LFS looks like shards of colored glass

[Leftyx]

Guys, I've been away since Patch X. I loaded my LFS and all the setup screens look okay, but the cars and tracks look like colored shards of glass.

I'm not clear on what causes that. It seems like a video card problem. I have an Nvidia GT 6600. I haven't changed the drivers in over a year. I don't want to mess them up by mucking around unless I have to.

LFS used to run fine on my system. I'm looking for some ways of resolving the graphics problem.

[morpha]

Update your drivers, all of them, get rid of your weird "updateophobia".
Your system does not work, how could it get even worse? Besides, if the updates really mess something up, guess what, you can blame (etc...) the manufacturer.

[Leftyx]

Sorry guys, but I tried updating the drivers and it didn't help. Any other ideas as to whats causing the graphics glitch? The cars and trax look like sharp shards of colored glass going off at all angles and directions. I can post a picture if you can tell me what to do.

[the_angry_angel]

A picture says a thousand words, but it sounds like a knackered graphics card tbh.

I'd check by downloading LFS again, trying it in the demo. If that still does it then I'd try a few other games, or similiar apps, and seeing if the same thing happens again.

[Leftyx]

weird dude, I don't have any other GFX card problems and never have. I'll try downloading S2 again. Like I said I haven't tried it in 6 months. I thought maybe something had changed in that time.

[Leftyx]

I loaded up S1 and it looks the same. So does S2 vL.05. Something is wrong with the way the game is running. I don't know what else to do. But if someone can tell me how to get a picture I'll post it so you can see what it looks like. Maybe then someone can figure out what happened since I used to run LFS 6 months ago.

[gohfeld23]

First off, you should download a fresh S2 Y and see how things run although I have to admin, looks like a GFX hardware problem.

Good Luck

[mutt107]

show us a screen?

[JasonJ]

Press Ctrl+S in game to get a screen shot. It is saved to the lfs/data/shots/ folder. This is a new feature since X patch release.

I was getting this sort of thing once, and it turned out to be overheating. Give your PC a clean and blow out the cobwebs. If you ar able to change PC parts yourself, even just try reset your graphics card in the motherboard in case the contacts are not contacting right. But, if your playing other reasonably GPU intensive games with no problems, then the overheating/dust/contacts might not be the problem.

[Leftyx]

Attached is a screenie of the menu with the car. The car looks like shards of colored glass...all triaangles and angles.

Sorry if this doesn't help I'll try and get an on track screenie.

[mutt107]

Attached is a screenie of the menu with the car. The car looks like shards of colored glass...all triaangles and angles.

Sorry if this doesn't help I'll try and get an on track screenie.sry but your gfx card is dead.

[Leftyx]

Press Ctrl+S in game to get a screen shot. It is saved to the lfs/data/shots/ folder. This is a new feature since X patch release.

I was getting this sort of thing once, and it turned out to be overheating. Give your PC a clean and blow out the cobwebs. If you ar able to change PC parts yourself, even just try reset your graphics card in the motherboard in case the contacts are not contacting right. But, if your playing other reasonably GPU intensive games with no problems, then the overheating/dust/contacts might not be the problem.

I tend to agree normally, but in this case I don't think it's the card. GPL still looks great after 6 months of being away. And all other programs are behaving.

So I went back and loaded some older versions of LFS and they all look the same. Triangles of colored broken shards. I wonder if something is up with LFS and the way it loads or something. It's just cars and tracks. Menus look fine.

[Leftyx]

sry but your gfx card is dead.

Guess I'll have to go out and get a new card. It's weird since every other game looks fine.

[JasonJ]

For those that don't have WORD here is the screen of the problem.

[Leftyx]

For those that don't have WORD here is the screen of the problem.

Thank you Jason. I appreciate this very much.

[Jakg]

i'd check your GFX card temps first to see if it's overheating, then try new drivers.

[morpha]

Also check your PSU, LFS puts a lot of stress on your CPU and a low wattage PSU might not be able to power both CPU and GFX card under high load.
I had similar problems with a 350W PSU, P4 Northwood 2.8@3.2, R9800XT standard clock. It's working fine now with a 480W PSU :thumb:

[pipa]

A picture posted in a word document. I am wondering that im the first, but that is an epic fail :D

[J.B.]

If you have removed the dust from your GPU (can of compressed air works best) and have checked that the GPU fan is still spinning then the GPU is actually broken. Been there.

