RogueGypsy

I have a cheapo viewsonic VA2226w for a monitor. My board is a 5 or 6 year old D865PERL, P4, w/Saphire Radeon 9250 video card.

The card has DVI, D-Sub and S-Video outs. I've been running the DVI to the viewsonic and the S-video to my 65" Mitsubishi rear projection TV. The monitor I use most of the time. The TV I'll use on occasion for youtube or Netflix.

Recently after restarting the computer (it's always on) the monitor will go black when I move the mouse. It doesn't happen every time, but every few minutes and more often when a page is loading or a video is playing. Over time it will do it less and less often, until it stops. Usually the next day, and operates normally.

I thought it might be a cable problem, my DVI cable is a little long, around 15'. So tonight I disconnected the DVI and connected a D-Sub cable. The problem went away. It also looked like the video was smoother than I was used to seeing from the DVI. I used an HD vid from Vimeo to compare. Not sure of what I was seeing, I reconnected the DVI and watched the video again. Sure enough the video was wavy in the top half of the screen. But the screen didn't go black with the DVI this time. I have the resolution peaked at 1680x1050 which is the max for the monitor. I did not reconnect the s-video cable going to the TV. I'm thinking the card just can't handle the output through DVI and S-video at the same time, both cables about 15' long.

Have you had any experiences like this? Any ideas?

Is it possible to get better video performance from the D-Sub than the DVI?

Do you think reducing the resolution would make a difference in the performance.

And one more, just to be a question whore.

Do you have any recommendations for an HD video card that will work with the D865Perl. I'm a bit of nOOb in this area, but I believe it's a pci slot. Not sure though.

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ASU2003

Does your DVI cable have all the pins? Are you using a splitter? Is the OS getting the correct resolution from the monitor using the EDID stuff?

RogueGypsy

DVI has all the pins and the little blade on the side.

No splitter. When the DVI and S-Video were being used both have their own receptacle on the card.

Not sure what EDID stuff is. IF I right click on the desk top and select properties/setting/resolution. It's set at 1680x1050. I was set at 1280x768 when I was using the S-Video too and got the same results- screen going black.

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Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

Cynthetiq

how old is your LCD? they don't have the same lifetime as CRTs.

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Shadowex3

Wait, your problem is that your monitor goes black only when the mouse is in motion? As in wiggle it for a black screen and it comes back on when you hold still or as in going blank for a second on the first motion?

Also DVI should be much crisper than Dsub for flatpanels because you're sending a digital signal to a digital device, the wavy combined with the mouse affecting the screen says "interference" to me. Try a different DVI cable? They're quite inexpensive at Monoprice.com.

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RogueGypsy

It's almost 2 years old. But gets a lot of use. 12+hrs a day.

monitor goes black only when the mouse is in motion? As in wiggle it for a black screen and it comes back on when you hold still - Yes It doesn't happen every time. It's always the intermittent stuff that drives me nuts. It's like this
restart comp, open Firefox, move mouse, screen goes black for 3-5 seconds.
Move the mouse 3 or 4 times, screen goes black for 3-5 seconds.
Move mouse 8 or 9 times ..........so on, until eventually it quits going black.
I also noticed it taking longer to return from black if I continued moving the mouse.

The Dsub looks at least as good as the DVI, maybe it is the cable. Neither looks bad, I just thought the DVI should look better.

Now it's really messing with me. It doesn't do it with the D-sub. Now it doesn't do it with the DVI after removing and replacing the same cable. Then it also occurred to me that it was only doing it when Firefox was open.

I'll give it a week and see if it recurs, if so I'll try a new cable.

I was just taking a shot that someone had experienced this before and had a quick fix. No joy.

__________________
Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

Jinn

This might seem strange but I'm voting for power supply. PSUs slowly lose both peak and sustained wattage output over time. As they lose power, they literally can only power certain peripherals at a time.

Mouse movement and LCD refresh seem almost entirely unrelated, until you consider that they both require power. A mouse only needs power when it is moving (to calculate displacement from original) and I wonder if that might be just enough to temporarily suck power away from the video card. The intermittent nature of it makes me think it's even more likely, and the fact that you've got dual output is an even bigger draw on power. VGA (D-SUB) takes less GPU cycles than does DVI, and would require less V, strictly speaking.

If you've got a multimeter, you might want to check the pins and see what their voltages are. I bet you're not seeing anywhere near +5V and +12V at the same amperage as when it was new. You could also try harvesting another power supply if you have one, just to see if the problem goes away.

I'd also expect it to be more likely to happen the greater your memory footprint. Open tons of programs that consume a lot of hard drive time (reads/writes) or RAM swapping (music does this well) and I bet it occurs more frequently - the ram and HD spike in their power draw during those times.

If it's really tied to mouse movement, it really can't have anything to do with the cabling..

