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Colorful Screen After a few minutes of Gaming

post #1 of 68
1/29/04 at 11:23pm
Thread Starter 
Ok..First post after trolling here for many weeks. Just got my 16.1" ATI 9600 2.8GHz 1 gig RAM 51m a few days ago...here is what is happening. I would play either Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto and everything would be crisp and clear...no ghosting that would interfere with playing at all....until about 10 minutes into it....the game would start to to have like a rainbow effect in the colors. Hard to describe...kinda like saturated with color. Then when I would exit out of the game my desktop would have the same problem...I would have to shut the system down and restart. I downloaded the OMEGA files and same issue. Whats up?
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post #2 of 68
1/29/04 at 11:42pm
Join the crowd...read my post from beginning to end:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=14200
I am fed up and been having these issues for a while...if you find out something that works please let me know and likewise I will do the same...good luck...
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post #3 of 68
1/30/04 at 12:50am
Thread Starter 
I want to make sure you understand....My games never locked up or shut down by itself...its only the COLOR of the screen and objects within the game get all super exposed or something...very colorful looking...and when I would have enough of playing that way and would quit the game..my desktop would have the same issue. So then I would turn the computer off and turn it back on a few minutes later and it was fixed.

BTW .... is this the dreaded washout that everyone is talking about?
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post #4 of 68
1/30/04 at 12:54am
I have gotten the same thing with Madden 04 so its not only you. It doesnt happen all the time just sometimes
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post #5 of 68
1/30/04 at 12:58am
Thread Starter 
And just so everyone knows...it happens to me in every game I play...it just may take about 5 minutes...so it makes me wonder.....what in hell did they test when they had the machine in the "lab" for the "grueling" testing??
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post #6 of 68
1/30/04 at 1:59am
I am beginning to think that it is an ATI problem because I don't really hear this issue with nvidia owners...either the drivers, the architecture of the card itself, or the coding of the games must be the culprit...Omegas have done nothing for me...An AW tech just told me to download their Catalyst 3.10 and try them...huh??? I told him will it install in a mobility card and he said let's try...I thought that the Omegas were the best drivers anyway...I am at that giving up point...maybe I'll dust off my PS2 and XBOX...
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post #7 of 68
1/30/04 at 6:26am
I believe it's a heat related issue. I had the same problem and once the laptop had a chance to "cool down", everything was fine again. Maybe the Nvidia cards do better at higher temperatures. Maybe a laptop cooler is in order like the one from Antec.
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post #8 of 68
1/30/04 at 7:03am
sherrman: you will be pleased to know that i have the EXACT same problem. and there are others to (sadly they seem to have left this forum, so i suppose they got their problem fixed).
I´m currently waiting for DHL to come pick my computer up and ship it to ireland for repair.

some things you might want to do to troubleshot:
plug in an external monitor and use both monitors at the same time, and check if the rainboweffect is visible on both or only the alienwarescreen.
for me, the rainboweffect is only visible on the aw-screen.
then you might want to check if your computer gets insanely hot after some hour of playing. i played freelancer for about 2 hours last week, and there actually was a rather nasty smell of burned plastic in the room after that.

anyway. after having talked to a really nice techguy for almost a year (my english suck, my swedish mouth just isn´t made for this) we coudlnt figure out what was wrong. it might either be the screen, or the connection between the screen and the GPU, or the GPU.
how how... i´ll update when i get my machine back, which should be rather fast as i bought it with my company. they really speed up everything concerning companies.
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post #9 of 68
1/30/04 at 9:04am
Thread Starter 
Poor Knights? Hei venimen! Min cun er norsk og jeg er laer norsk. Men Jeg snakke ikke so god norske! As you can see! I will try the 2 monitor thing...that makes sense! I too believe it is an ATI thing. I never heard of complaints with Nvidia. (or at least as many with ATI!). Takk!
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post #10 of 68
1/30/04 at 9:22am
haha! yes. poor knights=)
but it is not norwegian, it´s swedish=)
anyway norwegian and swedish are very similiar.
du pratar ju visst bra norska. huvudsaken är att man förstår dig, och det gör man.

yes, it´s most probably related to ati. but it seems like it´s not a very common problem, or else more people would be here complaining. i think i´ve encountered about 5 people now with this problem.
one of them had his GPU changed, but the problem was still there. and that was what made me think it may be the screen. ah, hell.. DHL picked up my machine about an hour ago. so we´ll all have an answer to the whole thing in less than 2 weeks.
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post #11 of 68
1/30/04 at 11:17am
I cannot wait for the Nvidia 5700...
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post #12 of 68
1/30/04 at 11:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by notebook_gamer
I cannot wait for the Nvidia 5700...
hah, and neither can i!
i´m really fed up with this 9600 card. seems to me like it´s really an unfinished card that ati pushed out just so that nvidia wouldn´t rule the entire laptopmarket.

i´m getting the 5700, thats for sure. but i´m still kind of frightened that it might be really ****ty when playing games. guess it all is because of all the negative nvidia reviews that are out. is the desktop 5700 any good at all?
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post #13 of 68
1/30/04 at 1:33pm
I think TimePilot can best explain to us, in laymans terms, how the 5700 will work with DX9 as the 5600 does not currently accel in the arena. He has extensive working knowledge of such things.

