PC problem: Red Spots on the display

[Napoleonthechimp]

Okay, I posted about this a while ago on neogaf and they told me this was an overheating issue, but the problem has come up again.

I bought a geforce 8800GTX and installed it, but after a few minutes I kept on getting loads of red spots all over the place. After being told it was a heating issue I bought a new Antec p182 case, installed everything at my dad's house and then tested it using his monitor. Everything was fine and I wasn't getting any red spots, so I took it back to mine, connected it to my MW221U and after a few minutes of switching it on low and behold I get red spots all over the screen.

I've tidied up the interior of the case as much as possible and I've seen other people with the same sort of airflow configuration in their p182's so why does this graphics card have such a problem with my monitor? Should I send the graphics card back?

[Napoleonthechimp]

I don't know, how do I check that?

EDIT: Lowering the resolution seems to stop it, but considering I spent about £180 on this card I sure as shit want it to display at the maximum resolution.

[crimsondynamics]

1) 8800GTXs are power-hungry beasts. What is your PSU rating?
2) Can you run the computer with the case door open? Do you have air-conditioning? If so, keep the room at a nice chilly temp and turn on your computer. If you have a fan you can use to blow directly at the case opening, that can help. This is just to see if it is due to overheating.
3) Install RivaTuner and get your temperature readout. You can play with your card's clocks as well, but what I would do is to severely underclock the GPU and see if that resolves the issue; if it does, up the clocks until the same red spot issue occurs just to see your temperature and / or power threshold.
4) If you have another video card handy, swap them and see if the same issue occurs.

[Napoleonthechimp]

1) 8800GTXs are power-hungry beasts. What is your PSU rating?
2) Can you run the computer with the case door open? Do you have air-conditioning? If so, keep the room at a nice chilly temp and turn on your computer. If you have a fan you can use to blow directly at the case opening, that can help. This is just to see if it is due to overheating.
3) Install RivaTuner and get your temperature readout. You can play with your card's clocks as well, but what I would do is to severely underclock the GPU and see if that resolves the issue; if it does, up the clocks until the same red spot issue occurs just to see your temperature and / or power threshold.
4) If you have another video card handy, swap them and see if the same issue occurs.

An older card can run vista at the 1680x1050 resolution that the monitor supports but if I use the 8800GTX (running on a 600w PSU) then the red dots appear ONLY when its running at the maximum resolution. I can't figure it out...

The interior of the case isn't particularly hot. The card is more trouble than its worth. I also don't know how to use rivatuner, where do I get the temperature readout from?

[crimsondynamics]

An older card can run vista at the 1680x1050 resolution that the monitor supports but if I use the 8800GTX (running on a 600w PSU) then the red dots appear ONLY when its running at the maximum resolution. I can't figure it out...

The interior of the case isn't particularly hot. The card is more trouble than its worth. I also don't know how to use rivatuner, where do I get the temperature readout from?

Precisely that: you're running an 8800GTX. I can run Vista at 1680x1050 resolution with an ATI Radeon 1300. Guess who's sucking up more juice? 

Again, what is your PSU rating? Do you have Dxdiag? Run it so we can see what your system is made of and give valid, constructive advice.

Let's not even delve into RivaTuner at this point. Let's get the obvious out of the way first.

[Napoleonthechimp]

An older card can run vista at the 1680x1050 resolution that the monitor supports but if I use the 8800GTX (running on a 600w PSU) then the red dots appear ONLY when its running at the maximum resolution. I can't figure it out...

The interior of the case isn't particularly hot. The card is more trouble than its worth. I also don't know how to use rivatuner, where do I get the temperature readout from?

Precisely that: you're running an 8800GTX. I can run Vista at 1680x1050 resolution with an ATI Radeon 1300. Guess who's sucking up more juice? 

Again, what is your PSU rating? Do you have Dxdiag? Run it so we can see what your system is made of and give valid, constructive advice.

Let's not even delve into RivaTuner at this point. Let's get the obvious out of the way first.

My PSU rating? Its 600w, has 3 PCI Express cables (2 of which are in the 8800GTX), there seems to be no issue with the power.

Here's some system info (it reported no problems):

Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Memory: 2046mb
Directx version: Directx 10

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX
Dedicated Memory: 763mb
Shared Memory: 767mb
Current Mode: 1440 x 900 (32bit) (60Hz) - I had to lower this to stop the red dots.


I'm going to contact the manufacturer to see if they can sort something out.

[crimsondynamics]

I still think running dxdiag would be useful, but anyhow...

600w does sound good. What I'd like to know is do the red dots appear under Vista only at that resolution, or does it also appear in games?

Is this a new card? Did things work alright before? Have you installed any new software recently? Have you tried installing a newer (or earlier) driver? It's worth a try.

Voltage (or the lack of it) plus temperature problems tend to arise when a graphics card is being taxed, so it's strange that this would occur with your card, since it works alright apart from that specific resolution yet everything seems normal. I just find it very odd that the card would have physical faults at rendering a specific resolution.