[Leftyx]

Also check your PSU, LFS puts a lot of stress on your CPU and a low wattage PSU might not be able to power both CPU and GFX card under high load.
I had similar problems with a 350W PSU, P4 Northwood 2.8@3.2, R9800XT standard clock. It's working fine now with a 480W PSU :thumb:

I replaced the PSU a year ago. I actually gave my old one to a fellow sim racer who needed a new power supply. He says it works fine in his machine.

I have a 400W PSU now and it drove the card fine for 6 months.

Thanks for the reply. The concensus is that the graphics card is not working.

[Leftyx]

A picture posted in a word document. I am wondering that im the first, but that is an epic fail :D

Well I don't know how to take LFS screenies so I did what I do at work when I need to show someone a screen. Ctrl-PrScr the screen and paste into a Word doc. I did say thanks to the person who made a .jpg of the screen.:thumb:

[Leftyx]

If you have removed the dust from your GPU (can of compressed air works best) and have checked that the GPU fan is still spinning then the GPU is actually broken. Been there.

The concensus is that the graphics card isn't working. I'll take a look at the fan. But I have a feeling I need to replace the graphics card.

I'll post my specs later and see about advice for a new graphics card.

Thanks all.

I'm curious as to why GPL would perform fine but LFS wouldn't. Could be because GPL is 10 years old and doesn't need as much GPU power? I don't know. Does NEbuddy else know?

I checked teh fan and it's working fine.

[Leftyx]

Hi Guys. Should I try asking Scawen? Maybe if he looked at the picture he could say that some setting was changed in teh last 6 months and that it needs to be changed. That would be cool. I so want to get into some LFS.

Like I said. No problems with any other games. Just the cars and trax in LFS.

NEbuddy else have any ideas?

[mcintyrej]

Show us what it looks like in game. That little picture of the car doesn't really show us much.

[Leftyx]

That little picture can be zoomed to show full screen, or close to it. The car is an example of what the cars and trax look like.

If you have a suggestion, please describle what you think is causing the problem.

If you really can't see well enough, then I'll go in an get a screenie. BTW do you know where the screenies are saved when you do a cntl-S?

Sorry, nevermind about where the pic is saved. I re-read the thread and JasonJ told me where to find the screenies.

I can't make one now since I'm at work but I'll post one tonight.

[JasonJ]

It's hard to diagnose your system issues with only a screen shot, but it will help.


A good program to monitor your PC's internal temperatures is called Speedfan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan434.exe)

It's safe (not spyware) etc and free.

Try and run LFS and speed fan for a bit together at teh same time, with some AI on the track to give your system a good workout for 5 minutes, then minimise LFS and take a shot of the speed fan screen. Something like this..
59627

Press the [configure] in speed fan button to show the info on the left and use Ctrl+Alt+Del to get the task manager like the right picture.

Instead of pasting into Word, try paste the picture into MSPAINT which comes with Windows by default and is located in Programs >> Applications. Then save the picture as a .JPG to save space and then upload it to here.

And for what it's worth, I had a brand new PSU that only lasted 6 months. When it died the system still worked but just randomly did weird stuff like freeze the Graphics and reboot the PC. But sometimes the PC was fine. If you have a faulty PSU, then it might be just running at borderline power, and is enough to keep your PC runnig but doesn't give enough juice to power the GPU to run LFS. Just something to keep in mind.

Are you able to borrow a Graphics card that someone else has spare ? Just to see if the rest of your system is ok.

[Electrik Kar]

but the cars and tracks look like colored shards of glass.

I'm not clear on what causes that.

Too much mould on your bread? :D


PS, seriously- I'm not sure. Try some graphically demanding games- if they're ok, then try re-installing LFS.

[Leftyx]

I

Are you able to borrow a Graphics card that someone else has spare ? Just to see if the rest of your system is ok.

I tried an old Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 200 and gues what? NO SHARDS OF COLORED GLASS.

Unfortunately I mucked up the driver installation when I put back my Geforce 6600 GT. I ended up having to restore Windows to yesterday's settings. Afterwards when I tested the 6600 GT again, the shards of glass were back. Seems fairly clear that a new video card is needed.

Thanks to all that helped from teh Hive Mind. :nod:

Here is a screenie to show how weird LFS looks on my PC.

[Stefani24]

do you have sp2?
if yes, ur gfx card is fuked up.

[Luke.S]

Ask if you can try your gfx card on someone elses system with lfs. It may be your PC.

[Leftyx]

do you have sp2?
if yes, ur gfx card is fuked up.

SP2? Are you referring to Windows XP Service Pack 2? If so, yes I have that.

As for the card. I replaced the 6600 GT with a brand new 7300 GT and ran LFS. The results were the same.

