Artifacts on 6950 possible psu or bad card! Help!

[admaster99]

I just bought a new radeon Diamond 6950 about a week ago and updated the bios to 6970 and it worked flawlessly for several days. But recently I started noticing artifacts during games and on the desktop. So I decided to run ATITool and when you scan for artifacts the window is compeletly yellow and flickering really bad.
So I down graded the bios to the orginal and I still see some artifacts but not nearly as bad as before, is my card bad or am I starving it for power. I have a 600 watt PSU coolermaster and it has never given me problems. I want to say I started noticing it when I upgraded my cpu to a q6600 several days ago but I don't now for sure.

System specs:
Intel quad core 2 q6600
6 gig of patriot ram at 800 mhz
abit IP-35e
300 gig hd
Diamond Radeon 6950
Coolermaster PSU 600 watt

 

[SickBeast]

That sounds like a bad card to me. Perhaps you stressed the ram too much by running it at the 6970 speed.

Have you tried underclocking the card? I would focus on the memory because that seems to be the limiting factor in terms of people doing that mod.

 

[happy medium]

I started noticing it when I upgraded my cpu to a q6600 several days ago but I don't now for sure.

This sound like a psu problem. What was you old cpu ? a dual core?

edit: your psu seems fairly good though.
+3.3V@25A,+5V@30A,+12V1@18A,+12V2@18A,-12V@0.8A,+5VSB@2.0A

 

[brencat]

That sounds like a bad card to me. Perhaps you stressed the ram too much by running it at the 6970 speed.

Have you tried underclocking the card? I would focus on the memory because that seems to be the limiting factor in terms of people doing that mod.

This ^

The memory on the 6950 was not designed to handle the spec or voltage of the 6970 bios. Try the shader-only unlock mod which keeps the memory at 6950 specs.

My fear is that you may have damaged your card with that 6970 bios, but hopefully not. There's a thread at [H] about permanent artifacts as the downside to 6970 flash.

 

[thilanliyan]

Sigh, I hope not too many people are doing this now...as has been found from when this unlocking initially started, it can damage your card.

I'll link to this again:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31168272&postcount=13

Ocing does more for a performance increase than unlocking the shaders does. If you send a faulty card for RMA and they find you have flashed the BIOS, they may deny warranty.

 

[admaster99]

It was a dual core e6420 and I want to say I only noticed it when I switched the processors but that could be a coincidence. I am leaning torward the bios update also if I got a new card I would not do that again because or at least for awhile to make sure I knew the card was running fine before I messed it up if I did you know what I mean. Also I was not able to underclock it because when I downgraded the bios and when I did that I tried to install a different driver to see if there was a difference. And I was unable to do this because there was and error with the INF file so after spending 2 hours messing with it I just pulled it out and put my old card in and most likely going to rma my card hopefully.

 

[badb0y]

It was a dual core e6420 and I want to say I only noticed it when I switched the processors but that could be a coincidence. I am leaning torward the bios update also if I got a new card I would not do that again because or at least for awhile to make sure I knew the card was running fine before I messed it up if I did you know what I mean. Also I was not able to underclock it because when I downgraded the bios and when I did that I tried to install a different driver to see if there was a difference. And I was unable to do this because there was and error with the INF file so after spending 2 hours messing with it I just pulled it out and put my old card in and most likely going to rma my card hopefully.

The RAM on the 6970 is different than the one on the 6950 so simply putting a 6970 BIOS in a 6950 could be detrimental.

The best thing to do is:
Save your BIOS using GPUz
Download the shader unlocker tool from TPU(It's in the thread somewhere)
Use the tool to unlock YOUR gpu's BIOS
Flash it
???
WIN

It's safe because it's your cards original bios + shaders so the probability of a dying card is basically nil.

 

[klinc]

I just bought a new radeon Diamond 6950 about a week ago and updated the bios to 6970 and it worked flawlessly for several days. But recently I started noticing artifacts during games and on the desktop. So I decided to run ATITool and when you scan for artifacts the window is compeletly yellow and flickering really bad.
So I down graded the bios to the orginal and I still see some artifacts but not nearly as bad as before, is my card bad or am I starving it for power. I have a 600 watt PSU coolermaster and it has never given me problems. I want to say I started noticing it when I upgraded my cpu to a q6600 several days ago but I don't now for sure.

System specs:
Intel quad core 2 q6600
6 gig of patriot ram at 800 mhz
abit IP-35e
300 gig hd
Diamond Radeon 6950
Coolermaster PSU 600 watt

ATI Tool? They discontinued it. That tools finds artifacts in every card. Use something else to test it. ATI tool is for old gpus. Not the new ones.

 

[admaster99]

But I cant get the drivers for the card to install it keeps saying cant find INF file otherwise I would do everything you guys recommend is that because I screwed up the bios some how? And isnt there away to set it to the original on the card somehow? Because as far as finding artifacts with ATITOOL, furmark works find and nothing shows up in that and if I put the fan speeds at 50% it doesnt go over 70C. But I notice artifacts in games particualarly cod World at war.

 

[klinc]

Artifacts is your vram taking a dump

 

[admaster99]

So that not fixable right?

 

[badb0y]

Nope, w1zzard should definitely change that article up a bit.

 

[admaster99]

so rma it and if I get the new card and I want more performance do the bios update for the shaders and not clock speeds correct.

 

[badb0y]

so rma it and if I get the new card and I want more performance do the bios update for the shaders and not clock speeds correct.

Not neccesarily clock speeds, just don't flash a 6970 BIOS. Flash a BIOS that is 6950 with unlocked shaders. If you want to overclock , use afterburner and all should be fine :thumbsup:
After you get your card, PM me I can help you further if you want.

 

[zagood]

so rma it and if I get the new card and I want more performance do the bios update for the shaders and not clock speeds correct.

Make sure to tell them you flashed the bios when you RMA it.

 

[badb0y]

Make sure to tell them you flashed the bios when you RMA it.

Yea, you can flash the BIOS back and send it in but that would be in bad taste, just be up front about it, I don't think they deny you the warranty.

I called in XFX to ask about their policy on putting custom coolers on the card and they said as long as the card is not physically damaged, it's fine. I then asked the same guy whether flashing my BIOS would void my warranty and he said no.

If you don't tell them they probably won't notice but I would be upfront about it.

 

[Zap]

Artifacting is a graphics card problem. If PSU was problem, then you would get massive system stability issues (if +12v was too low) or system shut downs (if hitting OCP).

 

[Elfear]

Make sure to tell them you flashed the bios when you RMA it.

+1

If you haven't done it already:
Uninstall all ATI drivers --> power down --> switch back to bios position 2 --> power it up and go into Safe Mode --> run Driver Cleaner to remove all traces of ATI/Nvidia drivers --> reboot and try to reinstall 11.1a drivers.

See if that works and report back.