AMD's real biggest issue, The DX9 Artifacts

[Homeles]

They're the ones listed in this link: http://www.overclock.net/t/1351650/...he-1-thing-on-amds-radar-the-dx9-artifacts/20

 

[BFG10K]

I didn't come here to ask for assistance or to have anyone help troubleshoot. I can do that on my own and when I do overclock I perform very rigorous stress testing unlike most people.

I made this thread to make people aware of an issue. You can read the Guru3d thread that I liked to so you can see some of the trouble shooting that others have done. There is a lot of info about this issue in that thread if you are uninformed.

This is a confirmed issue by AMD. I've personally seen these artifacts on more than one system.

So, believe what you want.

I don't believe my question was answered: So just to set the record straight, are you overclocking anything in your system?

A simple "yes" or "no" is needed.

I'm not saying these aren't legitimate driver bugs, but your personal experiences don't have merit unless you have the same problems with everything at stock.

 

[Keysplayr]

Coming from Mr. FUD himself. Cute. Why don't you stop throwing fuel on the fire. At least he's contributing. Gotta ask, have you seen any artifacts. Oh, wait, oh, you don't own an AMD card, or maybe you did buy those 7970's after all.

Yeah OK. If you would kindly point out where I posted any FUD I'd appreciate it.
And ease up on the hate, it doesn't become you.
No, I don't own AMD at the moment. I don't think you can blame me for changing my mind on that one.
@ Bababooey: I agree with BFG that any artifacts you experience while any part of your system is run out of spec (overclocking/underclocking, overvolting/undervolting, whatever) should be disregarded. System returned to default clocks and try again. If you still get the artifacts, make a video, show it here. It would at the very least shut some people up.

 

[3DVagabond]

People seem to be once again changing what "AMD said" to fit their own needs. The title says, and people are complaining about, artifacts. Artifacts similar to the types you get with an unstable O/C or bad memory. In the LINK provided Thracks clearly talks about flickering, which isn't the same thing.

I have access to the bug tracker, and DX9 flickering is the #1 thing on our radar.

Unless it's elsewhere in that thread and I don't know where to look?

 

[Dstoop]

People seem to be once again changing what "AMD said" to fit their own needs. The title says, and people are complaining about, artifacts. Artifacts similar to the types you get with an unstable O/C or bad memory. In the LINK provided Thracks clearly talks about flickering, which isn't the same thing.



Unless it's elsewhere in that thread and I don't know where to look?

I've seen it referred to as both flickering and as artifacting. The issue manifests itself either as a black, textureless "flicker" that appears and disappears almost instantly, or a more traditional looking muddy green/reddish artifact that also disappears almost instantly. It seems to depend on the game which one you get, but regardless of how you want to pick apart the semantics, both AMD and the rest of us are talking about the same known graphical issue with 7xxx series cards in directx9 games.

You can call it "the salmon donkey effect" for all I care, as long as it gets fixed.

Back to the original topic before this degraded into a he-said-she-said bitchfest, 13.1 seems to have made noticeable improvements to the issue in Guild Wars 2 for me. It still happens, but less frequently and less severely. Framerates, however, seemed to have suffered as well.

 

[Rikard]

From the list of affected games from badb0y I only have these

• The Walking Dead
• BF3
• Skyrim

I am positive that I had no artifacts with those with earlier patches, but I could take a look again. However, now you say Skyrim is fixed in 13.1 that I just updated to. Is that the situation too with BF3 and TWD, in which case that would be a waste of time?

 

[badb0y]

From the list of affected games from badb0y I only have these

• The Walking Dead
• BF3
• Skyrim

I am positive that I had no artifacts with those with earlier patches, but I could take a look again. However, now you say Skyrim is fixed in 13.1 that I just updated to. Is that the situation too with BF3 and TWD, in which case that would be a waste of time?

Those weren't a list of affected games just the games that I played last year and didn't have any issues with.

 

[blackened23]

I've seen it referred to as both flickering and as artifacting. The issue manifests itself either as a black, textureless "flicker" that appears and disappears almost instantly, or a more traditional looking muddy green/reddish artifact that also disappears almost instantly. It seems to depend on the game which one you get, but regardless of how you want to pick apart the semantics, both AMD and the rest of us are talking about the same known graphical issue with 7xxx series cards in directx9 games.

You can call it "the salmon donkey effect" for all I care, as long as it gets fixed.

Back to the original topic before this degraded into a he-said-she-said bitchfest, 13.1 seems to have made noticeable improvements to the issue in Guild Wars 2 for me. It still happens, but less frequently and less severely. Framerates, however, seemed to have suffered as well.

