[mythtv-users] Is my video card toast?

[Keith Richie]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:
> More information added below
>
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi list,
>>
>> Today was a particularly hot day and my apartment gets even hotter
>> than outside temps.  I came back home to see my mythbox running very
>> slowly and not really responding (even when I would fire up an ssh
>> shell, keystrokes were taking forever to enter).
>>
>> I checked top and Xorg was eating pretty much all the CPU (around
>> 98%); this was just when myth was running but not playing any
>> video/music/tv, etc.  I also saw that my Xorg.log had the AGP GART
>> line below many times, with it broken up once by the driver
>> encountered too many errors, failing back to legacy PCI mode:
>> (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized AGP GART.
>> (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized AGP GART.
>> (WW) NVIDIA(0): The NVIDIA X driver has encountered too many errors.  Falling
>> (WW) NVIDIA(0):     back to legacy PCI mode.
>> (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized AGP GART.
>> (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized AGP GART.
>> (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized AGP GART.
>>
>> When I finally got myth running, the screen had a very weird colored
>> static pixelation in a few of the square areas that the menu and the
>> icons are.  The clock part was perfectly visible.  I could not
>> navigate through the menus.
>>
>> I have an 6200 fx card with a passively cooled heat sink.  The mythbox
>> is small and compact and there is not much free room in it limiting
>> airflow, although, I have never really seen the temps beyond what they
>> should be (then again, as I said, the apartment was particularly hot
>> tonight).  I opened the box up and reseated the video card (in the AGP
>> slot).
>>
>> Is it possible the card just got too hot and died?  If so, I assume it
>> is a goner, but is there anything else I should try before replacing
>> it?
>>
>
> I am able to load the nv driver and I am able to play things with xine
> (although, obviously running myth with the nv driver is a
> non-starter).
>
> When I run with the nvidia driver, the screen looks fine when it is
> loading and pre-scaling theme images (although, now it seems to be
> stuck at 84% of theme images).  I upgraded the nvidia driver to see if
> that would work, and no luck.
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You can try changing the nvagp option 0 (no AGP), 1 (NVIDIA's AGP), 2
(AGPGART), 3 (try AGPGART, then try NVIDIA's AGP). Also check your
kernels vmalloc (cat /proc/meminfo | grep Vmalloc ) There should be a
cushion between Total and Used. Once I upgraded my kernel and for some
reason forgot to append vmalloc=192M to lilo. Either the nvidia driver
wouldn't load, or my HVR and PVR wouldn't initialize.

It depends on your mohterboard, and the maker of your 6200. They all
have the freedom to use different specs for AGP, though there are
standards - they are not always followed. Gigabyte produced a board
that under volted the AGP bus, some criple the bandwidth .....

Check for a mother board bios update as well.

Usually these things don't _just_ happen. Kernel update, bios changes,
xorg.config changes new hardware added .....

You can check the temps of the card in the nv control pannel
(nvidia-settings) thermal monitor. My  passive 6200, after watching
~60 minutes of HD is at 46 c.