5850 artifacting - crappy psu?

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Weenaboy

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Dec 6, 2004
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I'm getting frequent artifacting in Vantage's Jane Nash test on my Powercolor 5850 PCS+. At stock clocks (760/1050) there are probably ~5 cases in the test where I'll get a flash of large black squares or a large black circle. Underclocking the card to 600/800 reduces the number of artifacts but they're still there.

This wasn't really an issue for me since I hadn't noticed artifacts in anything else, not other vantage tests, not in games either. Until today anyway, when I saw a very brief flash of a short line of small black squares in Crysis. Walking back and forth in the same area I see the flash of black squares in the same place.

Could an underpowered graphics card be causing artifacts? My PSU is a 5 year old Antec TruePower 480w. It's also powering:

i5 750 @ 4.2ghz 1.375v
4gb ddr3 @ 1680
gigabyte p55a-ud3r
x-fi xtrememusic
2x sata hdd's
bluray drive
3x 120mm fans

*edit* Woops sorry if this is the wrong forum, didn't notice there was a subforum for AMD.
 
I don't think I'd feel comfortable with that PS running all those components and with your CPU overclock. However to find out unplug anything you don't absolutely need, return your CPU to stock clock and see if it still does it.
 
Well I unplugged everything except the barebones - cpu, mobo, gpu, ram, hard disk and a few fans, put everything back to stock. The artifacts in Jane Nash are still there and if anything are worse than before. I'll try installing older drivers, running cat 10.5 atm.
 
I have a similar system with less of an overclock on the 750 and I hardly go past the mid-200w range under load. If a driver downgrade doesn't work, it sounds like the card may be the issue from your recent update.
 
Well rolling back to 9.12 did nothing. I'm really not sure what to think now. For all practical purposes the card is fine, I mean I played Crysis for 10 hours before I got that artifact. It is an artifact right? Could it just be normal.. I dunno. I really haven't noticed any major problems in anything other than Jane Nash running at High. At Performance there's nothing.

On the other hand, my memory can't overclock for crap, I don't think I even managed to get it stable at 1100, so maybe there IS a problem with the card.

So I guess I'll sum up the evidence for and against the card being borked:

FOR
Artifacting in the form of flashes of black squares in Jane Nash on High (Also the only place I've ever noticed significant artifacting)
Possible instance of an artifact in Crysis
Memory overclocks poorly

AGAINST
No other artifacting noticed
No artifacts in Jane Nash on Performance
No artifacts in Furmark

Other things I noticed:
Heat makes no difference, case open with fan at 100% and case closed with fan at whatever the auto control sets it to (<50% im pretty sure) make no difference.

Underclocking the card seems to reduce artifacting in Jane Nash on High.
 
I experience artifacting in Jane Nash when I overclocked my GTX 295 although I failed to notice anything at all in hours of FarCry 2 previously. For some reason, that benchmark seems to be very sensitive, or it could somehow bring out the worse of a GPU. I was getting flashes of black shapes. Downclocking the shader made it go away. (appears to be GPU related)

I'd say you should first check your temperature with GPUZ. In cases where the heatsink is not mounted properly, improving cooling by opening the case or setting max fan speed isn't going to help since the heatsink has no proper contact.

Once you've confirm the temperatures are fine, you should consider RMA the card. I'd guess a faulty GPU too.
 
The temperatures are fine, load temps are about 60C with the fan at 70%. The flashes of black shapes are exactly what I get in Jane Nash at High. And I agree that it would be a good idea to replace my psu, I just don't have much in the way of spare funds right now and would rather not buy anything just yet unless I have to.

After playing some more Crysis I've noticed more artifacting in the area around where I first noticed the artifact, which is the stairs leading up the bridge of the aircraft carrier in the level Reckoning. The artifacts take the form of short, black lines. I walked around the ship a bit more and noticed it happens in other areas of the ship as well.