Flicker makes sense as a driver issue, but the "dot" artifacts that float around the screen as black , blue, green dots are almost always overclocking/voltage related. I've seen it on many GPUs from both ATI/nvidia.

 

[Rikard]

Those weren't a list of affected games just the games that I played last year and didn't have any issues with.

Wow, I really misread your post! :whiste: That explains a lot. OK, but other people listed Skyrim as one example, but I also did not see it there, neither before nor after 13.1. Not sure if I actually have any other game to test...

 

[Red Hawk]

I don't believe my question was answered: So just to set the record straight, are you overclocking anything in your system?

A simple "yes" or "no" is needed.

I'm not saying these aren't legitimate driver bugs, but your personal experiences don't have merit unless you have the same problems with everything at stock.

I know I wasn't asked, but might as well say. My card is factory overclocked by 10 MHz both on memory and the core; the problems exist at the factory clock and the stock clock. The card is otherwise stable even when overclocked by 100 MHz on the core. I haven't messed around with the voltage though.

 

[mablo]

I had artifacts very frequently in Euro Truck Simulator 2 while I was on 12.11 beta, however it have gotten a lot better after 13.1. Not completely gone though. It's the only game I've had artifacts on my 7950(stock).

 

[Dankk]

I take back what I said about Train Simulator 2013. Played it some more today and there's definitely still a lot of artifacts.

 

[3DVagabond]

I've seen it referred to as both flickering and as artifacting. The issue manifests itself either as a black, textureless "flicker" that appears and disappears almost instantly, or a more traditional looking muddy green/reddish artifact that also disappears almost instantly. It seems to depend on the game which one you get, but regardless of how you want to pick apart the semantics, both AMD and the rest of us are talking about the same known graphical issue with 7xxx series cards in directx9 games.

You can call it "the salmon donkey effect" for all I care, as long as it gets fixed.

Back to the original topic before this degraded into a he-said-she-said bitchfest, 13.1 seems to have made noticeable improvements to the issue in Guild Wars 2 for me. It still happens, but less frequently and less severely. Framerates, however, seemed to have suffered as well.

It just seems to me that we have two different phenomenon being described here. I sure wouldn't describe the type of artifacts some have complained about as flickering. I'm not trying to pick anything apart. Just trying to be a bit more accurate in exactly what the problem is. It's never going to be something that the engineers can address if we're throwing every type of video corruption ever experienced in and claiming they are the same one problem that needs to be addressed.

 

[Dstoop]

It just seems to me that we have two different phenomenon being described here. I sure wouldn't describe the type of artifacts some have complained about as flickering. I'm not trying to pick anything apart. Just trying to be a bit more accurate in exactly what the problem is. It's never going to be something that the engineers can address if we're throwing every type of video corruption ever experienced in and claiming they are the same one problem that needs to be addressed.

Fair enough, I agree that the issue is so vague and so easily mistaken for people who *actually do* have bad OCs or defective cards that who has what going on can be muddied considerably. My issue is mainly that as soon as someone jumps in the thread and says "I have artifacts too after OCing my card to the point where it melted on a 200w PSU" suddenly we're right back to everyone denying that the known issue this thread is discussing actually exists.

To be 100% clear to everyone in the thread, this is "the issue" as I understand it:

depending on the game, you will occasionally get a texture on a single object, or a piece of an object, or a horizon line, or something *specific* that for a split second flashes black and then goes back to normal, or flashes the typical muddy, military looking greenish-red of a normal graphical artifact and then immediately goes back to normal.

It only affects DX9 games, and certain games show it more than others with little consistency between users. To my knowledge, there are no reports of this *specific issue* occurring in any DX8, DX10, or DX11 games.

Tests following proper troubleshooting methodologies, as well as AMD reps, have shown that it gets better or worse depending on what version of drivers you're using, and persists even for people trying multiple different cards from different manufacturers in the same rig, indicating that it is primarily a driver issue.

Most reports indicate that it has been most prevalent between the 12.6 and 12.10 drivers, with 12.11/13.1 showing reasonable improvement.

Over the past few months, there have been numerous large threads about the issue on nearly every enthusiast forum, the AMD forums itself, and the official forums for many of the games it affects, showing that it's not an isolated issue, and more than just the tolerable level of people with genuine hardware failures reporting false positives.

If you are experiencing floating colored dots, full screen artifacts, persistent lines across your screen, full screen color flickering, black screen hard crashes, BSOD errors, random shutdowns or restarts, or anything that is not a quick, random flicker or artifact on a specific texture in a specific DX9 game, you probably don't have this issue. You should make your own thread in the Computer Help forum so all the helpful people here can guide you towards working out your specific problem.

