Artifacts in various games? Tested across multiple drivers. Video inside. (Update)

[Dankk]

Update - I know this is kind of late, but:

A random stranger commented on one of my Youtube videos saying he had the exact same problem, and reverting back to 12.4 seemed to mostly alleviate the artifacts. This reminded me that I had yet to test 12.4 to see if I had the same issue.

Good damn thing I did. Booted up the exact same level in Duke Nukem Forever, and after spending a substantial amount of time jumping around, trying to elicit some graphical corruption, I simply couldn't do it. I think there may have been *one* artifact that I saw during the whole time. But other than that, nothing. It was perfectly smooth the entire time.

I decided to boot up another game where I had a substantial amount of artifacts: Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. Whereas corruption appeared every minute or two just last night, with Catalyst 12.4 it was perfect. No artifacting, no nothing. Smooth as ever.

Sapphire gave me the go-ahead for an RMA, but I'm glad I haven't actually sent it in yet. I may just let the RMA expire and keep the card for now.

With this new information, do you think we can safely rule this out as a driver problem? Maybe chalk up the ridiculous VRM temps as unrelated, maybe the result of a faulty/sporadic sensor? (After all, the spikes in temperature didn't seem to correlate with the artifacts.) Any other thoughts?

Now might be a good time for me to fill out a detailed bug report on AMD's driver page.

I also want to thank you guys again for the help. This is why I love Anandtech. The people here are incredibly helpful. Especially you, RussianSensation, thanks.

 

[RussianSensation]

Hey LessThanDan,

I think you should monitor the VRM temperatures randomly just to keep an eye on them. Upgrade GPU-Z to the latest version 0.6.4.

I guess we both learned something that you can have severe artifacts in many games due to driver problems. Usually artifacts can occur in 1-2 games but based on your post it was prevalent in many games.

On the positive side Sapphire did respond to your RMA request which means if something should happen with card from now until the warranty expires, the company is actually there to help. If the card continues to work well with Cats 12.4, that'd be your last stable driver. Over time hopefully you will find a newer version of Cats driver that works just as well.

It's unfortunate to see that AMD has these driver issues that are random. You filing a report explaining those black artifacts in those games would be helpful since the more people complain, the more likely they will fix these issues.

As a side note, ironically, I fired up the Demo of Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga and I get black artifacts all over in that game MUCH worse than what you have. This is the first game I am having problems with. But I read it's buggy as hell.

Looks similar to this.

Chernobyl nuclear meltdown

 

[Dankk]

Wow. Indeed, that looks significantly worse than what I am experiencing. How did you manage to take those screenshots? Just regularly with PrtScrn?

One of the traits of my problem is that the artifacts are extremely brief... and by "brief", I mean they literally only appear for a single frame. Assuming the game is running at 60 frames/sec, these "single-frame artifacts" are extremely difficult to notice, and are almost subliminal in nature. I can't take a normal screenshot of these artifacts even if I tried.

So what I do is:

- I record a FRAPS video of about ~5 minutes of gameplay, while making mental notes of when I see abnormal flashes
- Import the footage into Adobe Premiere and scrub through it frame-by-frame, so I analyze the frame where the artifacting occured (video editing is my day job, which comes in handy)
- Save a screenshot of that frame for reference.

You can probably imagine why I'm so hesitant about actually RMA-ing the card, for an issue that occurs so subtly. The folks at Sapphire may not scrutinize such problems as thoroughly as I do.

If there's one thing that further proves it's a driver problem, it may be the fact that I ran multiple stress tests on the card (Kombustor, OCCT, Video Memory Test) and all of them passed with flying colors. No errors and no crashes to be found. Some games are just not playing nicely with the drivers I guess.

Here's a DNF screenshot I took (these will be low-quality because they're essentially a screenshot of a screenshot of a video editor)

Here's an interesting one from Dead Island (some strange anomaly going on with the trees)

Here's another one from Dead Island... I'm not even sure what to say about this one. The UI just exploded for a fraction of a second.

There's a few more I haven't captured, notably Ridge Racer Unbounded and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. Both those games are experiencing some pretty bad corruption.

Regarding Catalyst 12.4: I'm choosing to stick with 12.8 for now, because 12.4 had a notoriously bad issue with 78xx cards not waking up from sleep. Because of this, 12.4 is unusable for me. I basically have to choose between a) using 12.4 and dealing with crashes after my monitor goes to sleep, or b) using 12.8 which is mostly stable but has artifacts in a few games. Assuming the issues with 12.8 aren't permanently damaging anything, I'll stick with that for now.

Guess I'll get to filling out that bug report form then.

