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switchedanhappy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 16, 2003
135
0
ct usa
Hey guys, just thought you might be able to help me out.
I have been using my rev a dual 2ghz powermac w/ a radeon 9800 pro (128mb) for about two and a half years now, without too many problems. However. in the past week, it has been behaving oddly. First, it would lock up, and all I could do was move my mouse around. I'd restart it and it would behave normally. Earlier today, it started skipping and lagging while playing video podcasts. Then, just a few moments ago, I signed on, only to have all output to my monitors cut off after a few seconds. I restarted, and again, it worked for a few seconds, but then when I tried to launch safari to come here and ask about this very subject, I got some wierd artifacting and now everything had locked up. I turned the machine off and opened it up, to try to blow some dust off the graphics card (I'm guessing that it is the culprit), and now the machine SEEMS to be working alright. to be safe, I throttled back to only one processor for the moment and turned off processor sleeping, (as I usually do anyways to prevent that annoying "squeak")
What could be causing these problems? I'm not going to try watching video or playing games until I'm sure of what is wrong here. Thanks in advance for your help and support!
 

wangahrah

macrumors newbie
Feb 22, 2001
27
0
It might be, or it might not be. Does that help? :) Try doing some graphic intensive work...play a game that uses 3d acceleration, or download from ATI some of their screensavers or video card demos and run those. If those have problems, it might be the culprit.

Blue/green/weird artifacting does often come from somethng messed up with the video card. It might be overheating as well; is the machine in a particularly hot environment?
 
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