HD 7850 Sapphire, should I RMA? is this a problem for sure with it?

[Oscarmk]

Hello,

First my system specs:

HD 7850 Saphire OC (Default OC) currently running 12.8 WHQL drivers, CCC has everything at default.
i5 2500 K (Not OC, just turbo enabled to 3.7Ghz)
16 GB Ram Corsair
7200 RPM Hard Drive 6GB/s
ASUS Maximus iV Gene-z/Gen 3 motherboard
Windows 7 Professinal 64 Bit

I have been getting some artifacts in Guild Wars 2 using 12.8 WHQL drivers, so I went back to 12.4 WHQL but had the same problems.

I also noticed once some really small white squares in Diablo 3 auction house, but this only happened once.

So I ran 3d MARK 11 without any issues, and then tried Unigine Heaven, I saw white artifacting like this flash extremely fast, and saw a total of 4 in 30 minutes. I was glued to the screen trying to find artifacts for those 30 minutes...

See hazy "cloud" envolving city and part of the bridge.

And in Guild Wars 2:

(See light blue flashing in top right corner and left side)
For Guild Wars I will get 1-3 artifacts every 5 minutes, which can be black random artifacts, or textures flickering to white/blueish white for split seconds, this increases if card is under heavy load 80%+, so in towns for example where there are many people around.

(See squares illuminated for absolutely on reason at all), this is the ONLY artifacting/flicker I can reliable reproduce, all other flickers are completely random.

And in Diablo 3:

(See small white squares on second from the bottom line)

I have never ever experienced any issues with the card in the desktop, and have only seen it in Diablo 3 once in about 200 hours of play...

Also I have seen the roof of houses in Unigine Heaven 3.0 go white for a split second, like the texture changes to complete white, and in the last scene where the lights are going out, I have seen a flashing black artifact in the middle-right of the screen, I have seen this a couple of times but it certainly does not happen every time. This artifacts do not always happen and are random/sporadic.

Also it happens a lot more when card id under heavy load 80%+ according to GPU-Z.

The temperature is always max 60 C checked with GPU-Z.

I am just not sure if the problem is with the card or not... I want to RMA it, but I just want to make sure the card is defective first, or if perhaps this errors are normal with Unigine Heaven and Guild Wars 2.

I guess what I am asking is if occasional artifacts are possible in perfectly working hardware for Unigine, and if it is possible that Guild Wars 2 is just such a new game that it has graphical glitches.

Notes: Games or computer has never ever crashed.
In 12.6 WHQL the only texture flickering that is fixed is the one where the textures get "illuminated" for on reason in the skill menu in Guild Wars 2, but other issues persist.

So the question is, should I RMA or could this possibly be a driver issue?.

Thank you,

Oscar

 

[gren238]

I got a new AMD 7950 that mainly to play GW2 with and I am having at least one of the issues you are having with the split second flashes. It seems to be a problem that other people are experiencing so I am guessing it is a driver issue but I can't but sure. I have tried other versions of the drivers and it didn't seem to fix anything. I have tried 12.4, 12.6, 12.7 and of course 12.8. It happens on all of them for me.

As far as I can tell it is only happening in GW2 for me, I have tested Heaven and a few other games and didn't see anything.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55712-guild-wars-2-graphics-artifacts-110-second/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55463-graphical-artifacts/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57085-graphical-artifacting-terrain-flashing/



I found these threads while I was trying to figure out if my card was bad or not. I am still thinking about retuning my card for a 670 just so I can avoid any driver issues. I was hoping GW2 wouldn't have a driver problem since AMD cards are amazing for the money if you don't run into any driver troubles.

 

[Oscarmk]

I got a new AMD 7950 that mainly to play GW2 with and I am having at least one of the issues you are having with the split second flashes. It seems to be a problem that other people are experiencing so I am guessing it is a driver issue but I can't but sure. I have tried other versions of the drivers and it didn't seem to fix anything. I have tried 12.4, 12.6, 12.7 and of course 12.8. It happens on all of them for me.

As far as I can tell it is only happening in GW2 for me, I have tested Heaven and a few other games and didn't see anything.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55712-guild-wars-2-graphics-artifacts-110-second/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55463-graphical-artifacts/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57085-graphical-artifacting-terrain-flashing/



I found these threads while I was trying to figure out if my card was bad or not. I am still thinking about retuning my card for a 670 just so I can avoid any driver issues. I was hoping GW2 wouldn't have a driver problem since AMD cards are amazing for the money if you don't run into any driver troubles.

Hi gren238,

It does seem that I am not the only one having problems with Guild Wars 2, although my problems seem to be slightly worst than others, specially the random black/blue artifacts. I think the texture might be driver/game related but not sure about the artifacts...

The first link you posted is mine =), I made the thread but got no responses =(...

Anyway taking into consideration how many people are playing Guild Wars 2 it looks like the minority is having issues, I just can't find enough threads online. So perhaps we all just have a problem with our card?, it does look suspicious that there is minimal complain about this. There seems to be plenty of 7000 series ATI users claiming to run everything without any problems in 12.4 12.6, 12.7 and 12.8 drivers... so either they are blind/don't pay enough attention or really it is our cards =(...

I contacted Sapphire about the issue and they suggested to RMA, I am about to send my RMA form to get my RMA number... I really would like to avoid this, but looks like there is no other solution. I think once I get the replacement I will sell that one unopened, because even if it is drivers, I am done dealing with AMD drivers, I will just buy nvidia... It is sad because this is the first time I go ATI and I am having this issues.

 

[commissarmo]

I'm not very avid so far as gaming goes, but when I have had AMD driver issues in the past, I've always found rewinding the drivers VERY far back (even 6 versions earlier) often corrected the problem...

That of course, it not really a desirable solution per se, but it does imply, as was noted above, that most of the issues are likely to be driver related, and not necessarily hardware.

Of course, in my opinion, you made the right choice - it's usually not worth it to fiddle with the drivers until you go insane... then choose to RMA the card only to discover there was a faulty pin on the outputs or some such.

 

[gren238]

Looks like they released an update to the CAP drivers for GW2 improvements yesterday. I am going to test it out a little bit later and see if it helps.

 

[Oscarmk]

Looks like they released an update to the CAP drivers for GW2 improvements yesterday. I am going to test it out a little bit later and see if it helps.

I will give this a try, before sending my card back, already got my RMA number valid for 20 days.

 

[gren238]

While it seems like it did help a little bit for me with the update, it still hasn't fixed to split second flashes for me. Seems like I get less but they are still happening. Unless its fixed in the next week or so ill probably be returning the card for an nvidia card myself.

 

[Oscarmk]

While it seems like it did help a little bit for me with the update, it still hasn't fixed to split second flashes for me. Seems like I get less but they are still happening. Unless its fixed in the next week or so ill probably be returning the card for an nvidia card myself.

Had exactly the same experience, it definitely did help also the game does run faster overall. At first I though they finally were gone, but about 10 minutes in, I started to see flashing textures to light blue again... it is definitely better though but still has flashing textures mainly to light blue, which is making me rethink if the card is really faulty or if this is just the drivers...

Because of the improved performance, I am also wondering if I simply see less artifacts because of this, since the artifacting seems to happen more often for me if the gpu is under heavy load.

Not sure what to do now...