 

[Bill Brasky]

I had the same problem with my 5850 in Bad Company 2. A certain part of a level would create hideous artifacts, but I was never able to fix it. Fortunately, that was the only game I ever had problems with.

 

[Dankk]

I just had another thought: Is it possible to somehow have a corrupt GPU BIOS? TechPowerUp apparently has a copy of a BIOS for my exact model of Sapphire 7870, in their GPU BIOS repository. I wonder if I tried flashing the BIOS it would fix it?

If this sounds silly then let me know.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you continue to have artifacts in many games regardless of drivers, I think you should send the card in for RMA because if you flash the BIOS, I don't think the card is covered by warranty at that point (I mean you can still reflash it back and send it technically).

 

[Dankk]

If you continue to have artifacts in many games regardless of drivers, I think you should send the card in for RMA because if you flash the BIOS, I don't think the card is covered by warranty at that point (I mean you can still reflash it back and send it technically).

Remember though, when I reverted all the way back to 12.4, the artifacts disappeared. So the driver I'm using does matter.

I'm so conflicted.

 

[railven]

I'd personally RMA it if it isn't too late. Them kind of issues might creep up again. Have you tried 12.8? They've been solid with performance and hopefully aren't broken for your system.

I'd personally get the piece of mind by swapping out for a new board, you might not get the opportunity again.

 

[jacktesterson]

Have you tried 12.8?

Sorry, but read thread again

 

[Dankk]

Yeah, I'm currently using 12.8. I've been having issues since 12.6, and I had the same problem with 12.7 beta as well. I waited patiently for 12.8, assuming it would cure all my problems, but it didn't... which is what pushed me to create this thread.

When I reverted back to 12.4 however, I could not reproduce any of the artifacts. So you can see why I might be hesitant to call this a hardware problem, when it seems like it could possibly be a software problem (since switching to 12.4 seems to fix it). I tested things pretty thoroughly, but maybe I should revert back to 12.4 one more time to confirm that I'm not crazy.

Thing is, I've done some Googling and I've found absolutely no one else with my same problem. It seems to be extremely isolated. So... I'm still not sure what to do with myself. I can either

a) Wait for another driver update that perhaps will magically fix the artifacts, or

b) RMA the card under the presumption that it IS in fact faulty, and the RMA dept hopefully recognizes the problem and fixes/replaces it for me.

 

[RussianSensation]

When I reverted back to 12.4 however, I could not reproduce any of the artifacts. So you can see why I might be hesitant to call this a hardware problem, when it seems like it could possibly be a software problem (since switching to 12.4 seems to fix it). I tested things pretty thoroughly, but maybe I should revert back to 12.4 one more time to confirm that I'm not crazy.

My bad Dan! I thought you still had some artifacts with 12.4s but it was less extreme. Have you thought about doing a full OS re-install and starting from a clean slate with 12.8s? Try 12.4s again and see if all the artifacts go away. If it's not too much work, do a full OS reinstall too. Also, is there any way at all you can test this card out in another system, perhaps a relative's or a friend's?

 

[Dankk]

My bad Dan! I thought you still had some artifacts with 12.4s but it was less extreme. Have you thought about doing a full OS re-install and starting from a clean slate with 12.8s? Try 12.4s again and see if all the artifacts go away. If it's not too much work, do a full OS reinstall too. Also, is there any way at all you can test this card out in another system, perhaps a relative's or a friend's?

I decided to do a thorough uninstall of 12.8, and then re-install 12.4. My observations have remained the same.

Before swapping drivers, I fired up Duke Nukem Forever. On the caves level, I can see plenty of artifacts; in fact there's a particular place where if I stand there just right, I can see artifacts up the wazoo. Within only ~10 seconds of loading the level, I was able to reproduce artifacts to the tune of this video.

Uninstalled 12.8, wiped it clean with Driver Fusion and everything, installed 12.4, and ran Duke Nukem Forever again. On that exact same level, I tried to reproduce artifacts exactly like I did a few minutes before. I jumped around, tried to stand in that same spot, and... nothing. I played around for ~10 minutes trying to see if any corruption would pop up, and I think I *maybe* only saw one brief artifact during that whole time. But no more. Otherwise, it played perfectly smoothly.

There's no confirmation bias going on here. It's clear that using 12.4 instead of 12.8 minimizes artifacts to nothing. I could not reproduce the artifacts shown in that video, not at all.

I suppose I could do an OS re-install, but I'm not sure how that would help things, and I just reformatted as recently as 3 months ago. Plus, I habitually keep my PC very clean from bloat and crapware, so I'm unsure of what 3rd-party program could possibly be causing the issue.

