Graphics artifacts.

[Swarnendu]

Hello,
I am experiencing very high amounts of graphics artifacts only while playing games, graphics distortion and corruption. Games are crashing sometimes and few games always crashing. Now while continuing like this sometimes a game crashes and AMD says graphics driver stopped responding and has recovered successfuly. After this occurs no more artifacts or any such graphics problems and/or game problems, giving me pure and clean graphics. I do not understand the cause of this for a long time now. May be that this is a software related issue but where is that issue?

Can anyone please help me out on this?

My Configuration:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Cooler Master high profile OEM cooler
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR
Corsair Value RAM 2GB + 2GB DDR3 1333
XFX AMD Radeon HD 4890
Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 700
Corsair Force 3 60GB
WD Caviar Black 1TB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 320GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB
HP DVD RAM drive 22X
LG DVD RAM drive 22X
Creative X-Fi Titanium
ASUS Xonar Essence ST Deluxe
USB extension bracket
eSATA extension bracket

There are a total of 8 fans cooling each of the system component specifically including sound cards, hard drives, dvd drives and the motherboard with properly maintained intake and exhausts for each fan and cpu, gfx card and smps to reduce air turbulence eddy currents and removal of stale air around each fan with maximum possible potential. And output stale air of the system is further removed with dedicated battery powered fan. So I guess there are no cooling issues.

 

[randomkid]

Give us the detailed specs of your PC:
graphics card
processor
motherboard
power supply.

Also, how old is your PC & when was the last time you cleaned your PC & the cpu coolers / vga coolers?

 

[Swarnendu]

Give us the detailed specs of your PC:
graphics card
processor
motherboard
power supply.

Also, how old is your PC & when was the last time you cleaned your PC & the cpu coolers / vga coolers?

I have already given you the detailed specs of my pc. I have not given monitor, speaker, printer, modems, keyboard-mouse, mics and ups configurations. Do you need them?
Also I did not give the M/B BIOS config and windows system configurations. If you need them let me know I will give whichever info you need to give me a solution..
The M/B, CPU and RAM are 6 months old, SMPS being 9 months and graphics card has been replaced and it's 2 months old. And all others are either 2-3 years old or new i.e within 6-12 months.
I cleaned my pc around a month ago and I clean my PC every one month thoroughly (full disassembling).

 

[randomkid]

The info is enough. Thanks. So we can rule out overheating... It is great to clean the PC regularly but I think every month is quite on the extreme unless it is really dusty in your place.

The graphics card is last 3 generation AMD card. Is it brand new when you get it or 2nd hand?
Have you tried updating to the latest catalyst release from AMD?

 

[GI_JONES]

I think it could be your power supply. The claimed 700 watts should be plenty, but CoolerMaster isnt known for making the best psu's. You have a lot of drives and fans. Try running with one of the optical drives, only 1 hard drive (if you can) and only 2 or 3 of the fans, and turn off any case lights. This will lower what is being drawn on the 12 volt rail. Power supplies degrade over time, and your graphics card requires a fair ammount of juice. The review of the 600 watt version of your power supply wasnt very good. It claims that it really is only good for about 450 watts, before it fries. Here is a link to that review.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-eXtreme-Power-Plus-600-W-Power-Supply-Review/1034/1

Based on the info concerning the 600 watt version only being good for 450 watts, your 700 watt unit might only be putting out 550 or so which would be iffy for running your system

 

[Swarnendu]

I think it could be your power supply. The claimed 700 watts should be plenty, but CoolerMaster isnt known for making the best psu's. You have a lot of drives and fans. Try running with one of the optical drives, only 1 hard drive (if you can) and only 2 or 3 of the fans, and turn off any case lights. This will lower what is being drawn on the 12 volt rail. Power supplies degrade over time, and your graphics card requires a fair ammount of juice. The review of the 600 watt version of your power supply wasnt very good. It claims that it really is only good for about 450 watts, before it fries. Here is a link to that review.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-eXtreme-Power-Plus-600-W-Power-Supply-Review/1034/1

Based on the info concerning the 600 watt version only being good for 450 watts, your 700 watt unit might only be putting out 550 or so which would be iffy for running your system

I am using Catalyst 12.4, the latest.
Yes I see the 600W review, actually I wanted the Corsair GS600 but it was not available in the market then and so I had to go for the Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 700 for the exact same price.
I have already tested this SMPS on another system with core i5, nvidia gtx 570, 4gb dual ch. ram xms3, asus p8h67-m evo, creative x-fi titanium.
And if it is a hardware problem, as you mean, then why is the full lot problem disappears when amd driver recovers from non responsive? As I said ---- "sometimes a game crashes and AMD says graphics driver stopped responding and has recovered successfuly. After this occurs no more artifacts or any such graphics problems and/or game problems, giving me pure and clean graphics"

Please help..

 

[randomkid]

There is already a Catalyst 12.6. Try it. I found the 12.4 buggy but it was fixed with the 12.6 & I got better performance.

 

[americanbrian]

The info is enough. Thanks. So we can rule out overheating... It is great to clean the PC regularly but I think every month is quite on the extreme unless it is really dusty in your place.

The graphics card is last 3 generation AMD card. Is it brand new when you get it or 2nd hand?
Have you tried updating to the latest catalyst release from AMD?