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Shadowex3

No, your PSU isn't capable of picking favorites. It's first come first served. If it's incapable of supplying everything then your computer's going to just plain shut down because CPUs are incredibly touchy about losing power. If it was the mouse then we'd be talking about 5 volts @ 900ma absolute maximum but probably a lot closer to 5v@~200ma TOPS for any real mouse even if its got an LED instead of a laser. That's less than a quarter of a watt. If his computer is pushed over the edge of it's power supply by less than two watts then there is no way in hell he'd ever be able to power the CPU to play music or even open firefox without the whole thing shutting down.

Just consider my old setup; I tried to run a pentium 4 and an 8800gt off of a cheap power supply while I was using about a dozen fans to keep the p4 from setting anything else in the case on fire (yep, it was a prescott). My mouse didn't shut me down, but trying to do anything that took more GPU power than basic windows use sure did. My enormous power-sucking trinitron monitor(s) running at a combined resolution of 3520x1200 stayed on the whole time though.

Like I just pointed out the fans in his computer would take more power together than the mouse probably would. If his computer's PSU was SO DEAD that it couldnt power the mouse and monitor at the same time then it would NEVER be able to support ANY kind of CPU or GPU intensive work and would shutdown every time he tried to play a game, watch a youtube video, or load something.

Again: No. Ever see those dvi->dsub adapters that you just screw onto the end of the monitor cord? Your videocard does not know or care the difference when you use those, the only time it notices a difference is when using a DVI-D connection and says "Yo, I'm all-digital, stop running the signal through the DAC and save yourself some work" and then it's DVI that's easier since it doesn't need to convert it to an analog signal.

There is no such thing as amperage, also as I've said once or twice now if you were in such bad shape that the ~.100 of a watt that the mouse draws was causing things to lose power I think he would be having more problems.

Really hot DDR3 runs at 3 volts tops and once again if his power supply was so dead the mouse was overdrawing it then he wouldn't even be able to boot up his computer because a harddrive spinning up when you power on is the single largest power draw that hard drive will ever make, that's why if you have 5+ hard drives in some giant RAID array you need a beefy power supply even if you aren't using a beefy graphics card.

Plus once again the CPU and GPU would individually be FAR greater power draws when they started working hard than his ram and hdd would ever be even put together. Your CPU and GPU don't draw their full load all the time, they draw only what they need at a given moment. Start calculating prime numbers and rendering HDR video and it's going to draw a lot more power than playing minesweeper on your desktop.

Yes, yes it can. It's called "interference" if it's coming from outside and "bad cables" if it's the cables or plugs. As an example of the former (these things don't exist in a vacuum) ask yourself why do you think there are rules built into the standards about wiring? Why do cables have insulation? It's not to keep them from catching a cold, it's to deal with interference.

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Jinn

It's one thing to be wrong, it's another thing entirely to try correcting someone else when you're wrong.

This is patently false. We're not talking about digital signal processing; this is analog power and it subject to peaks and valleys, even with a power conditioner. As long as the CPU and mainboard have adequate power, the computer will not just 'shut off'. I've doing computer repair on the side for about 10 years and I've seen faulty PSUs cause all sorts of intermittent peripheral failures, including intermittent black screens and blue screens.

I think you're essentially proving my point here. Any spike in draw can cause a PSU to be unable to provide appropriate power to all of the devices. I'm not sure why your monitors staying on is important at all, seeing as how they're self-powered. If you mean to use it to say that the CPU is more likely to fail and cause a hard shut off than the GPU, then your anecdotal experience is great, but *ANY* part can fail depending on the immediate voltage conditions to them all. I've suggested the mouse because it is linked to the actual failure, and a ground condition on the USB jack could easily cause a momentary power draw. It just as easily be ANY of the peripherals, but the solution would be in replacing the power supply, not the peripheral.

That's great when you're talking about sustained, but this appears to be a spike. Even temperature-ramped fans draw a stable current and aren't subject to spikes like DRAM, CPU and GPU are.


You mean the adapter on the *outside* of the video card? Of course it doesn't 'care' at the termination point, because it's already done with signal processing.

You just made my point, so I'm not sure what the rambling bit above was about.

I could have left this alone, but really? You do realize that W = VA, where Watts = Voltage * Amperage? It's the fundamental measure of current. If you're trying to 'correct' me to 'ampere', you'd do well to recognize that amperage is the measure of current, measured *IN* amperes.

I'm quite familiar with what insulation is for, thank you. And as you so dutifully noted above, the actual current carried on the line is not enough to create any meaningful EM field to nearby cables, even with damaged shielding.

I'd wager Real Money that the OP's problem will go away if you test with a higher rated PSU, but feel free to blame.. what was it you think is the failure, again?

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Shadowex3

That kind of personal attack isn't necessary, especially when you can't seem to even settle on what you're talking about from one post to the next.


WHAT is patently false? That the PSU isn't going to pick favorites and that it just supplies power on a first come first serve basis? And what on earth are you talking about with "digital signal processing"? I didn't mention that until I responded to your contradictory and backwards claims about DVI vs Dsub power draw. When you say ridiculous things that have no connection to reality it makes me wonder if you're trying to deliberately obfuscate the issue and distract people from actually looking at the facts of your claims.

