HD 7970 lots of problems, should I return before it's too late?

[Randymark]

I got the card just before christmas I didn't buy it(put half toward it) and they're at least a 2 hour drive away atm. Then I hadn't really got to test it much since because I had a lot of work. But I've been getting really anxious about returning this because I've heard how poor sapphire's RMA is in the UK, with waits up to 60 days and am worried about being too late to return it to amazon who it was bought from.

At first I noticed the z-fighting on the mountains in Skyrim and other 7970 owners seemed to get them but my skyrim had fuzzy foliage, general flashing textures and lines inside of shadows. I tried a few recommended settings in CCC and changing of prefernce.ini etc but couldn't get anything to work. Then I started noticing it in games that it wasn't occuring on before. Crysis 2, Planetside 2, and Crysis.
It's hard to tell exactly from the video as youtube seems to have lowered the quality but it was quite bad.

[Crysis 2 flickering landscape] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xvrNVUAWrQ

[Skyrim various] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T2pTN-CKk

[Skyrim artifacts] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqe3NliYAA

[Planetside flickering foliage/shadows] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EePcXkBORNo

[Heaven DX11 Benchmark flickering/torn shadows etc] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a5V2ekQgQs

The HDMI port seems a little dodgy too. With the slightest of a wiggle my fills up with red bars across it.

There were also grey bars that popped up occasionally. I thought it was to do with the HDMI cable being knocked my the mouses but I wasn't sure.

Then last of all there's quite a audible coil whine which I read up on, at least until you can get the game ambience to go over it.

Here's my specs:
GPU: sapphire amd hd 7970 vapor-x ghz edition(stock) CPU: I5 3570K at 3.4ghz(stock) Ram: 8gb kingston hyper x 1866 HDD: 2x 1tb seagate 7200rpm PSU: 650w Antec Truepower Mobo: Msi z77a-g43 Case: Zalman z-11 plus OS: Win8 pro 64bit

On the current beta 12.11 drivers as I tried to fix the skyrim issue, but everything else still seemed fine until now for no apparent reason.

So any ideas, should I return my HD 7970? Has anyone had experience returning graphics cards to amazon.co.uk?

Thanks a lot.

**Edit**

Was trying to downgrade my drivers with driversweeper but must of deleted something important as it BSOD on startup, had to system restore to last night.

 

[wanderer11]

Flashing textures in Skyrim happen to me all the time in 12.10 and 12.11. Use 12.8. Source: I have a 7870.

 

[Randymark]

The only video I could make out anything obviously wrong on was the Crysis 2 flickering texture video and your second Skyrim video. Are you using ANY mods or custom ini tweaks for Skyrim?

You should try reinstalling drivers following these steps:
www.overclock.net/t/988215/how-to-properly-uninstall-ati-amd-software-drivers-for-graphics-cards

Maybe try an official driver like 12.10 as well - 12.11 is a beta driver, after all.

It's hard to see int he other examples but in games foliage looks very fuzzy as if the shadows it casts are hypereactive and it makes the game almost unplayable because it strains my eyes too much, plus it just doesn't look good. Skyrim was modded but before that it was the same.

Rolled back to 12.10 as you suggested with that method but there is still flashing on crysis 2 still and Skyrim hadn't changed.

Flashing textures in Skyrim happen to me all the time in 12.10 and 12.11. Use 12.8. Source: I have a 7870.

Yeh I'd read around to try and figure that one out but the stuff I came across was mostly the mountains, did you have the flashing grass and trees as well?

Thanks for the replies btw guys.

 

[wanderer11]

Mostly the sky flashed, but sometimes the whole screen was flashing black. I don't have crysis 2 so I can't comment on that.

 

[Randymark]

Mostly the sky flashed, but something the whole screen was flashing black. I don't have crysis 2 so I can't comment on that.

Hmm I think in some games my screen flashes black for a split second sometimes.

 

[ddpruitt]

I see a number of texture issues in the videos. Kinda hard to tell due to issues related to running off of youtube but they're there. First if the card is overclocked put it back to stock and then reinstall the latest drivers. Rerun the Heaven benchmark and run Furbench to make sure you're temps are normal. If this doesn't solve the problem you may have a bad card, RMA it.

Fun Fact: Running Boinc with GPGPU apps will test the stability of your hardware more than any other benchmark

 

[Randymark]

I see a number of texture issues in the videos. Kinda hard to tell due to issues related to running off of youtube but they're there. First if the card is overclocked put it back to stock and then reinstall the latest drivers. Rerun the Heaven benchmark and run Furbench to make sure you're temps are normal. If this doesn't solve the problem you may have a bad card, RMA it.

Fun Fact: Running Boinc with GPGPU apps will test the stability of your hardware more than any other benchmark

It's has always been at stock clocks and I just reverted to the 12.10 drivers now. The last time I ran The Heaven benchmark it was peaking at 59C. Is furbench furmark btw? Sorry tried googling it and that was what came up, if so is it the burn in test? Thanks a lot for the reply.

 

[ddpruitt]

It's has always been at stock clocks and I just reverted to the 12.10 drivers now. The last time I ran The Heaven benchmark it was peaking at 59C. Is furbench furmark btw? Sorry tried googling it and that was what came up, if so is it the burn in test? Thanks a lot for the reply.

Furbench is another benchmarking tool that can sometimes reveal issues that other tests won't. Run it at full screen at your max resolution. 59C is a normal temperature. Try pushing up the settings in Heaven. Generally the harder you push the hardware the more likely issues are to show up. And to be honest the games your running really won't stress a 7970 too much.

 

[Randymark]

Ran Heaven with everything maxed again and it got up to 60C, then ran furmark and it got up to 63.

 

[ddpruitt]

Any other glitches that popped up (missing textures, white lines, random triangles)?

 

[Randymark]

Not really, there was one occassion where it looked like it was artifacting on uningine maybe but it could have just clipped the wing of the dragon but the flashing textures and overactive shadows were present. In furbench I couldn't really tell, but the middle bit was quite fuzzy and distorted.

I went back to playing ps2 to try that and it had more overreactive grass and when I dided block I saw black splotches flashing on the ground, not sure if artifacts or what tbh.

 

[Randymark]

Hmm artifacts on chivalry too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3LPkkH5rU
There were some odd fuzz like shadows around aswell:
http://i.imgur.com/QlRF9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EUuy4.jpg
There was flickering on deus ex HR and JC2.
Plus this:
http://i.imgur.com/rtT0c.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Po6it.jpg

I think I'm going to take it out of my machine and back to my parents tommorow and see what I can sort out with amazon. Thanks for the help.