ATI Screen Blanking?

Hello;
I am having an issue with an ATI X1350 video card (I think)
intermittently blanking out. Happens maybe several times a day only for
a few seconds. Using several month old Catalyst software, OS is WinXP
Corp. Machine is an Abit AB-9 Pro mainboard. 2GB OCZ PC6400 (4x512),
Intel 6600 Core 2 Duo cooled by a large Zalman heatsink. I think I have
seen tis phenomenon with other ATI cards as well on different machines.
Anyone have a clue?

Marc

Marc wrote:
> Hello;
> I am having an issue with an ATI X1350 video card (I think)
> intermittently blanking out. Happens maybe several times a day only for
> a few seconds. Using several month old Catalyst software, OS is WinXP
> Corp. Machine is an Abit AB-9 Pro mainboard. 2GB OCZ PC6400 (4x512),
> Intel 6600 Core 2 Duo cooled by a large Zalman heatsink. I think I have
> seen tis phenomenon with other ATI cards as well on different machines.
> Anyone have a clue?
>
> Marc

Look in the ATI Control Panel. On the one I use, there is a setting
called "VPU Recover" (near the bottom of the list). It is possible,
that the "blanking" of the screen, is when a VPU Recover is being
executed, and the GPU was reset. It takes some time, for the thing
to be configured again after that. I believe in the past, some people
found, with that feature disabled, there were no ill effects, and less
symptoms. That is what I'd try first.

The implication is, that the driver is losing communications with the
GPU for some reason. Whether it is a software problem, or there is
an actual hardware element to it, is unclear.

Paul