Solved program to stress test a video card?

[sdowney717]

I am wondering about a hd2600pro if it might be bad.

After a while of playing 1080p streaming video it sometimes pixelates, smears, multiple images, etc...
That will start in a small area and rapidly spread across the whole screen.

If you stop playing the video and restart, it is ok for a while then happens again. It only happens after a while into various video and not right away.

 

[badger906]

download msi afterburner and then download msi kombuster.

with that you ca tweak and oc your gpu as well as stress test it and bench mark with kombuster.

id also do a ram test, as id point my finger more towards that that your gpu.

 

[Britton30]

Here, this will be of some use.
MSI Afterburner

MSI Kombustor v2.5.6 and v3.3.0 Available | Geeks3D


RAM (memory) test:

This will require memtest on a bootable CD or USB stick.
RAM - Test with Memtest86+​

 

[AddRAM]

We have plenty of benchmarks that will stress your card here.

Benchmarks - Windows 7 Help Forums

Heaven 4.0 will stress it but good

 

[sdowney717]

I found furtest and so far dont see anything odd looking. Will try the others.

 

[RoasterMen]

Your video card can support 1080P movies and streaming. Could you tell us your CPU?

 

[Duzzy]

Temp?

 

[sdowney717]

when running furmark, gpu temp hits 42*C

CPU is a pentium 4 3.2ghz running at 3.5 ghz socket 478 motherboard.
I was using a 2.8ghz pentium and it worked fine OTA streaming.

I built this as a cheap HTPC to watch OTA, Netflix, etc... Which it does ok.

Running the furmark showed no screen issues so I think this video card is ok.

Sometimes I notice the picture going crazy, but I think the signal strength of the antenna might be what is causing it. So might be I need a better distribution amplifier added to the line. Some tuners are better at multipath interference than others. I have a vbox 3560 off a coax splitter on a very long line and it works better than the HDTV wonder card if that is true. Mostly the wonder card is fine, but yesterday the PC was experiencing a lot of screen issues and I recall on some other channels.

I learn by experience trying various things, eventually I will get this working better. Channel 3 and 10 are worst.

I also proved it is not the video card by recording a 1080p channel while it was screwing up, then copying to another PC and it also played screwed up.

 

[Britton30]

I also proved it is not the video card by recording a 1080p channel while it was screwing up, then copying to another PC and it also played screwed up.

doesn't that prove the opposite, or am I missing something?

 

[sdowney717]

I also proved it is not the video card by recording a 1080p channel while it was screwing up, then copying to another PC and it also played screwed up.

doesn't that prove the opposite, or am I missing something?

The source file has the defect, not the video card. So when you play the bad source file on a different PC and it screws up, you know it is the file not the video card.

I changed to another distribution amp and so far, the signal is good. Not breaking up at all.

I had been having lots of trouble with add in sound cards being bad, so was making me wonder about other things, mb, tuner, vid card.

The amp that works better has a builtin coax splitter 1 to 2
The amp that gave me trouble had a single output and I had a 1 to 4 splitter on the output , which must have weakened the signal too low for that wonder HDTV card.

 

[badger906]

recording stuff just records whats on screen, so it will record any tearing or artifacts regardless of it being a gpu fault. and will show up on any playback device.

 

[AddRAM]

And splitting it too much like you have will ruin it.

I had some pix-elation problems on my Sony like 3 years ago so I ran all new RG-6 cable throughout the house. Not 1 problem since.

 

[Britton30]

Admittedly I'm no GPU guru, but it seems to be a better test would be using a perfect file. You may have bad playback over the recorded defects and not see it at all.

 

[sdowney717]

I have left the tv on and watched it all day during the day and it has been perfect.
So making that distribution amp change helped a lot.

So I think now that the hardware is fully ok.

This PC even though older tech just works fine for what I need it for.
All it needed to do was
1. watch OTA broadcasts
2. playback recorded 1080p video
3. watch online 1080p video without glitches
4. be able to work well over the gigabit lan, I use a very powerful PC as a data storage recorder for the TV. WMC lets you connect to other WMC PC linking the data storage. I found I can watch and record TV as it writes 1080p down onto the other PC in the living room. That way I can have an IDE 80gb HD and not need a lot of space.

I imagine it can watch blueray, but dont have a player in the PC.

I have 2 HTPC now. The first I built I went way overboard, quad cores, GTX260 video card, etc...

This other one most would consider way under-built. 3.2 ghz Pentium 4, 478mb, 2gb ddr400 ram, etc...
I was able to do this cheaply on used parts from eBay and a basic PC thrown away picked up off the street.

I have a free PCI slot left. I can buy a sound card to output 5.1 dolby by way of minijacks.
I assume WMC can do that?

My onboard sound is stereo mini jack out , but does have an spdif connector. But then I would need a dolby digital reciever.