But referring to an earlier post, I earlier ran LFS with an Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti 200. That card runs w/o a power cable connected to it. With that card LFS ran properly, but the gfx were shitty cuz, well, it was a Geforce 3 Ti 200. Need I say more?

Both the other cards have to have a power cable connected. So, I decided to try a different cable from the PSU. Even with a different cable the results were the same as before with the Geforce 6600 GT and the Geforece 7300 GT. I even removed the extra power cable completely and nothing changed. I even updated the drivers for those cards.

So something is wrong with either my computer, or the settings for LFS but I believe I ruled out the graphics card as the cause of the poor video. But now I have to return a graphics card to Microcenter and get my money back.

NEbuddy have any other trouble shooting suggestions?

[JasonJ]

Sounds like the PSU is struggling to power your Graphics card as well as everytihing else which is probably a fault with the PSU because I would have thought that 400W should be enough. Without a spare PSU, it's hard to prove this one is faulty unless you have Power Supply test gear.

Try temporarialy disconnecting all unneccessary devices using the PSU, like Floppy drives and unused Hard disk drives and CD Rom drives, even external USB devices, eg: printer, flash drive devices. Just skip any errors you get when rebooting, you dont need all that to test LFS briefly. This might free up enough juice to allow the card to run correctly, if this is the case, then the PSU is definately faulty or can't supply enough watts.

This approach may not work, but its worth a try to diagnose it.

Otherwise, got a spare PSU from a friend to test with? :D

[flymike91]

Call geek squad, bro :)

[Luke.S]

It could be a shi*y PSU cause i run an 8600gt flawlessly with a 350w psu.

[Rockstarenergydrink]

My cars also sometimes get a lil choppy like that in game but it doesnt ahppen on my car and nothin seems to go wrong so i just roll it it sometimes i makes some cars look pretty cool like a UFR Convertable pretty sweet haha

[Stefani24]

SP2? Are you referring to Windows XP Service Pack 2? If so, yes I have that.


Exactly what i meant.either ur psu or the (pci-e?) slot is destroyed.

[Leftyx]

Exactly what i meant.either ur psu or the (pci-e?) slot is destroyed.

Glad we got that straightened out.

I'm not saying it's not the PSU but GPL is fairly demanding at high resolutions and plays flawlessly.

And it's an AGP slot, my PC is circa 2001 but it's been upgraded for everything except the motherboard.

As much as I enjoy LFS, I'll be running GPL and it's mods. I can't see the use in testing the PSU if replacing it means I can run LFS. It's about time for a new rig anyway.

[Leftyx]

I loaded LFS on my kid's PC and it ran fine. I still don't understand what could be causing my problems. Tempted to pull off some power cables and see if that's giving the graphics card the power it needs.

I don't know if I can hold out for iracing.com, and GPL is kind of dated. I really need some LFS right now! Oh well, we'll see.

[Leftyx]

Sounds like the PSU is struggling to power your Graphics card as well as everytihing else which is probably a fault with the PSU because I would have thought that 400W should be enough. Without a spare PSU, it's hard to prove this one is faulty unless you have Power Supply test gear.

Try temporarialy disconnecting all unneccessary devices using the PSU, like Floppy drives and unused Hard disk drives and CD Rom drives, even external USB devices, eg: printer, flash drive devices. Just skip any errors you get when rebooting, you dont need all that to test LFS briefly. This might free up enough juice to allow the card to run correctly, if this is the case, then the PSU is definately faulty or can't supply enough watts.

This approach may not work, but its worth a try to diagnose it.

Otherwise, got a spare PSU from a friend to test with? :D

Testing the PSU turned out negative. I disconnected all unnecessary drives, all USB connections, and tried two separate power connectors to the graphics card. And the cars and trax still looked as bad as before.

If there is anything else that I haven't tried, I don't know what it is.

[Leftyx]

Here are a few more wonderful pics. NEbuddy know how to fix this? I've tried everything I know and what was suggested.

Apparently LFS forum is burping on the uploads. I'll try and upload some pics later. For now, look at the earlier pics in the thread if u think u can help.

Thank you

[JasonJ]

If you pull out the PSU in your kids PC, would it be able to run your 6600 in you PC ?

It doesnt take long to pull a PSU out. I do them in about 2 minutes at work. The only hard plug is the motherboard 24pin plug. Gotta watch out it don't bend the mobo. I'll take a guess, but I guess the 6600GT needs about a 300W PSU at bare minimum. So if your kids PSU is only 250W, then you might be outa luck there.

