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kjs862

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 21, 2004
1,298
24
See the little green dots? It a ATI X800XT.
 

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It might be.

You could also try a different DVI cable, longer ones sometimes do that, especially on a 30" display or an ADC display using a DVI adapter.

Another thing to try is making sure fan is clean and running at a decent speed. The X800 had a 3 wire fan, ths some ability to raise and lower speed based on heat.

If you card is a FireGl flashed to X800 (ie..2 @ DVI ports instead of an ADC and a DVI port) then it may be running a hair too fast. Thomas Perrier has software that allows you to try lowering RAM and GPU clocks on the fly. Not sure how well it works in 10.5.8. So you could try whacking 25 Mhz off the RAM speed and see if artifacts disappear. If so, then you could use his other software to dump ROM from card, change clock speeds, and reflash.

I would check all of these things first before calling it quits on the card.
 
Great thanks for the information. If it does happen to be the card, any idea where they sell these things cheap?
 
Depends on displays you need to connect.

There is really no such thing as a "cheap" Mac X800.

Retek on Ebay sometimes has the real deal ones. Note they MUST be Mac cards or flashed to Mac.

Regular PC X800s flash, but they will be VGA only. The FireGl X3-256 is perfect flash, but they are tough to find for less than $150. (mac OEM X800s still fetch upwards of $300) Retek has NEW X3's for $200...gets you a NEW X800 at a "reasonable" price.

With the ADC displays fading into the past, the flashed X3 can be a better choice as it has 2 DVI ports, one of which can run a 30".
 
i get those all the time since I switched to 10meter DVI cable. restarting screen always fixes it.
 
Yeah i'm running a 30" cinema display. I don't know what to do now. I mean this powermac g5 is running great for my current needs.
 
My card is an OEM card, 1 ADC, and 1 DL DVI. I just checked the fan and it seems to be running at a good speed, and there isn't much dust in there.

I few years back, I over clocked the card, so I think i did some damage back then. But nothing minor, I just had a few minor visual artifacts when I did some minor things, but nothing major like this. These green dots are on the screen all the time, no matter what task I do.

I looked on ebay, I looks like I can get a firegl card for $180...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-FireGL-X3-D...o_TV_Cards&hash=item439f283328#ht_1115wt_1167

I would consider another AGP card that can run my 30" ADC. Any other cards out there that I might be able to find for cheaper?
 
Hi,

I was having the same problem with my 8800GT (2008 2.8ghz). It would happen when coming out of Windows, generally a quick reboot would fix the issue.

After a couple months of dealing with this it finally hit its worst last night. I was trying to do something somewhat GPU intensive, the screen would flash full of those green pixels, then some blocking and finally the screen would start flashing. At this point the video was locked up and I had to hard restart.

At first it would go away unless I tried to do something intensive again, after a couple reboots I cant even get into OSX. It will load the dock and then the pixels/blocks appear and video is frozen again.

I have a new 8800GT coming from Apple, hopefully it will solve the problem. If it isnt the GPU I dont know what else it would be.

I would definitely keep an eye on it!
 
Hi,

I was having the same problem with my 8800GT (2008 2.8ghz). It would happen when coming out of Windows, generally a quick reboot would fix the issue.

After a couple months of dealing with this it finally hit its worst last night. I was trying to do something somewhat GPU intensive, the screen would flash full of those green pixels, then some blocking and finally the screen would start flashing. At this point the video was locked up and I had to hard restart.

At first it would go away unless I tried to do something intensive again, after a couple reboots I cant even get into OSX. It will load the dock and then the pixels/blocks appear and video is frozen again.

I have a new 8800GT coming from Apple, hopefully it will solve the problem. If it isnt the GPU I dont know what else it would be.

I would definitely keep an eye on it!
You should have baked it. That's what I did with mine.
 
Mackilroy, where can I find more information about baking? Im assuming is putting it in the oven to loosen up the solder points?

I put my ATI 2600 back in there last night, it seemed to fix all of my problems. I am up and running again, albeit a bit slower now.

Once I get my replacement 8800GT ill just throw it in the second PCI 16x slot.

Dave
 
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