New card (Sapphire Radeon R9 380), graphics glitches, how to diagnose?

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Recently I bought a new graphics card, a Sapphire Radeon R9 380, and had to return it because the fans kept spinning at 100% and couldn't be controlled.
After I got the replacement I was very happy that the fans now worked correctly but now I'm worried that theres something wrong AGAIN...

Here's a video of the glitch I get in SOMA:
https://youtu.be/AdYOFqDtN_Y
I tried experimenting with the settings in the game and the only thing that did something was Bloom Postprocessing which makes it worse:
https://youtu.be/pkJi11CLWgw
And yes I know that the game uses some distortion effects as graphical effects but these definitely weren't in the game when I played it with my old card (Radeon HD 6850).
Everything else seems to work fine, only get that flickering underwater. I guess it has to do with the particles flying around (dust or something?) doesn't crash and runs very smooth.

Now I just noticed this in Fallout 4:
http://imgur.com/77cvFfz

Its the first time this happened after 8 hours of gameplay, noticed just 1 other glitch everything else works perfectly.
It also crashed to desktop in Fallout 4, something something display driver recovered.
But that's something I managed to fix with a registry entry. Something with TdrDelay.
(Edit: It crashed again multiple times, without a message this time...)
(Edit 2 | new day): Yesterday it crashed multiple times, today I played for 4 hours straigt and no crash, it did run very stuttery at some points though... moslty when there was a lot of lighting/shadow effects).

For SOMA I tried downclocking VRAM and gpu clock speed by 10% (Edit: even 20%!!!). Didn't help at all.
The card is factory overclocked. Temperature is stable at 70°C while ingame.

*sigh*
Is there any chance its not a hardware defect? I tried different driver versions, cleaned everything with the DisplayDriverUninstaller (http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html) inbetween.

Is there any free program that can test my graphics card if everything is running as it should?
I tried EVGA OC Scanner X but that didn't find any artifacts and doesn't really have any other tests.
99% of the content of the games runs perfectly fine, it's just those tiny things that make me worry theres something wrong with the card and it's only going to get worse, what If I try another game later that has a lot more glitches but by then the time will have already run out for returning the card.
I also tried running the 3DMark Sky Diver and Unigine Valley benchmarks, didn't see any glitches there.
 
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I already did that, twice even, to make sure I didn't do something wrong :(
Also tried different versions, Beta/Release, Old/New and the one that came on CD using DDU inbetween tries (in safe mode).
I'm 99.9% sure the driver is installed correctly but I don't know how to tell 100%.
The only things related to the driver running are:
atieclxx.exe
MOM.exe
CCC.exe

The only thing I didn't try is reinstalling Windows because I hate losing all my settings.
I'm thinking about returning the card a second time, but what if I'm wrong and its not the card? How can I know?
I don't have a second PC I can just pop the card in to test it, the only thing I can say is, my old card works perfectly (except that it's slow).

Edit: Also updated chipset drivers, no change.
 
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I'm still using Windows 7.
What I'm wondering is, why do I only get glitches in SOMA and crashes in Fallout 4, but the Benchmarks and other games run fine?
If the card is faulty shouldn't it crash more often and have more glitches?
I really don't have time to test it out in 10 different games, especially when glitches only happen randomly in very few specific places (like SOMA, everything perfect until the underwater part which comes only after about an hour).
I also get a small 1 pixel wide white bar below the cursor texture in Hearthstone but I don't know if thats a sign that somethings wrong or NOT?
(Can't capture that, cursor doesn't show up on screenshots and when I record with fraps the white bar is gone)
My Problem is that I only have about a week left to return the card (At least to get an immediate replacement, as far as I understand) and I'm absolutely not sure if it even IS the cards fault.
For the most part it runs fine and then I get something weird like the glitches, or a crash, or something that might just be the games fault (like getting 15 FPS in Fallout 4 in certain places or weird jittering https://youtu.be/A1FI3BOeBxc)

Update: Just ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark for 2 hours, no artifacts or glitches and no crash. I'm confused...
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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If I'm correct, those are DirectX 11.1 titles and DX 11.1 is not fully supported on Windows 7. I'd seriously consider doing the free windows 10 upgrade, then after making sure it has activated, do a clean install of Win10.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1825794/directx-win.html



How to upgrade to windows 10:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2784691/ditch-problematic-win10-upgrade-replace-clean-install.html


