gpu ATI Radeon X1600 Pro Problems

I purchased my ATI Radeon X1600 Pro AGP card a month ago and whenever i try to play a 3d game wierd bars and colors come out of the textures, for example Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Call of Duty 2,even Battlefield 2 I'll be playing and a few seconds later wierd colors and bars appear to be coming out of textures. I have all the latest bios updates, chipset updates, and Catalyst updates. Does anyone know what is wrong?

BTW, I have
Dell Dimension 8300 desktop (2.6 ghz)
ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 512MB
1 GB Ram
Windows XP Home Edition

quote monkey_ninjas316

Do you know how warm your video card is getting? It could be artifacts from over heating.

Do you think it might be because im not getting enough power to the video cards fan?
Also How do you know how warm it is getting and wut temp should it be?

EDIT:
I have the some ATI Tool and it says it is at like 139degrees Fahrenheit.
So artifacts are the wierd shapes and cones coming from the textures and also these weird boxes that are greenish yellow?

This message was edited by SXC on May 07 2006.

Have you tried maxing out your fan speed in games to see if that helps unless it really isnt over heating at all. If your one of the many trying to run this card off a older 300wt or less psu with low amps on the 12v+ then you could also run into artifacts. How many watts is the psu and how many amps are on the 12v+? (usually a sticker on the side of the psu will indicate each rail and how many amps are on each one)

I found out that I have a 12 Volt rail with 250 watts. Is that sufficient for my x1600 Pro?

This message was edited by SXC on May 09 2006.

This message was edited by SXC on May 09 2006.

quote Tweaker

Though saying your psu is in-efficient and causing you to get artifacts wouldnt be a bad assumption.

No, it wouldn't be bad to assume at all. An X1600PRO on a 250w PSU..

Doesn't your computer ever shut down during gaming? When I was using a 350w PSU for a little bit, and I swapped a 6600GT into my computer (because the card was out of the other computer with the 350w PSU), my computer would just completely shutdown and restart during a game after about 30 minutes sometimes. It wouldn't do that with my 9800PRO.

But I don't see how a 250w PSU is supplying constant, steady power to all your components. Might be time to upgrade.

EDIT: I see that you have a Dell, now, and that the PSU is a 250watt Dell PSU, which everyone claims a Dell 250w is equal to around a normal 300w PSU. But, still, it wouldn't hurt to upgrade.

Now... here comes the hard part. Upgrading a Dell's PSU. The use proprietary motherboards and don't follow the ATX standard (bastards). But, that's not true on ALL of their models. I read that from the 8200 or 8250 and on, they switched to ATX. Well, we have an Dimension 8250 (P4 2.4ghz, 768MB RDRAM, 2 HDD's, 2 DVD drives, 6600GT (535mhz/1000mhz), etc.) and, it wasn't that the PSU failed, but I felt that an upgrade to the PSU was necessary. At the time, it had an overclocked 9800PRO, but anyways, I bought an Ahanix 350w PSU Standard ATX, and it worked. It was a high quality PSU, still running quiet.

I think a site called powercooler.com or something (someone will chime in and give the right url) sells PSU's for Dell's. Although, they are overpriced, but they sell high wattage PSU's.

Do some research before you spend extra for a "Dell PSU" from another site specializing in replacement "Dell PSU's".

This message was edited by Iceguy2003 on May 10 2006.

THE SOLUTION FOR THIS PROBLEM IS EASY AS I SOLVED IT WITH 2 ATI RADEON X1600 PRO AGP 512.

FIRST: THE POWER SOURCE is one of the problems , the radeon card needs 20A in line with 12 Volts POWER SOURCE. and an extra fan that shoots wind directly to the graphic card chip.

SECOND: YOU NEED TO INSTALL OBLIGATORY ATI TOOLS SOFTWARE, AND INCREASE FAN SPEED, THIS WILL HELLP ON COOLING THE CARD. BUT GETTING THE CORRECT POWER SOURCE AS PER MENTIONED ABOVE YOUR ARE DONE!

THIRD: ENSURE YOU HAVE AT LEAST OVER 1 GB RAM to use this card.

THIS WORKS GREAT , AND BRINGS THOS STRANGE COLORS TO DISSAPEAR >

Oooops forgot to mention my X1600 was an ASUS EAX1600XT Silent/TVD the one with the heatpipes, first I tried a fan screwed directly to the heatasink.

Needless to say it didn't work, so then I thought it may be my cases airflow, a it was pretty poor so a Thermaltake Tsunami, round IDE/floppy cables, and sleeving all my wiring (blowing up and loosing 450 gig on 3 hard drives, one wire earthing on the case was not a good idea)I went back to the idea of the heatsink. I took that off bought a Zalman VF-900Cu LED with ramsinks to find I was still suffering with the same problem.

Now I find out that its probably the PSU, over-complicaing things me ........................never.....

Hi

I've taken your advice and got myself a OCZ 450W Modstream PSU.
Here are the rails and Ampage 450W: +3.3V(28A), +5V(45A), +12V(26A) Hopefully this will cure things, I'll let you know after it 's fitted and I've been on COD2 for a couple of hours