[ale] Memory or Software? (Scott Castaline)

[Scott Castaline]

On 11/22/2009 09:34 PM, Ryan Marshall wrote:
>> Can anybody tell me whether I'm experiencing a software bug or if it's a
>> hardware issue?
>>
>> I've noticed that certain functions over a period of time stop working
>> or become erratic. It became very noticeable with Songbird where
>> intermittently my "Last Played" Date/Time would be blank, even though
>> the track had played. If I restarted Songbird it would display correctly
>> for a while and then start again. It seems almost like a heat related
>> problem as it intensifies the longer the system is on. On first morning
>> boot, all is well, but later the problem comes to play.
>>
>> I've had also for a while, but never thought too much about it until now
>> have lost my scroll wheel function when switching desktops. Not a big
>> issue, but when it happens I have to actually point to the desktop I
>> want and then click. Then of course, there was the issue that I asked
>> about a few months back that affected my display and someone pointed out
>> that I probably hadn't set the fonts settings correctly for my LCD
>> display. This problem periodically returns even though the settings are
>> correct, but if I open and close the dialogs the problem sometimes stops.
>>
>> I have a Gig-a-Byte MoBo (GA-MA790FX-DS5) with an AMD Athlon 64 x2, 4GB
>> RAM (OCZ 800MHz), 1ea Diamond PCIe x16 HD3650 Video w/1GB VRAM. I have
>> never seen memory usage reach 2GB or above, but, the problem seems to
>> happen when I have a large # files open in say OpenOffice or especially
>> Adobe Reader. I have also seen where if I have a OOo Calc sheet open to
>> max. window display and I am using the calc to verify a formula, when I
>> switch back to calc part of the calculator remains displayed on top of
>> my spreadsheet. Could this be a driver issue? Or could it be ATI chips?
>> Or maybe just bad VRAM or RAM?
>>
>> Any opinions
>
> Bad VRAM usually causes artifacts on the screen.  Moreso than the
> application UIs become undead, but lines on the screen, weird dots and
> sometimes the screen stops refreshing entirely.
>
> I'm inclined to think this might be due to the video driver,
> especially with an ATi card.  The first thing I would do is turn off
> compositing (compiz) if you've got it on and see how that goes.  Past
> that, I'd update or roll back the driver.  Neither the binary nor the
> open source ATi linux drivers are particularly good but last I checked
> they were passable for 2D desktops.
>
> Then, I'd check for heat issues, memtest, etc, etc, hardware stuff.
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I've never set up Compiz so as far as I know it's not running.