Ai Haibara]

Okay - I'll admit right away that yes, the video card in question is roughly 10-11 years old (it was part of a Compaq OEM WinME system), AND is probably permanently screwed up, but I thought I'd ask, anyway.

According to the stickers on the tower, the card is a 32MB NVidia TNT2, and currently exhibits faint horizontal ghosting on-screen (if I place a window in the middle of the screen, for example, it'll ghost elements to both left and right sides). I've tried more than one monitor, and it does it regardless of which OS I'm using, Windows or Linux. (It seemed to happen at some point during the time I'd been using Knoppix 5, though I can't be sure that was actually the cause.)

The card is currently the best PCI standalone video card I have, unless I track down another (better) PCI graphics card; my newer systems all use integrated graphics components or cards not really compatible with the decade-old hardware. The only other option I have would be to replace the TNT2 card with an ATI Rage Pro Turbo (I think it's a Pro Turbo... it's definitely a Rage), and that'd probably be a fair step back.

So, I was just wondering if there was actually anything I could do to 'fix' it. If not, no big deal.

[jagabo]

In your window-in-the-middle example what is the distance between the window and the ghost images? A few pixels? Much more?

[Ai Haibara]

Not much at all. If I open a regular directory window, the text will immediately ghost in both directions, and aspects of the window frame will, as well.

Basically, the ghosting looks like this (apologies for the mediocre photo - I wanted to at least show the effect, though the picture may exaggerate it a little, I'm not completely sure, so I didn't try for a perfectly-lined-up picture. ):

[jagabo]

I was thinking it was a poor VGA cable. But the ghosting is way too severe for that.

[Noahtuck]

I was thinking it was your monitor but after reading your OP again i see it does it on different monitors.

I had a a CRT that did the same thing, had a ghosting effect where it look like one color of everything was slightly off from the other, showed 2 of every letter, number, etc. slightly out of phase from each other.

I thought my eyes were wiggin out and i was having double vision at first!!

the card is a 32MB NVidia TNT2

HOLY BEJEEZUS!!!!!!!
I have one of those, and a 16mb version and maybe a 64mb one, and an old 16mb VOODOO, those things are like 10 years old!!!!!

[Ai Haibara]

I'd used different VGA cables when I tried the other monitor, too.

HOLY BEJEEZUS!!!!!!!
I have one of those, and a 16mb version and maybe a 64mb one, and an old 16mb VOODOO, those things are like 10 years old!!!!!

You could always send them all to me.

Yeah, it's all old hardware... for the most part (with the obvious exception) everything in the tower is working okay. Even my old Win98 towers, too.

[jagabo]

The only other option I have would be to replace the TNT2 card with an ATI Rage Pro Turbo

Why is that the only other option? You can still get PCI cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709+600007853&QksAut...e=&srchInDesc=

and AGP cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709+600007850&QksAut...e=&srchInDesc=

Most of them are probably far better than the ones you have.

[Ai Haibara]

That was one of the possibilities I accounted for when I wrote, "unless I track down another (better) PCI graphics card" above... though I'll admit I didn't actually know how readily available PCI/AGP cards still were, in stores.

Swapping the card for the lesser card was an "if all else fails spectacularly"-type last resort.