That being said, one more thing i've noticed with the issue specific to Guild Wars 2, the artifacting/flickering will *NEVER* happen on my character, other characters/NPCs, or my skill animations. It seems to exclusively happen on stationary objects, specifically areas exposed to lighting effects outside of the base "world" lighting (torches, fires, in caves with special lighting, etc), and seems to occur more often in very heavily lit areas or very low lit areas that use a lot of these extraneous light sources. It also seems to only happen on objects a medium to far distance from my character, but is distinctly different from normal texture/object pop-in as things load, as it only happens on objects that are *already* fully loaded. My money is still on it having something to do with how light sources and shadows are being rendered where sometimes it just craps out for a frame or two before fixing itself.

 

[yepp]

I've encountered this in:

Alan Wake (very rare occurrence)
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
Dead Island (worst offender)
Guild Wars 2
Skyrim
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Tera Online

Doesn't matter if I overclock my system or not.

 

[Bateluer]

I have a stock system, SnB w/ASRock mobo, and a Radeon 7950. Haven't noticed any corruption or artifacting in any games so far personally. Never saw any with my previous 6950 either.

I did experience my #2 LCD dropping out occasionally, requiring a reboot to bring it back. I've been attributing the issue to the DVI/Display Port adapter. I think the Catalyst 13.1s cleared it up though, hasn't occurred since I installed those.

 

[AdamK47]

I've encountered this in:

Alan Wake (very rare occurrence)
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
Dead Island (worst offender)
Guild Wars 2
Skyrim
Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light
Tera Online

Doesn't matter if I overclock my system or not.

I can confirm Dead Island. When I had three 7970s I would encounter something odd every 10 minutes or so. Like a texture blank out in a single frame. It wasn't a gameplay breaker though.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Wow, thought I just had a random glitchy card. I get random black artifacts/lines in Dota 2, but not any of the other games I've been playing. Looks like it is the only DX9 game on my list. Wonder if we'll ever see a fix?

 

[Hatisherrif]

I've encountered this in:

Alan Wake (very rare occurrence)
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
Dead Island (worst offender)
Guild Wars 2
Skyrim
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Tera Online

Doesn't matter if I overclock my system or not.

I only tried Alan Wake for a few minutes to confirm increased performance over my old card, but I could not notice any artifacts during that time. I will have to test again.

I can confirm terrible artifacting in Chivalry and Dead Island, which can even get unplayable at times. Skyrim artifacts too since the release of 13.1 (weird that it didn't before). I don't play the other games you listed, but I noticed some very, very rare and quick black flashes/flicker in Tropico 4 and Just Cause 2. World in Conflict seems totally clean for now. Weird, it seems that games which use my GPU 100%, whether they are DX9 or not, never flicker. That's right, World in Conflict, Left 4 Dead 2 etc. did not seem too flicker so far. Will investigate further.

 

[yepp]

I only tried Alan Wake for a few minutes to confirm increased performance over my old card, but I could not notice any artifacts during that time. I will have to test again.

I can confirm terrible artifacting in Chivalry and Dead Island, which can even get unplayable at times. Skyrim artifacts too since the release of 13.1 (weird that it didn't before). I don't play other games you listed, but I noticed some very, very rare and quick black flashes/flicker in Tropico 4 and Just Cause 2. World in Conflict seems totally clean for now. Weird, it seems that games which use my GPU 100%, no matter whether they are DX9 or not never flicker. That's right, World in Conflict, Left 4 Dead 2 etc. did not seem too flicker so far. Will investigate further.

The flickering artifacts is very rare in Alan Wake, in my 5hr plus of gameplay so far, i've only seen it occur 3 times.

 

[lopri]

Is The Witcher 2 DX9 or DX10? Asking because that's one of the reasons I've kept the 7950 despite my waning interest on high-end video cards. I haven't encountered artifacts when I played that game.

 

[thilanliyan]

Is The Witcher 2 DX9 or DX10? Asking because that's one of the reasons I've kept the 7950 despite my waning interest on high-end video cards. I haven't encountered artifacts when I played that game.

I also did not experience any artifacting in Witcher 2 using a 6950.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I also did not experience any artifacting in Witcher 2 using a 6950.

I did not play all the way through, in fact I only have a few hours into it. But I have not seen any artifacting in that game either.

 

[KevinH]

I also did not experience any artifacting in Witcher 2 using a 6950.

From what I gather it's not a 6 series issue.

 

[Red Hawk]

Is The Witcher 2 DX9 or DX10? Asking because that's one of the reasons I've kept the 7950 despite my waning interest on high-end video cards. I haven't encountered artifacts when I played that game.

The Witcher 2 is DX9.