MB source of graphics problems??? HELP! =/

Murderotica926

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Dec 25, 2012
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Ever since I completed my new build I've noticed a ton of shadow flickering and a smaller degree of texture flickering in pretty much any DX11 game I play. I was convinced it was my HD 7970 and I was literally just about to RMA the card when I decided I would just test out my old 6950 on my new build, just to make sure I wouldn't see the same problems. My heart sank to the floor when I saw the same exact flickering problems with a completely different GPU - problems I never saw on the same card with my old build, which was with Phenom II X4 955 on a Gigabyte M68 motherboard. Same exact RAM on both old and new build (8GB G. Skill Ripjaws @ 1333Mhz 9-9-9-24 1T).

Now I KNOW it's not a driver issue - because upon swapping out my 7970 for my old 6950, I also made sure to completely wipe my drive and do a fresh install of Windows 8 to make sure there were simply no drivers at all on my system. Fresh install of Catalyst 13.1 and the chipset drivers for my motherboard. This has to be 100% a hardware issue. But the fact that it isn't the GPU is scaring me. Everything is stock settings. Motherboard BIOS is the absolute latest version and it has all default settings. Both the 7970 and 6950 were also run at default settings. Nothing in the entire build is overclocked. I wish I could test my motherboard and CPU separately but obviously I can't because my new and old CPUs use different sockets, and I don't have access to another LGA1155 Z77 motherboard or another i5 3570K. I've stress tested the hell out of my CPU with Prime95 and there are 0 errors and 0 warnings. From what I understand, Prime95 Blend test also does a lot of memory testing as well, but I have not run Memtest. Either way, I can't imagine my RAM would be the cause of flickering shadows and textures - if any memory would cause that, it would be VIDEO RAM, and I doubt both of my GPUs have bad VRAM, especially when I never saw this issue with my 6950 in over a year of use in the old build.

Also, OCCT GPU testing showed 0 errors in either GPU after hour-long testing (although its only DX10 testing). But if both my CPU and GPU are checking out with their respective stress tests, I really don't know what else it could be. It HAS to be this motherboard, but I have absolutely no idea how a motherboard could cause visual errors in video games. I've tried both PCI-e slots - no difference.

This is the best, most obvious example I could capture with FRAPS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-sT8s0755s

PLEASE HELP ME TROUBLESHOOT!!! =(
 

Murderotica926

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Dec 25, 2012
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Well it shipped to me with 2.5. The latest is 2.7 but I have not tried that yet. I'm very skeptical that will make any difference, I'm beginning to think there is some issue either with the PCI-e controller on my CPU or the actual PCI-e lanes on the motherboard. The Micro Center I bought the MB and CPU at is about 3 hours away but I'm close to going there with my whole PC to have them try different motherboards and CPUs in my build.