StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm running an Asus 9800 XT/TVD card, no overclocking of any kind, and I've noticed that in SOME environments in SOME games, most notably recently some of the outside areas of Tribes: Vengance, I get a lot of erratic tiny white dots flickering on things, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Tried multiple driver versions, I've got good cooling (5 case fans, full-tower case, the card itself is a solid-copper sink with dual fans) and all that...I'm running out of ideas. Anything?

Having lots of fans doesn't guarantee good cooling. Do you have good airflow? Air coming in from front (or maybe side) of case and exiting the back?

Aside from heat, you may just have a defective card. If you haven't overclocked it, then your warranty might still be good. You might have to consider getting it replaced.

Airflow's good, I build the things for a living Wierd thing is, 98 percent of games, works beautifully. Doom 3 had the problem big-time, but that was a known common problem on 9800-series cards. And then, like...a /part/ of Tribes. I don't get it.

EDIT: two front intakes, one side intake, two rear exhaust, 2.8C CPU, Asus Radeon 9800 XT video card.

Try underclocking. Yes, you build boxes for a living but you might have missed something when you did so, resulting in heat buildup in the GPU area.

That worked for Doom 3, so I know it's an /option/, but it galls me to do that, and I was trying to find out if there was another solution anyone could think of. I hate having to throttle my hardware back, yaknow?

I think underclocking it is what you'll have to do - you see, since the intro of Doom III, 3Dmark05 et al, it's turned out that many 9800XTs (and 5950 Ultras) aren't stable with these new games, even at stock speeds.

The white hots are artifacts no? Use ATiTool to check for artifavts, it may be the card is getting used in ways it never has been before (the new games do that alot), and those parts heat it up massivly.