Last weekend my old (but newish) graphics card sort of went crazy and it had random lines all over the picture. This occured after a game had crashed and caused the monitor to go off. So seeing as I wanted to play games and not go back to my even older GFX card (which isnt dx9 compatible) I just went out and got a new one from a shop down town.
So I got back and inserted the graphics card and happily started up Titan Quest. Worked fine, but had random artifacts that I wasn't too fond off, I played it for a bit and it wasn't too bad. I messed around with drivers and settings later but could not get rid of the artifacts.
So after searching on the internet for similar problems, most people claimed it was my power supply. Mine was only 350W and the gfx card recommended 400W so I figured that must be the problem and ordered a new PSU. It would take a few days to arrive so I switched back to my old graphics card till it arrived.
A few days later, I eagerly installed my new PSU (which is lit up like a christmas tree) and tested my graphics card again. Sadly the same problem remained. So elminating that from the possibility, I also then checked the core temperature, which was fine, then I downloaded and install Riva Tuner (an overclock and random setting changing thing for Nvidia cards) and did all the things that people suggested I do for my card (I have a 7600 GS AGP and my motherboard is an SiS chipset) but sadly nothing worked.
I then stumbled up this thread on hexus.net, which essentially outlined all the steps I went through, but at the end he points out how to fix it in one easy step.
Simply uncheck combined writes in the troubleshot section of the advanced display properties tab in Windows.
I spent a good 2-3 evenings trying to figure out the problem only to find that it was fixable but unchecking something present in the standard Windows GUI. The tooltop for the checkbox even states that it could cause corruption! Such a frustrating time, I was planning on taking the card back and getting another one because most threads on the net insist the card is just faulty.
Anyway I am very happy now that it works and figured I would provide a quick summary so that it might push some people with the same problem to the quick and simple solution.
Graphical Artifacts in Direct 3D games (such as World of Warcraft and Titan Quest)
7600 GS AGP (mine was XFX but I am sure this applies to others) SiS Chipset
Nvidia 91.47
Open up the standard windows display properties dialog, select the settings tab and click "advanced", go to the troubleshoot tab and untick the "enable write combine" option. Restart and problem solved!
Also if you have problems playing video files (the pc becomes very unresponsive and no video plays) then upgrading to the latest SiS AGP drivers fixes that problem nicely. This seems to be a problem with the latest video drivers and the SiS chipset and is unrelated to the graphical artifacts in games.
hi i was just wondering what kind of motherboard do you have and what specific sis chipset? a sis 651 or sis 645, 648? reason i am asking is because i will be buying the same card bfg geforce 7600gs OC
heres my email add sugarqfx@gmail.com
This is not only AGP !
MotherBoard AMD S939 ASUS A8S-X - SIS 756 and SIS 965L chipsets + Xpertvision 7600GS
It runs about 40 degrees (video card) in game so it isn't hot and it has a decent fan on it.
However I get huge black / white slabs of where texture in game and some times the characters skins all turn artifact looking.
After doing this tweak and disabling "write combine" I have had no issues
same problem, wasted till now 2 months...
all forums say card is broken, but i had it the same minute
when i start a direct 3d game.
agp 4x, sis chipset, thanks for the solution,
i will check out if it works for me too =)
it starts after 1 minute in city life or sim city.
and it starts happens the first second in Act of war.
thanks for the possibly solution.
kind regards,
Casio
btw, my card is idle 54 degrees Celcius (WAY TO WARM !!)
gaming is 60 degrees Celcius !! =(
Stock cooler btw from ASUS
Same problem here.
I've a 7600GS, AGP on an older MSI Board ( 4xAGP ).
I've a lots of artifacts. Each time, my RAM runs out ( i've 512mb... and if it's full, i get the artifacts )
I've tried the posted solution - doesn't help.
Only one thing: near half year it worked without problems. maybe is my card really broken?
OMG man I have to say I litterally love you. I just bought an xfx 7600gt agp for my computer, not the best out there but way better than what I had. Downloaded all the updates for xp, drivers and everything and put the card in and boom artifacts right off the bat with hl2 and any game i wanted to play. I've been searching for the past 8 hours trying to find out what to do...I did everything you did...reinstalled drivers, cleaned drivers, updated my agp chipset driver the whole shabang.....then I read through what you wrote about turning off the little feature of Enable write combining and BOOM no artifacts, no more having to try to underclock the card (which made them worse) everything working as its suppose to. Made me feel so much better I didnt buy a piece of crap lol. But thank you very much your a Saint!!!!!!
Thanx a lot for the walkthrough, my uncle bought the card and had a similar setup, SiS 645, we did exactly the same thing of buying a new PSU etc etc, finally we found the solution.
This solution should be posted on all the forum threads relating to this problem, as virtually all of them have an exhaustive approach to trying to fix the problem without actually doing so. This simple fix is great. I wish I had found it sooner.
Hey,
I've got the same problem but owith one more thing...
I've got Vista home ed. so I wouldn't know how to do the thingy you did.
Any solutions?
Thanks in advance!
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