Solve : Faulty Graphics chip or bad Monitor??

1.	Solve : Faulty Graphics chip or bad Monitor??
Answer» hey peeps! I have an issue it seems with my computer monitor, or possibly Graphics chip (GPU). anyway the problem appered the other day, and again today. The screen on my monitor suddenly looked all broken and distrorted, and i could see the bars created by the electron beams flickering behind the image. this image stayed frozen on the screen until i manually shut off the computer unit, shutting off the monitor itself did not work, only the computer unit. thinking it may be my GPU i ran a diagnostics test on the GPU, video card and memory, but it detected nothing..although the test was simply to test the color generating capabilities of the GPU..not to detect faults in hardware. the bottom line is i think that the monitor may have an internal problem with the mecahnisms them selves, or something is malfunctioning, because of the flickering! does anyone know what could be wrong for sure? all of these speculations is just me testing novice troubleshooting skills i think a new monitor may be in the question soon....Be fore buying a monitor see if you can use another one to testOOOH okay! i have an LCD monitor on this comp would that work to unplug it and try it on the other comp? LCD Monitors do not have electron beams It is therefore your GPU, this happens when the memory is fried, or when you overclock too high. (possibly due to overheating too) This happened on my old PowerColor 9600. I took it out without grounding myself first, I put it in again and all it did was give big lines down the screen and artifacts everywhere! I swapped out to a 9700 Pro and it was smooth sailing from there Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM LCD Monitors do not have electron beams and even if they did- a monitor is not GOING to cause the computer itself to freeze.Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM LCD Monitors do not have electron beams It is therefore your GPU, this happens when the memory is fried, or when you overclock too high. (possibly due to overheating too) This happened on my old PowerColor 9600. I took it out without grounding myself first, I put it in again and all it did was give big lines down the screen and artifacts everywhere! I swapped out to a 9700 Pro and it was smooth sailing from there I KNOW they dont have them..yeesh hahaha! i meant would an LCD monitor work to test the GPU as in case its the only other desktop monitor i have. do you think it could have been damaged by the smorgasbord of dust i blew out of the case when i replaced the RAM? that would explain why it overheated! thanks for the replies too!Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 12, 2009, 01:59:15 AM Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM LCD Monitors do not have electron beams and even if they did- a monitor is not going to cause the computer itself to freeze. ALSO knew that i was just making sure it wasnt the monitor ...is trying to LEARN about comps still... and will make mistakes diagnosing Quote from: Casey2.0 on January 13, 2009, 01:39:50 AM Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 12, 2009, 01:59:15 AM Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM LCD Monitors do not have electron beams and even if they did- a monitor is not going to cause the computer itself to freeze. also knew that i was just making sure it wasnt the monitor ...is trying to learn about comps still... and will make mistakes diagnosing No insult intended! Especially when just starting out, it's best to get a second opinion from people who've been doing it for a while. In any case- as far as I can tell, you should try another video card. I had a Radeon 7000 that did the same thing after almost a year of hard service. Now my old comp won't even boot with the little fellow, it complains with a beep code meaning "No Video card"... It's possible it's the motherboard, but this is more often caused by the graphics card.Quote do you think it could have been damaged by the smorgasbord of dust i blew out of the case when i replaced the RAM? If it was a serious blowout it's worth the time to remove any addon cards and RAM sticks and blow out weach slot individually. As always when working inside the case remove all power and take anti-static precautions. Double check all cable connections after it's all reassembled before powering up... The jury is still out on whether a bad graphics card damages the monitor or vice versa. My monitor which was showing pink downloads and notepads was diagnosed as bad . I leaned towards this as the system was 10+ years old. Apart from the discoloration of the desktop and blotches on images there were some amount of flickering in the background . Also the decision that it was the monitor stemmed from the fact that when I gave it a few slaps it worked FINE. When disconnected for a few weeks and reconnected it worked fine for a week. Another aging monitor took its place and that would suddenly black out and come back on. It finally died. Now no working good monitor shows any thing and I am awaiting a new video card to see if the faithful 'ole girl' is alive. I shall share the results once the card arrives. Quote from: scrolljoe on January 14, 2009, 09:52:38 AM The jury is still out on whether a bad graphics card damages the monitor or vice versa. No it isn't. a bad graphics card could easily send a signal that calls for a refresh rate far beyond what the monitor is capable of. Often the monitor will scream loudly at this forced torture of it's circuits; and usually will display a distorted image or no image at all. Of course; a properly functioning graphics card and a monitor with proper DDC INFORMATION will work fine together; the graphics card, aware of the monitors inherent limitations, respects it's abilities and never asks to much. the monitor, being treated fairly, won't fill the room with a high-pitched scream. It's a Win-win situation. even so; Newer multisync monitors sometimes detect this "out of range" behaviour and automatically show a message, rather then torture themselves trying to show an image they cannot display. LCD monitors are unaffected by refresh rate display (although it will cause strange changes to the LCD clock rate) From personal experience, I had a graphics card torture and kill two of my monitors. It was actually only half the graphics cards fault; both monitors refused to give up the DDC information to the graphics card, or the card was ignoring the DDC and torturing them anyways. the card them proceeded to die a violent death.Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 14, 2009, 01:48:03 PM the card them proceeded to die a violent death. this made my day I love how I managed to squeeze the words torture, violent, and Death into a short story about computer hardware. makes it more colourful. It was actually a quiet death... but that isn't very exciting, is it?Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 14, 2009, 04:11:18 PM I love how I managed to squeeze the words torture, violent, and Death into a short story about computer hardware. makes it more colourful. It was actually a quiet death... but that isn't very exciting, is it? No I guess it doesn't. I've only really taken a sledge hammer to a HDD at a few points in time....burnt a mobo with its own CPU (AMD of course) them proceeded to place it in the fire....don't do that by the way...those older capacitors hurt when they explode!