I'm not saying I can't reformat; I certainly can, but it's a tad time-consuming, and I'm just not confident that it would help with anything.

I do suppose I could try it in another PC. I probably won't be able to do it until Saturday, but I'll get back to you guys and let you know what happens.

 

[3DVagabond]

I would just run 12.4 and not be too concerned. Do a bug report and submit it to AMD.

 

[Dankk]

I'm doing some more googling, found a couple more people who are having my exact same issue. Here is someone else playing GTAIV and getting artifacts COMPLETELY identical to what I'm getting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce0sS_uvO7c

I would just run 12.4 and not be too concerned. Do a bug report and submit it to AMD.

Unfortunately, 12.4 was notorious for crashing your entire computer after your monitor went to sleep for 78xx users. I was one of the many affected. I'm going to avoid using that driver for that problem alone. :\

 

[RussianSensation]

Do you have an HDMI cable? Maybe try testing the GPU over HDMi instead of DVI.

LessThanDan, try testing the GPU in another system. At the very least if the problems persist in that system, we can isolate all of the hardware components in rig as "not at fault". That would allow us to 100% focus on the GPU and GPU drivers.

 

[Dankk]

I'm disappointed to report that the 12.9 beta driver has not fixed the corruption.

Do you have an HDMI cable? Maybe try testing the GPU over HDMi instead of DVI.

LessThanDan, try testing the GPU in another system. At the very least if the problems persist in that system, we can isolate all of the hardware components in rig as "not at fault". That would allow us to 100% focus on the GPU and GPU drivers.

I've tried an HDMI cable, and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I thought I had another computer I could test my card with, but I realized it's a small MicroATX machine and the card won't fit unless I disassemble everything. That, combined with the fact that the PSU probably isn't strong enough to power it anyway, means that it would be a very lengthy activity to try to install the card in it.

*sigh* very unhappy right now.

 

[BenSkywalker]

The memory on your video card is bad, sorry.

 

[Dankk]

The memory on your video card is bad, sorry.

Tempted to just RMA it now. I've been experiencing corruption with flash video lately too.

 

[Dankk]

Update: Sapphire's stateside RMA facility (Althon Micro) authorized a return for me last week. Here's what's happened so far:

1) I shipped the card last Wednesday.

2) They received the card on Friday.

3) They shipped out a replacement today, and it will arrive tomorrow.

Realistically, they only had Friday, Monday, and Tuesday to test the card and file for a replacement. That means an RMA turn-around time of only 3 days. Assuming the replacement card they give me works perfectly and is free of artifacts, this will have been the best RMA service I've ever had.

I had my doubts about Sapphire earlier. But goddamn that is some fast customer support.

I'll post one more update tomorrow when I confirm that the card works.

 

[Dankk]

I got my card yesterday. The artifacts have not been fixed.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm tired right now, so I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'll check the S/N on my card to see if it's the same one, or a replacement. They didn't specify on the RMA receipt if it was a repair or a replace.

 

[Dankk]

Checked the card. It's different card than the one I sent them; so it's a replacement. The replacement card has artifacts. :\

What can I do? Do I just file another support ticket and get another RMA? In the meantime, I'll just use my 6950, which has no problems.

Sorry for the 4 posts in a row. I'm really, really frustrated now. Sadly enough I might have to add Sapphire to my list of manufacturers to never buy from anymore.

Out of desperation, I broke down and reformatted my PC today. On a completely clean install of Windows, I'm still getting corruption. So much for that.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Could it be some kind of conflict between your motherboard bios and the 7870?

Have you tried the latest bios for your ASUS P8P67 motherboard?

Also, if it's a P8P67 PRO or better, please try your 7870 in the second PCI-E motherboard slot.

 

[Dankk]

Could it be some kind of conflict between your motherboard bios and the 7870?

Have you tried the latest bios for your ASUS P8P67 motherboard?

Also, if it's a P8P67 PRO or better, please try your 7870 in the second PCI-E motherboard slot.

I am indeed using the latest BIOS for my P8P67 motherboard.

 

[Mezzanine]

There's a lengthy thread over at Guru3D full of people reporting very similar artifacts but no definite fix unfortunately.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368290

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I am indeed using the latest BIOS for my P8P67 motherboard.

I did not read every post in this thread, but I did find out you've tried to underclock the GPU and also overvolted it without success. Did you try underclocking the memory on your 7870 too?

The strangest thing about all this is that when OP is using Catalyst 12.4 there are no artifacts. While all the later Catalyst drivers have the artifacts. Very strange...