2nd graphics card has display corruption, please help

[Kasakka]

I'm having trouble with the GeForce 6200 PCI card on my system. After some time (hours usually but varies) I get display corruption that is limited to my second graphics card.

 

The problem:

 

After some time (hours, but varies) I get corruption like garbled colored blocks on screen or lines in program windows, only cursor moving on screen, temporary (several minutes long) jamming of the whole system where everything moves really slow. After that it seems to work normally for a while but the jam can return.

 

What makes this problem peculiar is that it seems very specific: only 2nd graphics card monitors show the garbled graphics and what's even more interesting is that if a window has garbled lines, the lines move with the window as if they're attached to it. No flicker or anything like that and the garbled lines even show up in screenshots! This would suggest to me that somehow the 6200's rendering breaks down. At first I suspected overheating but this doesn't happen at all in Windows so now I'm guessing incorrect EFI string settings or driver problems.

 

The facts:

 

- System has two graphics cards: GeForce 8800GT 512MB (PCIe) and 6200 128 MB (PCI).

- Drivers are 9f9 and now 9f23 from NvInstaller. Both cards use EFI strings, no injectors.

- NVCAP for the 6200 card is taken from the "setting outputs" thread, it's the VGA+DVI one (values 01 and 0e). Not sure if this is correct for the card.

- Plists for the EFI strings were created from aquamac's dual 9800GTX templates, modified, combined and finally converted to hex with gfxutil.

- Both cards show up correctly in System Profiler. QE/CI enabled, correct VRAM etc.

- Connected screens: 8800 - 1920x1200 monitor and 1920x1080 HDTV, 6200 - 1600x1200 monitor.

- All outputs (though not sure about the 6200's TV out, can't test it) work on both graphics cards. Graphics corruption is visible on both the VGA and DVI connectors on the 6200.

 

Below is the plist I used for the 6200:

	<key>PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1e,0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x0)</key>
 <dict>
	 <key>@0,compatible</key>
	 <string>NVDA,NVMac</string>
	 <key>@0,device_type</key>
	 <string>display</string>
	 <key>@0,name</key>
	 <string>NVDA,Display-A</string>
	 <key>@1,compatible</key>
	 <string>NVDA,NVMac</string>
	 <key>@1,device_type</key>
	 <string>display</string>
	 <key>@1,name</key>
	 <string>NVDA,Display-B</string>
	 <key>NVCAP</key>
	 <data>
	 BAAAAAAAAQAOAAAAAAAABwAAAAA=
	 </data>
	 <key>NVPM</key>
	 <data>
	 AQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==
	 </data>
	 <key>VRAM,totalsize</key>
	 <data>
	 AAAACA==
	 </data>
	 <key>device_type</key>
	 <string>NVDA,GeForce</string>
	 <key>model</key>
	 <string>NVIDIA GeForce 6200</string>
	 <key>name</key>
	 <string>NVDA,Parent</string>
	 <key>rom-revision</key>
	 <string>3172a</string>

 

Can someone please help me solve this? Or at least give some guesses why this is happening.

 

Here's a picture showing a minor occurrence of the garbled graphics. They can sometimes fill big portions of the screen. If I move the Displays panel around on the screen, the lines follow. If I plug out one of the monitors on the 2nd graphics card after the garble has appeared and go to Displays and hit "Detect displays" the monitor still connected to the 6200 stays blue.

 

[Kasakka]

bump. No ideas whatsoever?

[nickhe]

why do you need 2 grafic card and 6200 doesn't even have sli and i try other drivers

[aqua-mac]

Hi Kasakka,

 

I would still suspect overheating. Does the heatsink get very hot? OSX does seem to stress graphics cards more than windows in general desktop use. Also, the fact that this deteriorates after a while points to overheating. With your motherboard, does the 6200 run at 16x, 8x or 4x? You could remove the 8800 GT and just run the 6200 (no need to change the boot list to do that) and see if the problem persists. If it does not then it is some conflict between the cards and not overheating.

[Kasakka]

Hi Kasakka,

 

I would still suspect overheating. Does the heatsink get very hot? OSX does seem to stress graphics cards more than windows in general desktop use. Also, the fact that this deteriorates after a while points to overheating. With your motherboard, does the 6200 run at 16x, 8x or 4x? You could remove the 8800 GT and just run the 6200 (no need to change the boot list to do that) and see if the problem persists. If it does not then it is some conflict between the cards and not overheating.

 

The 6200 is PCI, not PCI-E so the speed isn't relevant here. I think you may be right that there is overheating. I did experience somewhat similar problems in Vista yesterday. It doesn't help that the card is passive cooled and there isn't that much airflow in the case considering that my system is water cooled. I'll try hooking a fan to it to see if that fixes the issue. The 6200 is pretty {censored} tho, it can't even run a YouTube Flash video fullscreen without severe stutter and there's noticeable slowdown in Vista so in the end I might just stick to swapping cables on the 8800GT.

 

nickhe, I need the 2nd graphics card so I can run 3 monitors at the same time. The 8800GT only has two outputs, my motherboard only has one PCI-E x16 slot so to get another monitor connected a PCI graphics card was required. SLI isn't a concern really, plus I don't want to get a nForce motherboard for it anyway.

[hacker23]

Sorry for bumping this thread, but I was wondering if anyone has found a solution for this yet. I am using a 8600GT 256 PCIe 16x and a 6200 128 PCI for my third display. After a varying time the third display becomes unresponsive, gives corrupt display and I get these console messages in rapid succession:

28.01.09 21:13:34 kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

28.01.09 21:13:34 kernel 0000000b

 

Although my 6200 is also passively cooled, I don't think it's a problem of overheating. I've left my case open for some time and the heatsink on the 6200 wasn't particularly hot when the error occured. My guess is a problem with PCI-handling but I just can't figure it out.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[djmayhem]

any solutioins on this yet? I have the same issue... It cant be heat, the sync is barely warm to the touch...

[greatestPharaoh]

I had similar issues, but never found a solution either running two 9600 GTs in a very well cooled case with active cooling on both cards.

Connected via PCIe and using GFX strings, thought that the issue was being caused by second card being connected to 2 x monitors with different resolution monitors to first card..