Ati 9800 128mb osx horizontal lines

[vaz]

A couple days ago after a reboot i noticed my ati 9800 128mb R350 model with rom version 130 started to display dotted white lines here and there. Finder menus, desktop icons, Dock, 3d games and movies all seem to have these annoying lines.
2 years ago i had the same issue when my stock ati fan popped out of its socket! I swapped out the heatsink and installed a new Iceberg 4. Plugged it in and rebooted and all was fine!

It does this on another fresh tiger startup drive.
Reinstalled drivers and did rom update to latest. same lines.
BUT in safe mode boot its fine on both hard drives. sounds like a 3d problem..but where??

I changed the fan on the gpu yesterday, cleaned the gpu and reused the old copper heatsink, but used new thermal paste on it. I put paste in the center gpu and around the outer metal part surrounding the gpu this time. Not sure if i was supposed to, but at the time it made sense since it has contact with the heat sink.

I've changed all the power cables leading into the 9800 and this time i unplugged 2 hard drives to that chain of power, but still horizontal lines.

The lines also get better or worse as i use the computer all day.
Aticellerator is disabled and has been for months so thats not in this equation, even removed it completely since the 9800 doesn't overclock well. ATi monitor sometimes shows 64mb of ram installed on the card, and sometimes 128mb.

I posted this into the MDD section too, as this is the machine i'm using.

Strange or what?

Please ANY help would be grand!
Thanks

[reddrag0n]

Is this a flashed PC card or an authentic Mac card?

Sounds like the GPU is on it's way out, or it could have been a corrupted rom. Anyone else know anything about these cards?

[vaz]

Good question, it is mac authentic...i was also told by others the gpu might be on its way to death
How many hours are these rated at, 10,000 hours??
I will try to flash the rom down the true way..aticellerator pref pane didn't have any effect on the ugly horizontal lines.
Even in boot option mode it displays lines so that keeps the issue focused on the gpu i agree.
Anything else i should try if flashing the rom doesn't work?

Thanks

[vaz]

It turns out it suffered heat damage!
I got an RMA from ATI so it should be fixed or replaced 1 month left on my 3 year warranty yay!
My fan was dying and it wasn't spinning much, wobbling and making noises for a few days. A new heat sink and fan and thermo grease didn't help afterwards either.

So at least i know why i got the lines and since then i've modded the innards recently to prevent hot air from sitting around.
Hope the next card lasts longer!

[reddrag0n]

good to hear that the problem was solved. just in time too for the RMA replacement.

[vaz]

UPDATE:

Glad to see ATI replaced my card owning up to their warranty. No issues at all now