joeindio Posted April 15, 2008 Report Share Posted April 15, 2008 Hello all laptopvideo goers, First things first, I'd like to congratulate all of you for this amazing resource on nVidia cards. Been reading the posts for some time now and learned a lot about this previously unknown (to me) world of videocards... Now onto some storytelling: I was once a very happy owner of a Toshiba M30 with a GeForce FX Go5200 nVidia card. I'm no gamer, so this laptop suited me perfectly as I was able to use it with all gfx / video / programming / office apps i needed. I was even able to use it on Ubuntu and enjoy a Compiz-powered X desktop... Life was good... Then, one day, I don't remember anymore why (we humans do silly thing sometimes), I tried to update my card's drivers from the original Toshiba 46.44 version to another one, 156.xx whatever, that I downloaded straight from the nVidia website. That driver wasn't designed for my card, so I tried to force it and then ultimately had to give up. Since my XP install was somewhat rotten, I took the opportunity to reinstall the damn thing from scratch, and everything was again OK, with the original drivers... ...until one day (i guess some 2 weeks after this reinstall) I started to notice some weird behaviour: weird characters appearing at bootup (see pic 1) on linux console with framebuffer, I sometimes get some characters mixed up too on XP (and X in Ubuntu too), I see random corrupted pixels and lines (they are never at the same place, so it's not burned screen pixels) these corrupted pixels get worse and appear as i move windows around or make a selection box with the mouse (see pics 2 and 3) Compiz does not start in Ubuntu (i guess it doesn't recognize hardware acceleration) Now, to cut this short, I spotted another thread that describes something similar, but wasn't sure if my situation is exactly the same. I already tried many drivers from LV2Go: the "best" 67.66, 78.59, 79.70, 87.25, 169.09, 174.74, etc etc...Right now I'm sticking with 169.09 - apparently the older the driver, the worse the corruption gets. I also tried lowering the frequency of the GPU and VRAM with RivaTuner and let it run like this for some days, to no avail. Having tried everything that I can figure out on my own, I'm asking the dreaded question: Is my GeForce FX Go5200 dead? (please answer the poll and/or give me any pointers you might have...) System info: * Toshiba Satellite Pro M30 - PSM35E-000MN-PT Laptop * nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 Graphics Card -- Device ID 0324 * Current working Driver : 169.09 * Last Useable Driver : 46.44 (Toshiba) - started noticing corruption with this one * Windows XP SP2 32-bit / Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 * An accurate description of the issue at hand * I attached the NERD log file in case someone wants to give this one a shot. Again thank you all for this great site and for any advice on this. LaptopVideo2Go_LogFile.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Enlightener Posted April 16, 2008 Report Share Posted April 16, 2008 I'd have to say: -Yes, Your graphics memory is most propably damaged with little left to remedy it with. The graphical artifacts are consistent with a damaged frame buffer memory. What exactly did You do to try and force the first set of drivers into the system? These faults seldom arise without failed cooling or severe overclocking. If Your computer is still under warranty I'd try and get it replaced. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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