Sudden color change in GTX 260

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by wingman123, May 7, 2011.

  1. wingman123

    wingman123 Member

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    GPU:
    Gigabyte GTX 260
    Hi,

    I have a Gigabyte GTX 260, and yesterday, the colors suddenly changed so that everything was having a yellowish tint. At times it switched between the normal color and the tint quickly (several times per second) and sometimes the tint would stay for minutes and so on. When I restarted the computer, it came back to the normal colors and stayed that way until shutdown. But today, when I booted up, the colors again had the tint and this time it wouldn't go away. When I switch to the other DVI port, there's a blue tint to everything. Here're how the test image at http://www.abchomestore.com/colortest/Color_Test.gif looks like when I connect the cable to the two ports:
    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/07052011429.jpg
    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/534/07052011430.jpg

    From this I guess we can rule out the problem being in the monitor, drivers, the cable, the ports themselves or the DVI to VGA converter I use, since one port doesn't show blue and the other doesn't show red. So the problem has to be the card. What I can't figure out is why this happened. In fact, the exact same thing happened to my last card about 3 years ago, which was an Inno3D 7900GS. Could it be the heat, because I live in a hot country and the room temp is about 30 deg Celsius now. This time the problem started happening when I was in the desktop maybe 10 minutes after playing Crysis 2 for about one hour. The card's about 2 years old now and the GPU temp is about 80-85 deg Celsius when I play a game.

    Anybody got an idea on how or if I can fix this? Could using a monitor with a native DVI input help in any way?

    Thanks in advance!
     
  2. Sutura

    Sutura Master Guru

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    GPU:
    Palit GT210 0.5/1680x1050
    Hm...well, I want to help, but can't tell you much. The first thing that comes to my mind is to thoroughly clean it. Or may be, when you strip the card down, try to bake it?
     
  3. Corbus

    Corbus Ancient Guru

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    GPU:
    Moist 6900 XT
    Well try when you sit on your PC not to rush in or make loud noises or else you will scare it ,thats why it changes colors.

    I think your GPU needs a clean and thermal paste replacement.

    Or the fact that you live in such a warm enviroment your card is dying prematurely.
     
  4. wingman123

    wingman123 Member

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    GPU:
    Gigabyte GTX 260
    An update:
    When I turned on the machine today, the normal colors were back, with the colors switching to the yellowish tint occasionally and then returning to normal. I ran Furmark for about 10 mins (with the temp maxing out at 80 deg celsius) just to see if the gpu temperature would affect the color change, but didn't see any relation between them.

    I took a screenshot while the colors where wrong and when I viewed it on a different computer, the colors looked normal. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism of capturing screenshots (is it done after the frames being processed by the gpu?), but if it is, does that mean the problem's not in the gpu but in the circuitry between the gpu and the dvi ports?

    Btw, I tried cleaning the card (only the back of the board though, didn't take out the front cover) and that didn't make any difference.
     

  5. angmar

    angmar Guest

    sounds like a lose video cable. or some other sort of monitor connection issue
     
  6. sublime20

    sublime20 Banned

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    GPU:
    GTX 560 Ti


    i know when my monitor cable was loose on my samsung flat screen lcd, i would see little areas of uncolored pixels, then the same monitor about a few months after i moved it around alot and a few wires got severed inside the thick outer shield, it turned everything greenish yellow, untill i moved it around and made the wires inside touch...

    so it could just be a monitor dvi/vga cable being severed inside its outer sheath, you might need to replace your monitor. or if it has a totally disassembleable DVI/VGA cord (meaning, if it disconnects both from the monitor itself and the computer) then you can just get another cable for it.... but if its hard rigged, you have to get another monitor.... unless you are really good at splicing complex cables and soldering.

    sorry for the book. i tried to be explanatory with detail haha.

    p.s. check the little prongs inside the connector on your monitor cables, make sure none are bent or touching others, this leads to faulty display also!
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2011
  7. PurpleFish

    PurpleFish Guest

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    GPU:
    XFX GTX260 c216 @ 780core
    If your screen shots look normal when viewed on another pc then its your screen or cables. Have you tried a different monitor? I feel this will solve your problem.
     
  8. wingman123

    wingman123 Member

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    GPU:
    Gigabyte GTX 260
    I think I've finally found what the problem is. I just tested with another monitor that supports DVI input.

    another monitor -> another VGA cable -> still has the tint
    another monitor -> DVI cable -> colors are OK

    So the colors are OK when using the DVI connection without converting it to VGA. The problem's definitely not in the DVI to VGA adapter since I tested with 3 different adapters. Just out of curiosity I tested my old 7900GS which had the same problem, and sure enough, the colors were fine with the DVI cable.

    So I guess the problem is in some digital to analog converter module on the card itself (although I'm not even sure there is one on the card).

    Anyway, I guess I have to either buy a monitor with DVI or buy another graphics card.

    Thanks for all the suggestions, btw.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2011
  9. Wokis

    Wokis Active Member

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    GPU:
    Nvidia Geforce GTX Titan
    I had the same issue with VGA on GTX 460. My DVI screen displayed things just fine but my secondary screen connected through VGA showed pretty much the same as yours.

    Cause? Slightly unstable overclock on my CPU. Increasing vcore solved it.

    I also had a similar color issue earlier (no O.C.) which was solved by clearing CMOS.
     

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