Or even this, could you try the 6600GT in your kids PC to see if the card is ok ? :D

It must suck having to reassemle to get back on the forums :(

[Leftyx]

If you pull out the PSU in your kids PC, would it be able to run your 6600 in you PC ?

Probably not. But read on.

It doesnt take long to pull a PSU out. I do them in about 2 minutes at work. The only hard plug is the motherboard 24pin plug. Gotta watch out it don't bend the mobo. I'll take a guess, but I guess the 6600GT needs about a 300W PSU at bare minimum. So if your kids PSU is only 250W, then you might be outa luck there.

I forgot to look to see what her PSU rating is. But read on

Or even this, could you try the 6600GT in your kids PC to see if the card is ok ? :D

Put the 6600GT in my kid's pc. Plugged in a power cable to the card. Started up LFS. Ran fine.
Then put my kid's Geforce 3 Ti 200 into my PC and started up LFS. Ran fine.

It must suck having to reassemle to get back on the forums :(

I must say, I'm tempted to leave the cards where they are. At least LFS runs on my PC. If GPL runs on my PC then I'll have to make up my mind if I want to keep this old vid card in my PC for good.

[JasonJ]

I'm not sure 100%, but now the Geforce 3 Ti 200 is working in your PC, it's probably because it doesn't need as much Power. But if PSU is actually faulty, over time the fault may progress and then the PSU might fail all together and it possibly might damage some other component when it finally gives in.

Bare in mind there's alot of may's and possibly's.

When my PSU went on me, my radeon x1295 256MB failed to boot but my less powered radeon 9800 128MB still worked. I got a new (unwanted+Antec) 500W PSU to test with and everything worked so I bought it at cost price and chucked out the 6 month old PSU.:tilt:
At my work the PSU is the most common cause of faults. We have about 300 PC's and I have to change one at least every 2 weeks. Although we can't confirm this in your system unless you test a 100% working PSU in your system.


edit:
Another thing you can test is the RAM, (you never know, it might be the RAM). Swap the RAM from your PC into your Kids PC and see if it corrupts the graphics running with the 6600GT in your kids PC. Of course only do this if it fits and is a similar type of RAM.

edit:
Another thing you could do, is try your kids PSU in your PC with the 9600GT installed, if that works, by a cheap low powered PSU ($20) (should be at least the same rating as hers of course) for your kids PC from a computer parts seller. I'm assuming your kids PC has a lower powered PSU because it's a 'hand-me-down' :shrug:

[BruTaLysT]

I would call this poly-mesh distortion, no shards of colored glass, lol thats funny :)
It's likely due to GPU core making faults. Overclocking can result in such behaviour. It certainly has nothing to do with the game itself.
Also keep in mind a 400Watt PSU says nothing. There are 250Watt PSU's capable of putting out more Amps on a 12V rail then some 400Watt cheap-ass PSU's do. NEVER, i say "NEVER" buy cheap PSU's. It's the hart of your computer-rig and has to be well build.

Although it seems your 6600GT is fried, it's still a bit weird other games tend to work correctly. Could you also try to run a benchmark demo like 3Dmark06 to check if you have the same problem. I see you check GPL all the time, but please test a bit more advanced cpu/graphics combo's to keep the stresslevels high.

The one thing that remains and where i'm quite curious about, is why did you get a 7300 while you had a 6600? That's seems like a downgrade to me, especially since i bought a 2nd hand 7800GT AGP 6 Months ago for just 75 Euro's. These things don't cost shit nowadays. Even 8800GT's are just a bit over 100 Euro's. That's pure power for nothing if you ask me. 7300's are disgustingly slow, maybe on pair with that Ti200 of yours. Now i'm exaggerating i guess, but still :P

btw, It was hard not to laugh about that screenshot in word document, how hilarious. What you did is almost more trouble then to just press print-screen and paste it in some gfx editor like paint :P Well, now you know how to :)

I hope you figure out the problem, but it seems pure hardware based to me, so check out that PSU, clean your case, whatever. The beast needs taking care of you know :P

Don't think RAM could be causing any problems, bacause if ram makes errors the system just crashes instantanious. I never had an incident were RAM caused graphical glitches. Even your videocards memory does not seem to able to cause any of this because that causes texture faults and weird pixelated corruption. When 3D meshes go wrong it's more likely to be the GPU core itself, probably caused by insufficient power. The lack of power could then easily damage your card for life and if the PSU fails altogether even more components can die from heavy spiking. I've already seen too much friends low on money buying these crappy PSU's and litteraly setting their PC's on fire with them. They were in total shock, i could imagine but i warned them though. There should be a warning sign on those damn things but all everyone does is check the Wattage and figures the more the better while this is clearly not the case.