-Craig
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post #14 of 68
1/30/04 at 1:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig
I think TimePilot can best explain to us, in laymans terms, how the 5700 will work with DX9 as the 5600 does not currently accel in the arena. He has extensive working knowledge of such things.

-Craig
yes, i noticed that he has extensive knowledge in that area. really nice to have someone like that here... =)
he said that DX 9.1 will use all of the really nice features that the nV FX series use.

as i´d like to use programs like maya on this computer i will just have to use the nvidia series of cards. while ati seems to be the top one when it comes to gaming, their cards just dont preform very well in other areas. and that is something i´m a little mad about. all the people all the time throwing **** at nvidia just because they dont make as good gaming cards. nvidia far exceeds anything an ati can perform when it comes to openGL sheit and such.
haha. a lot of worthless mumble-jumble here. hope noone minds=)
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post #15 of 68
1/30/04 at 8:41pm
I've had the same "colorful sparklies" problem, too, recently. I'm using the Omega drivers. I don't think it's the Radeon 9600, because over the course of a month using a Hypersonic GX6 with a Radeon 9600, I didn't have any color problems, gamma/washout problems, or ghosting problems, either...all problems I've experienced with my new AW Area-51m. I suspect the LCD that Uniwill uses for this chassis is the culprit. That's the only way to explain having no problems with the exactly same configuration on a GX6.(which uses the Clevo/former Area-51m chassis)
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post #16 of 68
1/30/04 at 9:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by toddler
I've had the same "colorful sparklies" problem, too, recently. I'm using the Omega drivers. I don't think it's the Radeon 9600, because over the course of a month using a Hypersonic GX6 with a Radeon 9600, I didn't have any color problems, gamma/washout problems, or ghosting problems, either...all problems I've experienced with my new AW Area-51m. I suspect the LCD that Uniwill uses for this chassis is the culprit. That's the only way to explain having no problems with the exactly same configuration on a GX6.(which uses the Clevo/former Area-51m chassis)
it may very well be the radeon 9600. you must know that a damaged 9600 will not behave like it should behave. and only because one 9600 does work does not mean that the other one will work=)
but as i believe i said in some earlier post, it may also be the screen (also in that case, a broken screen. not a flawless one), or the connection between the screen and the gpu.
one thing that counts against the 9600 is the fact that it is very much overheating in my case, and also i have noticed some connection between the gpu fans going berzerk just as the rainboweffect starts.

one strange thing i forgot to mention earlier is that while suffering from the rainboweffect if i press the <print screen> button the rainboweffect dissapears instantly, only to be back in about 5 sec. that is really strange i think, and probably makes it more probable that it is the screen that is toast.

as for the washoutproblem, there are simple solutions explained elswhere on this forum. and the ghostingissue is indeed because of the screen, because it has 50 ms responsetime.
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post #17 of 68
1/30/04 at 9:32pm
Thread Starter 
So funny you posted that about the print screen button.... I WAS ABOUT TO!!! I noticed it today when waiting for the rainbow to appear again before I called Tech support...On hold now as a matter of fact. This will be an issue that may cause me to return it!
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post #18 of 68
1/30/04 at 9:49pm
The ghosting is such a handicap in gameplay...is there any way to minimize it?
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post #19 of 68
1/30/04 at 10:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sherrman
So funny you posted that about the print screen button.... I WAS ABOUT TO!!! I noticed it today when waiting for the rainbow to appear again before I called Tech support...On hold now as a matter of fact. This will be an issue that may cause me to return it!
hehe=)
seeing as i´ve just returned mine, i guess you´ll have to return yours to. anyway, that´s what the tech guys will have you do after you tell them that you have already reinstalled everything one hundred times, and that you have tried all drivers=)
what tune do they play while you are on hold? is it the x-files theme?
i never got to hear that one being played. they played some spacey trance thing for me all the time=)

Quote:
The ghosting is such a handicap in gameplay...is there any way to minimize it?
No. sadly enough. that is something you have to sacrifice to get the magnificent 1600x1200 resolution.
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post #20 of 68
1/30/04 at 10:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by harkon
No. sadly enough. that is something you have to sacrifice to get the magnificent 1600x1200 resolution.
On the Hypersonic GX6 I got much better response time at the same resolution. (1600X1200) This makes me a little sad.
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