You just proved my point, the power supply is going to give power to whoever needs it first and if the CPU and mobo lose power the computer shuts down. If his mouse, which is incapable of drawing more than 5v@500ma unless it breaks the USB specs, is pushing his PSU past its limit of being able to power everything else then his CPU and GPU would do the same thing when they start drawing more power.

I don't discount entirely that it may be a faulty PSU contributing to the problem, but the fault is most certainly not that the two and a half or so watt power draw of his mouse is overdrawing his PSU but somehow magically his CPU and GPU can draw dozens of watts more. Whatever the PSU could be doing to cause this, it's not from the mouse overdrawing it.

Your argument just does not make any kind of coherent sense in terms of a working computer, hell it's not even internally consistent with itself like I'll point out further down...

Again, no, you're proving mine. If any spike can cause the PSU to be unable to power everything how are the CPU and GPU's many times greater power draw when he suddenly starts doing something that requires them to work hard going to be exempt from this while his mouse, which is not capable of drawing more than about two and a half watts (since its unlikely they're totally throwing USB specs to the wind for a mere mouse), is somehow able to bring his power supply to its knees?

If you want to start bringing in special conditions like the USB mouse interfering with the monitor somehow still being related to the mouse overdrawing the power supply then good luck with that but don't expect me to wait for you to find some way for that to work without also messing with the rest of the motherboard, which is where that USB jack attaches to and would be solved just by switching to a different set of ports (or even a different one in the same set)

Sustained what? Spike of WHAT? Are you talking about a spike in voltage or amperes? A fan suddenly jumping to max speed and the CPU suddenly getting loaded are both sudden increases in the amount of power being drawn but if you're trying to say voltage or amperes there's a really big difference here and it's really freaking important. If your CPU or GPU draw more amps under load that's normal, but if your CPU suddenly starts drawing more volts that's a really big problem since your vcore is supposed to stay with what it's set at in the bios. Same with your GPU, you don't want that thing basically overvolting itself and causing problems (visual artifacts being one of those).

Words have meaning Jenn, in 10 years of repairing computers and all that experience with power supplies you should have learned that, along with learning the most basic and fundamental facts about the components you're talking about. Especially when making statements like this where you're dealing with things where the distinctions are important and you get those most basic and fundamental of facts utterly wrong.

And once again, because this really does need to be continually pointed out since you apparently are trying to obfuscate the issue to hide this on purpose, a "spike" of about two and a half watts from a USB powered mouse is going to be a damn sight less than the "spike" of any of those others except for his RAM.

See now I think you're just playing games, you're basically contradicting yourself here. Lets go back to your original post:

to which I responded:

Now how the hell did you do this? First you claim that the connector that doesn't need to run the DAC uses more power, then when I point out both possible situations of why that claim is ridiculous you respond first by acknowledging that you do know about signal processing and then by claiming you have no clue what I'm "rambling about" despite acknowledging signal processing a few lines up.


It's an electrical joke from same style as this (abridged) chemistry joke:
"... and it's so stable you could put another few nitrogens on it."
"No you can't."

Or alternatively flatly denying that the Star Wars prequels exist because George Lucas died tragically of a stroke in the mid 90's.


You realise that by admitting that you contradict your entire argument that the mouse is pushing his PSU over the edge, right? If you admit that the power draw of the mouse is that negligible then you're admitting that if the margins here were so close that said negligible power draw pushed his PSU over the edge then any number of much more power hungry components would have done worse already.

Any number of things starting with plain bad cables and possibly some interference since he's also got an issue with the screen being wavy, which suggests to me he isn't getting a digital signal since that sort of wavy issue tends to be more what you get with a bad analog signal.

Whatever it is, and it may be PSU related I never said it wasn't, it is not specifically that his mouse is somehow pushing his computer all two watts or so past it's limit and yet somehow the CPU and GPU magically aren't.

But since you're probably going to take the wall-of-text war even further and continue to try and find ways to twist things to mean what you want them to or dance out from this how about a simple test that will absolutely prove whether you're right or not: run prime95 and ATItool's "scan for artifacts" to stress both the CPU and GPU to the limit. If the monitor doesn't shut off then it's not an issue of how much power is able to be supplied because running both of those at max will absolutely outweigh the power draw of moving the mouse while loading a page or playing a video. After that just troubleshoot the mouse in different ports, or if you've got one try a non-USB mouse (assuming you have a USB mouse to begin with).

Those actions will test every factor of your theory that somehow the mouse is causing problems with the power supply: It tests the mouse, it tests the ports, and it tests whether the power supply is actually near its limit or not.

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Jinn

You're wrong there. Enjoy your Internet expert status, I'm done here. Best of luck, OP.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Shadowex3

Obviously give a different mouse or port (preferrably both) a try first. If that doesnt help go here and download both programs:

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/#newusers

You don't actually have to create an account to use Prime95, you should be able to just run it in place. Run the first seperate (atitool) and then both together for about 15 minutes or so and the two ought to tell you whether its on your graphics card or if its a power issue.

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