How exactly can we rule out overheating? Where are the TEMPS (GPUtool preferably)? You can have all the fans in the world but if the Heatsink and fan are mounted wrong it won't make a bit of difference. What TIM is used on the GPU &CPU? Does the H/S Fan contact the GDDR on the graphics card (full coverage or flower) If full coverage are all the TIM pads still in place? If the H/S Fan is removed for cleaning has it been re-mounted properly? Did you reapply the thermal paste?

Is it OC'ed? POST THE TEMPERATURES. Then we can rule out GPU and CPU overheating (but not memory overheating as is very common with modern cards despite not placing sensors to monitor GDDR temp on most models).

What kind of artifacts? Are they discoloured? triangular shadows? blocks (squares)? Lines (usually green blue or purple). A video would be nice.

The fact that this happens under LOAD but not in normal operation implies it is probably heat or maybe power.... With all of those fans running you may be overtaxing the 12V line.

 

[americanbrian]

Does your GPU have a dual bios? the 4890's were billed as OCers. MAny have DUAL BIOS.

It could be that it has had a bad flash on one BIOS and recovers to the default whcih then runs, If this is the case you should be able to use the switch on the card to set it to the default BIOS.

 

[americanbrian]

Please post pics of GPU-Z...

 

[Swarnendu]

My 4890 has been fully replaced with a new card by XFX. I gave them a XFX 4890 XXX edition (extrenal exhaust, active cooling of the memory chips and the vrm by thermal pads to the metal heatsink chasis) and they returned me an internal exhaust card with no active cooling of the memory and vrm, lower clock speed and far lower quality chokes and overall card circutry design. They said that xfx is producing these cards for replacement purposes. I am extremely dissatisfied with xfx.
The gfx card heatsink has been mounted properly I have checked it.
Artifacts like blinking squares and triangular 3d protrusions and triangular holes in some 3d objects.
No my gpu do not have dual bios.
temperatures are high as usual of a xfx card of those times and may be even now, 45C idle and 65-75C extreme load at fan speed forced at 100% and at default vbios fan speed control 56C idle and 85C extreme load.
How do we add pictures over here?

 

[americanbrian]

I use photobucket ,

From what you are telling me I suspect the GDDR is overheating. I say this because of the lack of interfacing to the heatsink and the nature of what you describe the artifacts to look like.

The only workable solution I can give you without replacing the card again is to massively underclock the memory and hold the fan speed at 100%. If you use GPUtool to underclock the memory really low and try to run some of the games that normally produce artifacts and see if there is any improvement.

I use photobucket to take screenshots. it is free. Don't worry about the pics. I would be happy if you would just try what I suggest. it should take a couple of minutes and will help decide if this is the problem...

 

[randomkid]

My 4890 has been fully replaced with a new card by XFX. I gave them a XFX 4890 XXX edition (extrenal exhaust, active cooling of the memory chips and the vrm by thermal pads to the metal heatsink chasis) and they returned me an internal exhaust card with no active cooling of the memory and vrm, lower clock speed and far lower quality chokes and overall card circutry design. They said that xfx is producing these cards for replacement purposes. I am extremely dissatisfied with xfx.
The gfx card heatsink has been mounted properly I have checked it.
Artifacts like blinking squares and triangular 3d protrusions and triangular holes in some 3d objects.
No my gpu do not have dual bios.
temperatures are high as usual of a xfx card of those times and may be even now, 45C idle and 65-75C extreme load at fan speed forced at 100% and at default vbios fan speed control 56C idle and 85C extreme load.
How do we add pictures over here?

That is too bad about the poor replacement. I heard others are giving replacements at an upgrade.

As I mentioned earlier, the catalyst 12.4 is no longer the latest. try to update the Catalyst to 12.6

 

[Swarnendu]

That is too bad about the poor replacement. I heard others are giving replacements at an upgrade.

As I mentioned earlier, the catalyst 12.4 is no longer the latest. try to update the Catalyst to 12.6

Catalyst 12.6 WHQL is not yet out, it's beta.

 

[Swarnendu]

I use photobucket ,

From what you are telling me I suspect the GDDR is overheating. I say this because of the lack of interfacing to the heatsink and the nature of what you describe the artifacts to look like.

The only workable solution I can give you without replacing the card again is to massively underclock the memory and hold the fan speed at 100%. If you use GPUtool to underclock the memory really low and try to run some of the games that normally produce artifacts and see if there is any improvement.

I use photobucket to take screenshots. it is free. Don't worry about the pics. I would be happy if you would just try what I suggest. it should take a couple of minutes and will help decide if this is the problem...

Ok, If I change my memory clock to something lower or higher and then revert it to it's default 975Mhz, then all the artifacts go away. If I do not touch memory clock settings in AMD Overdrive after turning on my system and run a game then I see artifacts.

 

[randomkid]

Catalyst 12.6 WHQL is not yet out, it's beta.

It is still better than the buggy 12.4 WHQL or not.

But its up to you. of course.

 

[randomkid]

Ok, If I change my memory clock to something lower or higher and then revert it to it's default 975Mhz, then all the artifacts go away. If I do not touch memory clock settings in AMD Overdrive after turning on my system and run a game then I see artifacts.

Probably just one of 12.4 bugs... I don't know about you but if you installed the 12.4 to replace an older version, the version number will remain as the old one when you check in the CCC status info.