While playing my favorite game today, I began to notice a "tear" along the middle of my screen (top half of the screen doesn't match up with the bottom half). I'm almost positive that it isn't the video card but you never know. I've had instances where I start up my computer and I'll only get a black screen with a very, very slight red tinge towards the bottom of the screen (once it was green). With the northbridge sounding like a 50cc dirt bike with no muffler, I decided that I might as well go all out and upgrade my computer.

My only problem is that I haven't paid enough attention to the market and now trying to find a 939 socket board with 184-pin memory, PCI-Express x16, and IDE connectors is damned near impossible. The one or two I've found I'm not happy with.

So, here's what I've got to do.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition Processor - Retail - $89.99


ASUS M2N-E AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $99.99


VANTEC MRK-200ST-BK EZ Swap 3.5" SATA Removeable Hard drive rack Kit, with LCD display - Retail - $35.99 x 2


Seagate SV35.2 ST3320620SV 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $89.99


Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $42.99


CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail - $44.99

Total cost after shipping is $453.58.

Now, this is money that I really can't afford to spend right now as I am a single homeowner. If any of you pimps out there can find a way where I can shave off a dollar or two, let me know. I do have to keep the Vantec hard drive trays (I lock them in my safe when I leave for more than a day) and I only use Seagate hard drives (I've had too many WDs fail on me). I've already got a ThermalTake Toughpower 700W PSU and the two optical drives that I have are IDE drives.

If you truly think that it's the video card, please let me know ASAP. I'd rather spend $90 on a new video card than $450 on new gear.

I'm going to be ordering this tonight.

Thanks,

Rob

You've tried a different monitor &/or cable? It seems just as likely to me that either of those could be the culprit as the mobo or GPU ... if you are going to fork out $450 it ought to be on fixing a clearly defined problem.

I don't know about you, but I don't have enough hair to withstand splashing out a load of wonga, only to find it was the monitor after all

I only get the "tear" when I game. Otherwise, it's fine playing videos, etc.

Have you tried a different video driver? It sounds like a video problem to me. The black screen with the red or green tinge sounds like the video driver initializing and your only seeing the "tear" when you game sounds like the card or driver also.

I've got the most up-to-date ATI driver for the HD2600 Pro.

I did have a problem on the reformat (LINK) but I thought I had solved it. I just bought a new program called Driver Detective (LINK) and I'm going through updating all of my old drivers (10 out of 28 were out of date).

I'll update all of the drivers, log into my game, and see if I've still got the issues.

Thanks,

Rob

maybe this will help..

Stastny.info - Tearing effect - Stuttering image on LCD when playing first person shooters

It seems plenty of other people have this problem

Screen tear - how to get rid of it - Video - PC Hardware

Well if you do decide to go with a new computer here are my recomendations. Drop the 5000 in favour of the 4000+ which is $30 cheaper. Or even better drop all the way down to an OEM 3800+ which is half the price and just reuse your old cooler.

I'd also recomend a cheaper motherboard with perphaps integrated graphics that way if you do have a graphics card failure again you've got a backup. The new 790G boards are also supposed to be really good with HD video and arn't even half bad with gaming either. (1024*768 at medium quality in UT3 without any problems is pretty impressive).

That being said I hope you're able to fix it and don't have to spring for a whole new computer. Good luck

Rob,you'd get a better bang for your buck with this combo,i'm running it in one of my "lighter"game rigs.

For the money,even @stock ,its so fast its silly .
I oc'd it to 3.0Ghz stable with no voltage increase or high temps with the STOCK cooler...

Mobo, Evga 650i Ultra
Newegg.com - EVGA 122-CK-NF66-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $79.99 (after$20 rebate)

Cpu, Intel E2180 @2.0Ghz
Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail $79.99

Memory , Gskill DDR2 800
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail $44.99

And then later on when cash permits, you could swap in a quad core if you want...

Attached Thumbnails

 

From what I've read about "screen tearing," The problem seems to be centered around VSYNC. When its on, it may prevent tearing but you'll get lower frame rates. Lowering graphics level and resolution may also help. Tearing happens with both Nvidia and ATI cards.

The refresh rate on your monitor is fixed at 60Hz, When you turn on VSYNC, your FPS will be limited to 60. You will also want to turn triple buffering on. I'm a tad confused by it all right now but if you want to find out more, go here, and scroll down to vertical sync. I know that program is for an nvidia card but the information should apply.