I wish u luck

[Leftyx]

I'm not sure 100%, but now the Geforce 3 Ti 200 is working in your PC, it's probably because it doesn't need as much Power. But if PSU is actually faulty, over time the fault may progress and then the PSU might fail all together and it possibly might damage some other component when it finally gives in.

Bare in mind there's alot of may's and possibly's.

When my PSU went on me, my radeon x1295 256MB failed to boot but my less powered radeon 9800 128MB still worked. I got a new (unwanted+Antec) 500W PSU to test with and everything worked so I bought it at cost price and chucked out the 6 month old PSU.:tilt:
At my work the PSU is the most common cause of faults. We have about 300 PC's and I have to change one at least every 2 weeks. Although we can't confirm this in your system unless you test a 100% working PSU in your system.


edit:
Another thing you can test is the RAM, (you never know, it might be the RAM). Swap the RAM from your PC into your Kids PC and see if it corrupts the graphics running with the 6600GT in your kids PC. Of course only do this if it fits and is a similar type of RAM.

edit:
Another thing you could do, is try your kids PSU in your PC with the 9600GT installed, if that works, by a cheap low powered PSU ($20) (should be at least the same rating as hers of course) for your kids PC from a computer parts seller. I'm assuming your kids PC has a lower powered PSU because it's a 'hand-me-down' :shrug:

The PSU in my box is an Antec rated at 430 watts.

[Leftyx]

I would call this poly-mesh distortion, no shards of colored glass, lol thats funny :)
It's likely due to GPU core making faults. Overclocking can result in such behaviour. It certainly has nothing to do with the game itself.
Also keep in mind a 400Watt PSU says nothing. There are 250Watt PSU's capable of putting out more Amps on a 12V rail then some 400Watt cheap-ass PSU's do. NEVER, i say "NEVER" buy cheap PSU's. It's the hart of your computer-rig and has to be well build.
The PSU is an Antec rated at 430 watts.

Although it seems your 6600GT is fried, it's still a bit weird other games tend to work correctly. Could you also try to run a benchmark demo like 3Dmark06 to check if you have the same problem. I see you check GPL all the time, but please test a bit more advanced cpu/graphics combo's to keep the stresslevels high.
When I get a chance I'll test run a 3Dmark06 on the 6600GT in my box.


The one thing that remains and where i'm quite curious about, is why did you get a 7300 while you had a 6600? That's seems like a downgrade to me, especially since i bought a 2nd hand 7800GT AGP 6 Months ago for just 75 Euro's. These things don't cost shit nowadays. Even 8800GT's are just a bit over 100 Euro's. That's pure power for nothing if you ask me. 7300's are disgustingly slow, maybe on pair with that Ti200 of yours. Now i'm exaggerating i guess, but still :P
I understand your feelings about the 7300. I bought the only AGP card they had in teh store. I only needed something to test with. It gave the same results as the 6600GT.
I've been away from computer gaming teh last 6 months as I've been using my XBOX360 on Xbox Live almost exclusively for gaming.

btw, It was hard not to laugh about that screenshot in word document, how hilarious. What you did is almost more trouble then to just press print-screen and paste it in some gfx editor like paint :P Well, now you know how to :)
That's how they taught us to take screenshots at work. :shrug: Ctrl-S works much better and much easier.


I hope you figure out the problem, but it seems pure hardware based to me, so check out that PSU, clean your case, whatever. The beast needs taking care of you know :P

Don't think RAM could be causing any problems, bacause if ram makes errors the system just crashes instantanious. I never had an incident were RAM caused graphical glitches. Even your videocards memory does not seem to able to cause any of this because that causes texture faults and weird pixelated corruption. When 3D meshes go wrong it's more likely to be the GPU core itself, probably caused by insufficient power. The lack of power could then easily damage your card for life and if the PSU fails altogether even more components can die from heavy spiking. I've already seen too much friends low on money buying these crappy PSU's and litteraly setting their PC's on fire with them. They were in total shock, i could imagine but i warned them though. There should be a warning sign on those damn things but all everyone does is check the Wattage and figures the more the better while this is clearly not the case.

I wish u luck
Thanks for the help. Always nice to read a thoughtful response to a techinical problem.

[Starbert]

How is your card doing now?? Last week you raced with us, so is it OK now?? :) Just Curious!!

Greets Starbert