Answer»

hey peeps! I have an issue it seems with my computer monitor, or possibly Graphics chip (GPU). anyway the problem appered the other day, and again today. The screen on my monitor suddenly looked all broken and distrorted, and i could see the bars created by the electron beams flickering behind the image. this image stayed frozen on the screen until i manually shut off the computer unit, shutting off the monitor itself did not work, only the computer unit. thinking it may be my GPU i ran a diagnostics test on the GPU, video card and memory, but it detected nothing..although the test was simply to test the color generating capabilities of the GPU..not to detect faults in hardware. the bottom line is i think that the monitor may have an internal problem with the mecahnisms them selves, or something is malfunctioning, because of the flickering! does anyone know what could be wrong for sure? all of these speculations is just me testing novice troubleshooting skills i think a new monitor may be in the question soon....Be fore buying a monitor see if you can use another one to testOOOH okay! i have an LCD monitor on this comp would that work to unplug it and try it on the other comp?
LCD Monitors do not have electron beams

It is therefore your GPU, this happens when the memory is fried, or when you overclock too high. (possibly due to overheating too)

This happened on my old PowerColor 9600.
I took it out without grounding myself first, I put it in again and all it did was give big lines down the screen and artifacts everywhere!

I swapped out to a 9700 Pro and it was smooth sailing from there

Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM

LCD Monitors do not have electron beams

and even if they did- a monitor is not GOING to cause the computer itself to freeze.Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM

LCD Monitors do not have electron beams

It is therefore your GPU, this happens when the memory is fried, or when you overclock too high. (possibly due to overheating too)

This happened on my old PowerColor 9600.
I took it out without grounding myself first, I put it in again and all it did was give big lines down the screen and artifacts everywhere!

I swapped out to a 9700 Pro and it was smooth sailing from there

I KNOW they dont have them..yeesh hahaha! i meant would an LCD monitor work to test the GPU as in case its the only other desktop monitor i have.

do you think it could have been damaged by the smorgasbord of dust i blew out of the case when i replaced the RAM? that would explain why it overheated!
thanks for the replies too!Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 12, 2009, 01:59:15 AM

Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM
LCD Monitors do not have electron beams

and even if they did- a monitor is not going to cause the computer itself to freeze.

