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The origin of artifacts?

L

Lorn

Banned
Could somebody explain for us exactly what artifacts are (yeah graphic errors but what ARE they), why they are caused, and anything else you might have to add.
 
I would love to see discussion on this too. I've personally seen 2 different kinds of display corruption too, so I want to know more about it.
 
Sparklies that you see when the GPU has been overclocked too far I would guess are the result of math errors... but obviously not serious enough to cause a crash or lockup. Artifacts from RAM being overclocked too far seem to actually be geometric shapes or patterns... no clue why that's caused.
 
What about when the screen gets a "pink" overtone?

This happens when I OC the 6800GT, and 6800nu too far. No crashes whatsoever. 😕
 
Originally posted by: Amaroque
What about when the screen gets a "pink" overtone?

This happens when I OC the 6800GT, and 6800nu too far. No crashes whatsoever. 😕
Click to expand...

what game? in CSS/HL2 if you change the AA or Res in game and dont quit, then you will get pink textures. just quit the game and get back into it.
 
It doesn't matter what game. Also, this won't happen for about an hour. If I exit, and restart the game, it's fine for another hour or so. 😕
 
Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Sparklies that you see when the GPU has been overclocked too far I would guess are the result of math errors... but obviously not serious enough to cause a crash or lockup. Artifacts from RAM being overclocked too far seem to actually be geometric shapes or patterns... no clue why that's caused.
Click to expand...

My best guess to this point has been that overclocking the GPU tends to screw up texture and shader rendering operations (hence the sparkling textures, but the overall scene looks OK), but overclocking the RAM tends to screw up geometry data as well (hence the random triangles, etc. appearing all over the screen).

No clue about the pink thing, but it sounds maybe heat-related.

On a more basic level, 'artifacts' like this are the result of signal coherency errors in the transistors of the GPU or video RAM. If you turn the clocks up too high, or raise the temperature too much, the voltage levels can't change fast enough to keep up, and/or there is too much thermal noise for the gates to work reliably, which randomly corrupts data as it moves through the GPU/RAM. In your main system CPU/RAM this would be instantly fatal to the system (since you would almost immediately corrupt some vital piece of the OS sitting in memory), but since most of the GPU is hardwired, it will keep running and just produce garbage video output.
 
AGP voltage is for the NB of your moboard~
you can try.

most system OCers will get to a point where they will need more vagp.
mine is set for 1.65v ~ and it needs it 😉
 
What if your video card isn't OCed and heat isn't an issue? I have even read that prolonged use of a video card, even in 2D, just eventually wears it out. And keeping the machine off for an extended period of time fixes it. I had this happen recently.

And I had two different kinds of artifacts. One was texture smearing, and the other was red patches all over the screen, like covering the entire screen. It was a specific pattern too, not triangles.
 
Originally posted by: malak
What if your video card isn't OCed and heat isn't an issue?
Click to expand...
I've had that problem occasionally, even once after a cold-boot, with my R9200, I suspect that the RAM is a bit dodgy (FIC, not BBA), or something else is going on. I want to volt-mod it, but there seems to be precious few R9200 volt-mod guides. I just want it to be absolutely stable at stock, although overclocking it might be nice too. Might be able to bump the UT2K4 FPS ave. from 30 to 40 or something with a little more mem bandwidth. (Chips are -4, running at 200Mhz DDR, should be theoretically capable of 250Mhz, if they aren't lower-grade chips. But they might be.)

Originally posted by: malak
I have even read that prolonged use of a video card, even in 2D, just eventually wears it out. And keeping the machine off for an extended period of time fixes it. I had this happen recently.
Click to expand...
No, that doesn't make much sense at all. If it was truely "worn out", that would imply that it was damaged due to overuse somehow. Leaving it off for some time wouldn't fix that, although it would if the problem was heat-related, or possibly PSU-related, perhaps the PSU itself needs to cool down, because when it gets hot, it delivers unstable power to the system.

Originally posted by: malak
And I had two different kinds of artifacts. One was texture smearing, and the other was red patches all over the screen, like covering the entire screen. It was a specific pattern too, not triangles.
Click to expand...
I would suggest that the second type of artifacting that you experienced, was most likely RAM-related, either overheating, or again, unstable power can cause that too, sometimes.
 
Hmm, I'm still having issues, I think I'll be calling Alienware tomorrow. Getting green patches now in bootup, red patches when in windows. Only came up before when I was playing a game. I'm thinking maybe faulty RAM on the video card?
 
Huh, I just noticed something wierd, when I shut down my machine, after running it for ~4-5 days straight, with the side-cover off, using the TV-out for display - the "It is now safe to shut down Windows" XP screen had a bunch of wierd flickering horizontal lines coming off of everything, to the right-hand side. Bah, I think this 9200 was just flaky since I bought it or something. 🙁
 
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