Recurring issue with 4870

[THERESONATOR]

Hi guys

Today I rather belatedly got my copy of both Bioshock and Oblivion. In both games I have an issue with my graphics. Both games run super smoothly on the absolute highest settings and resolution. HOWEVER, when you walk around in dark areas, red stars appear a lot. This is much more a problem in Bioshock since most of that game is very dark. In Oblivion of course its more an issue at night time and when you are in caves. I have looked around, people don't refer to them as stars although on my computer they appear as stars, but instead as red dots. Also in Bioshock I occasionally get random squares of varying colour, usually shades of green.

I have overclocked my CPU but not graphics. My i7 920 is running at 3.2Ghz. Graphics at stock 750Mhz GPU, 900 MHz Memory. Fan speed 40%, temperature as I write this is 41 degrees C.

In Oblivion you don't tend to get stars but red dots.

Also for some reason World In Conflict crashes a lot during loading and sometimes even midgame even though reviews say that game was not buggy.

I have patched all my games to the highest patches!

I believe these things are called artifacts?

I dont know whether it has any effect but I don't tend to turn my PC off. I put it on standby or just let it idle away with the screen turned off. Maybe it needs a cool down!

 

[brandonb]

Yes, those are artifacts. Usually caused by the video card overheating, sometimes caused by defective cards.

I've had the issues once in about 2003 with a brand new video card (9700 pro) and it would do the same thing as you described, but also in some games (at the time BF1942) would also corrupt polygons, and render them funny and it would cause crashes.

The only thing to really do is return the video card, clean it up (blow out the dust), or lower the clocks.

Your idle speeds don't seem worrying. There is a program out there which detects artifacts. ATI Tray tools or something?

 

[v8envy]

Had that issue with an X1800XT. Like you, I never shut down my machines.

It was running fine at 85C load for about 11 months, after that the artifacting began. That cured me of the belief that it's fine to run consumer silicon at around the boiling point of water for any significant length of time.

The only other thing to try is clean out the drivers and/or reinstall windows and make sure you're running the latest drivers from ATI, not downloaded through microsoft update or from your install CDs.