Strange 'lights' appearing in Rainbow Six Vegas...

[ahmadka]

Well, I just got Rainbow Six Vegas, which seems to be quite good. Anyway, I am seeing these strange 'lights' in the game. They only appear at some very specifc angle, and just appear on the screen for a split second, and then disappear...

here is a screenshot of them...

Click here...

What do you think this could be ??

Please note, that I sometimes, also see some similar glitches appear in a few other games too...

Doom 3: I start seeing artifacts after 5 minutes play, if the resolution is above 1024x768, with other settings max...

NFS: Carbon: game hangs if I enable motion blur...although if I enable is during the race, the game is fine, provided I dont exit to windows...

Other games I have tested that work perfectly at max settings are the following, although I dont play play for more than 40-60 minutes in a go , meaning they are not 'rigorously tested' :

Age of empires 3
Quake 4
Oblivion
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
NFS: MW
UT2004 (old is gold)
Battlefield 2

Please note that I am using an eVGA 7900GT CO (factory overclocked) card...

So whats the logic behind those 'lights' ?

 

[imported_FishTaco]

Have you tried underclocking your 7900GT to see if the artifacts/problems go away? If they do go away, I'd talk to evga about a replacement.

 

[ahmadka]

i dont know how to underclock the card...also, is it safe, cuz i have never over/under clocked anything...

 

[mb]

Wow, I thought I had problems.

If your other games work fine... man I don't know what to tell you. I certainly don't see any lights in the game like that.

Try reinstalling your graphics drivers and the game to see if that helps, if you haven't done so already. Use the method found here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=67799

 

[ahmadka]

I have a general question regarding this +/- clocking business ...

when you change the clock speed in windows, do you make a hardware based change, or a software based change ?

also, is +/- clocking in anyway dangerous ? I am asking because I have never +/- clocked myself before

 

[duragezic]

It's software that controls the hardware. But you don't need to physically touch or modify the video card to do any normal under/overclocking.

Do a web search for 'Coolbits Nvidia' and find 'Nvidia Coolbits Overclocking' or something to that affect. It's a very small registry (.reg) file that you run and now your Nvidia Settings (control panel) will have an overclocking tab. Overclocking normally voids you warranty, but since eVGA is such a great company, not only do they provide quite a few of their cards factory overclocked, but they offer their lifetime limited warranty even if you overclock it yourself! So they certainly shouldn't have any problem replacing a video card that you determined to be defective at their factory speeds by clocking it down to verify it was the problem.

It's not terribly dangerous to do. Just about all video cards in the past few years will clock themselves down if they get dangerously hot (and you'll notice this quickly while in-game) or you'll get artifacts and instability. Very uncommon to actually wreak the card, and since you'd be underclocking there's nothing to worry about.

So anyway, once you have Coolbits .reg applied, find what the Nvidia STOCK speed for the 7900GT is. eVGA has overclocked it, but once you find what Nvidia designed the 7900GT to run at, underclock it to those speeds to see if that clears up the problem.

 

[ahmadka]

OK well, I had my final exams for my 6th semester here in my uni, so I cudnt report earlier on my current situation regarding this UFO style problem...

anyways, i took the liberty of monitoring the temperature of my card while running some games for some amount of time, to see if the card heats too much or something...

I used Riva Tuner to monitor the temps (I cudn't find the temp monitor option in the nVidia Control panel )...

Anyway, check this file of the temp logs of several games:

http://www.mediafire.com/?42m1jytmttn

In the logs, I ran 3 games for some times, all at MAX settings (except Oblivion):

Age of Empire 3 - about 12 minutes- about 66*C on average
Quake 4 - about 33 minutes - about 62*C average
Splinter Cell 4: Double Agent - 40 minutes - about 60*C average
Oblivion (not included in above log file)- about 35 minutes - about 56*C

Regarding oblivion, I ran the game at full settings/resolution, only 'Bloom' was used instead of 'HDR'..The game wont allow both 4xAA and HDR to be on at the same time...

Anyway, the result is, that even through the temp remains between 60 and 70, these games dont act strange......

So I dont think temperature is the problem causing artifacts in Vegas....its something else...!!

 

[clamum]

Did you try underclocking the video card anyway? I'd try that for the heck of it... it wouldn't hurt and only takes a minute.

 

[ahmadka]

No, I dont know how to do that....check this: no matter which software I use, if I even try to *read* the current graphics card settings, the next time I start windows, I get 'dots' all over the desktop....then I have to reinstall the 93.71 nvidia drivers to fix the problem....

For example, if I just go into the nvidia control panel, and just browse through the options, WITHOUT doing ANY modification to the existing settings, and then restart my PC, I get the red dots...

Also, I tried RivaTuner, to underclock the card, and this is what happened...

When I open the card clocking section of the program, RivaTuner tells me that I need to restart the PC, so that RivaTuner can figure out the default clocks of the card.....I restart, and then, again, I get the ****ed up artifacts on the desktop....and I again have to reinstall the 93.71 drivers....

whats the solution to this problemo ??

 

[Alone]

Red dots randomly appearing on your screen?

Bad video memory on the card.

 

[ahmadka]

can someone please tell me how to downclock my card ? I want to try that before I go for a RMA...

 

[James Bond]

Originally posted by: ahmadka
can someone please tell me how to downclock my card ? I want to try that before I go for a RMA...

Don't bother. If you under/over clock it, thats just better reason for eVGA not to give you a new card.

Contact them, tell them about the red dots, and get a new card. They have a good warranty policy.

 

[ahmadka]

so you are saying that if I downclock, the warranty on the card goes down the drain ?