ALSO knew that i was just making sure it wasnt the monitor ...*is trying to LEARN about comps still...* and will make mistakes diagnosing Quote from: Casey2.0 on January 13, 2009, 01:39:50 AM

Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 12, 2009, 01:59:15 AM
Quote from: Kurtiskain on January 11, 2009, 11:52:28 PM
LCD Monitors do not have electron beams

and even if they did- a monitor is not going to cause the computer itself to freeze.
also knew that i was just making sure it wasnt the monitor ...*is trying to learn about comps still...* and will make mistakes diagnosing

No insult intended! Especially when just starting out, it's best to get a second opinion from people who've been doing it for a while.

In any case- as far as I can tell, you should try another video card. I had a Radeon 7000 that did the same thing after almost a year of hard service. Now my old comp won't even boot with the little fellow, it complains with a beep code meaning "No Video card"...

It's possible it's the motherboard, but this is more often caused by the graphics card.Quote

do you think it could have been damaged by the smorgasbord of dust i blew out of the case when i replaced the RAM?

If it was a serious blowout it's worth the time to remove any addon cards and RAM sticks and blow out weach slot individually.
As always when working inside the case remove all power and take anti-static precautions.
Double check all cable connections after it's all reassembled before powering up...
The jury is still out on whether a bad graphics card damages the monitor
or vice versa. My monitor which was showing pink downloads and
notepads was diagnosed as bad . I leaned towards this as the system
was 10+ years old. Apart from the discoloration of the desktop and blotches
on images there were some amount of flickering in the background . Also the
decision that it was the monitor stemmed from the fact that when I gave it a
few slaps it worked FINE. When disconnected for a few weeks and reconnected
it worked fine for a week.

Another aging monitor took its place and that would suddenly black out and come
back on. It finally died. Now no working good monitor shows any thing and I am awaiting a new video card to see if the faithful 'ole girl' is alive.

I shall share the results once the card arrives.
Quote from: scrolljoe on January 14, 2009, 09:52:38 AM

The jury is still out on whether a bad graphics card damages the monitor
or vice versa.

No it isn't. a bad graphics card could easily send a signal that calls for a refresh rate far beyond what the monitor is capable of.

Often the monitor will scream loudly at this forced torture of it's circuits; and usually will display a distorted image or no image at all.

Of course; a properly functioning graphics card and a monitor with proper DDC INFORMATION will work fine together; the graphics card, aware of the monitors inherent limitations, respects it's abilities and never asks to much. the monitor, being treated fairly, won't fill the room with a high-pitched scream. It's a Win-win situation.

even so; Newer multisync monitors sometimes detect this "out of range" behaviour and automatically show a message, rather then torture themselves trying to show an image they cannot display.

LCD monitors are unaffected by refresh rate display (although it will cause strange changes to the LCD clock rate)

From personal experience, I had a graphics card torture and kill two of my monitors. It was actually only half the graphics cards fault; both monitors refused to give up the DDC information to the graphics card, or the card was ignoring the DDC and torturing them anyways.

the card them proceeded to die a violent death.Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 14, 2009, 01:48:03 PM

the card them proceeded to die a violent death.

this made my day I love how I managed to squeeze the words torture, violent, and Death into a short story about computer hardware. makes it more colourful.

It was actually a quiet death... but that isn't very exciting, is it?Quote from: BC_Programmer on January 14, 2009, 04:11:18 PM

I love how I managed to squeeze the words torture, violent, and Death into a short story about computer hardware. makes it more colourful.

It was actually a quiet death... but that isn't very exciting, is it?

No I guess it doesn't. I've only really taken a sledge hammer to a HDD at a few points in time....burnt a mobo with its own CPU (AMD of course) them proceeded to place it in the fire....don't do that by the way...those older capacitors hurt when they explode!

Solve : Faulty Graphics chip or bad Monitor??

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