GeForce 4 MX GO 16 MB on a Toshiba TE2100

[WILL]

I bet you guys thought I'd never be using this forum huh? ;)

Well this isn't really for me so much as it's for my friend. He has been having some very odd troubles with his video card and believes that either something is misconfigured or is fried.

His laptop which is a Toshiba TE2100 has on it an nVidia GeForce 4 MX GO with 16 MB on-board, for some strange reason has been having trouble while doing 3D things (playing a 3D game using DirectX and OpenGL and such). However when he is not doing anything with his 3D (ie. in Windows), he's fine.

Now, the problem steammed from a while back where he remembers running a program called ENTECH POWERSTRIP 3.x(you can get it at guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com/)) that he used to overclock his GPU. The card's original speed was 200MHz which he increased by about 30MHz until he saw some 'artifacts' as he calls them (tiny little blocks of pixelized crap on his video screen) then set it right back down to 215MHz. He also set something on the program where it "Forced a 32bit Z-buffer mode". He had his GPU overcloked for about a week.

I originally concluded that he fried his chip, but he wants to eliminate any possiblities that it might be something else before deciding on that. The problems that occur (3D texture effects that are drawn on screen go all funky colors like the texture memory is being currupted somehow, and sometimes the game will crash sating that the device has failed) only happen after a few (5-20) minutes. Which leads me to believe that it's not completely burnned out at least, but he believes that it might be some setting thats messing it up.

What do you guys think it might be, if it is not a fried GPU and is it possible to have parts of this thing burnned out and still be able to run 3D programs for a small amount of time like this?

[Robert Kosek]

The overclock increased heat which subsequently damaged the chip, I've the same issue with my Radeon 9800xt ... although it's odd polygons stretching all over the screen.

[Clootie]

Maybe he forgot to set back video memory speed/timings (this cen be done in PowerStrip too)?

[JSoftware]

blinking textures means that you're ****ed.. i had a geforce fx 5700u which did this as default. i got my money straight over. but the fact that he overclocked it makes the situation completely different(this should really not be necessary and especially not on a laptop). if you are lucky they'll hand you a new laptop but if you are unlucky you might pay both for their time detecting that you have made the error yourself

[K4Z]

The nVidia MX series is a cheaper version of cards, not really designed for (3d) games. Most of the MX cards display artifacts, right out of the box. And, being onboard (plus on a laptop) makes it's worse. :P
Eh, I would of recommended not Overclocking a lower ended card.

One of my computers has a GeForce 4 MX 440, and while playing DirectX games it displayed lots of artifacts, wrong color, striped and wrongly transparent textures.

I mininized all that by updating drivers, using OpenGL whenever possible, and lowered the clock speed. If the artifacts are really bad, try lowering Hardware Acceleration, Display Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Trouble Shoot.

(I dunno if it's possible on a lappy but) You could also try increasing or lowering the Apature size of the video card in the BIOS. With 16 megs, I'd try 32 or 64. (Sometimes you can get a small speed increase without ill affects)

But if possible, I'd recommend upgrading/buying a new laptop. Not much you can do with an onboard 16mg GeForce MX.
Good Luck!

[Robert Kosek]

One thing, that I didn't comprehend and when asked ATi for support got a bum answer on, is that the cards are extremely tempurature sensitive. I suggest preventing your card, whether onboard or PCI/AGP/PCI-E, is to check the heat and fan. My card averaged roughly 140A¬?C on a hot day, and that is what damaged my card in the first place.

One thing I know for sure, I'm going NVidia next time... once I actually have the money to upgrade that is.

[WILL]

In case anyone was wondering what came of this... he fried the chip. :P

New one cost him between $90-120 bucks Canadian... (I forget exactly how much.)

[JSoftware]

And I'll once again question the need to overclock. There's no rational explaination why you would risk frying your cpu to get a few thounds extra cycles.

I've done it myself in my younger years and while I got a big rush doing it it was of the same type of rush as putting money into a slot machine. I fried everything I overclocked ofcourse..