rec.autos.simulators

I have a Radeon 8500LE which I've been overclocking to about 285 (from
250).  I never had a problem with it running any sims but tonight I've
noticed a number of anomolies in GPL and in GTR2002.  In GPL at Monza
for example, there are entire sections of grandstands missing near the
s/f line, where I see blue sky and there's a horizontal band of blue sky
about 2/3 up the trees on the left hand side starting right after the
s/f tower and leading right through Curva Grande.  At Rouen, the distant
background at turns 1 and 2 stays constant (I seem to recall that there
were trees blocking any distant view there) and is really distracting.
After the hairpin at Rouen, instead of trees on the left hnd side I get
what can only be described as an almost vertical wall of leaves leaning
in towards the track - almost like one of those sound deadening walls
you see on US Interstates (but leaf-covered).  I've tried turning the
detail slider to full which helps a bit but doesn't resolve these
problems totally.  (I have made no recent video driver changes).

In GTR2002, a lot of track detail is now gone.  For example at Spa, I
see solid blue shy starting at a low horizon.  I seem to recall that the
background scenery was very woodsy and hilly before.

Strangely, the NR2003 demo seems unaffected.  I would have thought that
something with that kind of graphics requirement would display some
symptoms as well, if there was something wrong with the videocard.

I un-overclocked the videocard, and I still get these symptoms.  Could
this be a heat-related problem?  Never had one before and the cover has
already been off of my case, so I doubt that.  I hate to think it, but
could I have fried something on the vid card?  Regular 2D video (Windows
desktop, etc) is fine.

I ran 3DMark and get a score in the usual range.  Is there a diagnostics
tool that I can run for a Radeon 8500LE?

No, I'm not hallucinating and haven't had a drop to drink.  8-)  Gonna
try runing GoBack to a few hours ago to see if things revert back to
normal.  Otherwise it appears to be a hardware problem.

Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Bert

I don't really think whether this is the cause in your case, but
overclocking can dramatically reduce the lifetime of chips. It is imaginable
that half a year of constant overclocking can cause first errors to appear,
especially if perhaps cooling wasn't optimal, but even with good surface
cooling it is possible due to hot spots. It's happened to me with an Athlon
once.

Achim

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Achim.  I seem to have it solved though.  It
seems to have been a corrupted video driver.  As a last resort, I changed video
drivers to the latest Catalyst 3 driver and all the problems went away.  Perhaps
I could have just re-installed the driver that I was using....who knows?

Thanks!