Just keep in mind that is geared towards doing a clean install after having already upgraded. The downloaded installation media can be used to do the upgrade however, just remember to select the "keep files, folders and settings" option during installation. When doing the clean install, you'll want to boot from the media, delete all existing partitions and install to the unallocated space. Make sure AHCI and UEFI are enabled when doing the clean install. You don't need to worry about that for the upgrade. All of this of course is assuming you DO the upgrade. Otherwise, I'm not sure you'll have much more luck with the DX 11.1 API and games that require full support of it.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Good luck and let me know if you still have issues. It's possible, even likely, you may still have issues after doing the upgrade. I suggest also doing the clean install after the upgrade has been verified as activated as the clean install resolves a lot of issues that follow the upgrade from the previous OS installation.
 
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Aaaaallright I'm back after testing it on Windows 10. I did not do an upgrade but a clean install.
The first time starting SOMA I thought it would finally work, but then I still noticed the same kind of glitches as before, just less.
One 4x4 pixel area for just one frame every 5 seconds or so. Then I restarted the game, and the second time it was back to crazytown, now with black textures randomly popping up:
https://youtu.be/LYGkDXGeOeU
After that I tried my old card again (Radeon HD 6850) and it works, just with a lot less FPS. (Even without reinstalling drivers)

I don't know what to do... I mean its just the underwater part of this one game and relatively random crashes in Fallout 4 (Display driver 'amd driver' stopped responding and has successfully recovered or something) that I THINK only happen in specific places every 15~ Minutes? It's really hard to tell when the crashes happen so randomly. I played it for 4 hours non stop yesterday without any crash.

Just now I found another thread while trying google again (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2815718/weird-graphical-issues-soma-sapphire-radeon-380.html)
Looks like its almost exactly the same glitch.

What I'm thinking now, is that the card might actually be fine and it's just a stupid coincidence that exactly those two games I tried with my new card happen to be not working correctly with it. Unfortunately don't even have other current games to try, because I didn't even buy any, knowing playing them with my old card at 20fps wouldn't be that fun...

But if I'm wrong, then I'm missing out on the 14 day immediate replacement that I can get directly from the vendor, after that I have to do the whole RMA procedure with the manufacturer instead. At least that's how I understand it. (I'm in germany, so I don't know how much the laws differ).

Can I even ask for a replacement for a perfectly fine card? At least it says so on the paper... "Can return it within 14 days, without explanation blabla" One argument would probably be to just get a replacement then, but I don't want to wait another week for a replacement, because I can't play Fallout with my old card, aaaargh :D
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Did you check to see that Windows 10 shows as activate, just out of curiosity, and did you use the product key from your previous OS during the installation process?


If your other card works fine, with none of those issues, then it cannot be anything other than the card or the card drivers. Period. Actually, make sure you have the latest motherboard bios installed as well.
 
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I used this method (http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/30/how-to-clean-install-windows-10-directly-without-upgrade/) to install Win10 on a seperate partition. Simply because I don't want to switch to Win10 yet if its not absolutely necessary (which it would have been if the new card only worked on Win10).
There are no new versions of my BIOS, the newest one is 3 years old and I have that already.
If it was the card, wouldn't benchmarks like Unigine Valley/Heaven, FurMark etc show some kind of glitches as well?
Even after 2 hours of running Heaven it still worked perfectly and at a nice stable 70°C.
I have no idea... I'll just have to believe it's just SOMA. Didn't find any fixes for it. Oh well at least I played it already, just wanted to experience it again with better graphics and a nice smooth 60fps.
As for Fallout, I THINK I remember having the same bug with Fallout New Vegas with a completely different card a few years ago?
So maybe its just the bethesda render engines fault or something. It's just weird because I never thought it would still be possible in 2015 to crash the graphics card through a software bug.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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It certainly COULD be game specific, but unless every title you're having issues with is using the same engine, it's improbable. IF they are, then you're probably right. Generally these kinds of problems are corrected through driver releases but I'm unaware of any common issues of this nature related to those titles or your hardware. Usually problems are likely to result in crashes too, not pixelation or display corruption. Those are usually related to hardware issues, but could be something else, I've seen stranger problems.

In the past I've seen similar problems as this due to the strangest reasons like slightly bent pin on the CPU or motherboard but since you don't have any issues when using a different GPU card, that's unlikely.
 
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