 
Personally I think the evidence points to a faulty GPU. I would RMA that and use the downtime to order yourself a new PSU .
 
Weenaboy said:
Could an underpowered graphics card be causing artifacts? My PSU is a 5 year old Antec TruePower 480w. It's also powering:

i5 750 @ 4.2ghz 1.375v
Click to expand...

Yes an underpowered GPU can have artifacts. Also. old PSUs can also cause such problem as well.

Regardless of whether or not the GPU is faulty (whether trough bad luck or crappy PSU), replace that old and problematic PSU no matter what. The XFX 650W PSU is a very good replacement. It's simply not worth the gamble.
 
move up to a beffier unit.......while I am able to power a 3870 off of a 350w unit, i would not run a 5850 on anything less than 650W with your setup
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
move up to a beffier unit.......while I am able to power a 3870 off of a 350w unit, i would not run a 5850 on anything less than 650W with your setup
Click to expand...

Actually, a 650W unit merely gives the OP greater piece of mind in the case of an overclocked i5/i7 configuration with an HD 5850. You see, overclocking a CPU and/or GPU will draw more power from the PSU than running everything at stock speeds. Normally, you can run an i5 or i7 system with an HD 5850 with a good 500~550W PSU. But when overclocking is involved, that rig simply needs more power.
 
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Well I got a refund on the card which was nice. Annoying thing is I paid US$260 for the Powercolor and now I can't seem to find a reference 5850 in stock anywhere in Sydney for less than $US320. There are a bunch of non reference ones like Gigabyte and Powercolor at ~$US300 but you can't change the voltage on em.

So at this price range would I be better off just buying a 5870 at $US360 or a 470 at $US340? Taking overclocking into account as well.
 
i would change the psu like other people said right away. way back when 6800gt just came out i was running it with a 350w psu and it was artifacting and freezing up.
 
A 470 would be a bad idea with that PSU, better off just refreshing the sales page until you see another 5850 for a good price.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
A 470 would be a bad idea with that PSU, better off just refreshing the sales page until you see another 5850 for a good price.
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Very true. In fact, I would not trust that old TP480 for even a G210 or a 4350 due to the age of that PSU. You see, even if that TP480 were "good", the capacitors and other internal components in that PSU would have deteriorated to the point where it could not deliver even 350W at realistic internal PSU temperatures. But what made the TP480 worse is that the capacitors are of low quality, and that Antec designed its TP PSU's fans to spin at too low of a speed to do any good in terms of the cooling of the PSU's innards.
 
Ok I guess I'll see if I can grab a 5850 somewhere and maybe a TX750 as well. I'm pretty curious about Trifire, would my motherboard (Gigabyte P55A-UD3R) support a 5970 + 5850 setup? Just so I know what my upgrade paths are.

The Gigabyte site says it supports CrossfireX but it also says:

*1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) (The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
*1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)

Does that mean if I put a 5970 into the first slot and a 5850 into the second, the 5850 will be bottlenecked? And why is it called a PCI-E x16 slot if it only runs at x4 :S.
 
Weenaboy said:
The Gigabyte site says it supports CrossfireX but it also says:

*1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) (The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
*1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)

Does that mean if I put a 5970 into the first slot and a 5850 into the second, the 5850 will be bottlenecked? And why is it called a PCI-E x16 slot if it only runs at x4 :S.
Click to expand...

In this case, then yes, the CrossFire performance will be restricted. What happens with the GA-P55A-UD3 and other lower-priced P55 mobos with two graphics-card-capable PCI-e slots is that only the primary PCI-e x16 slot is connected directly to the CPU's integrated PCI-e controller while the secondary PCI-e graphics slot is connected to a separate PCI-e controller in the P55's PCH (the P55's PCH lanes are PCI-e 2.0, but are internally restricted by Intel to PCI-e 1.0 bandwidth). This setup leaves only three PCI-e lanes available from the P55's PCH for expansion cards (since the Realtek LAN controller already eats up one of the four remaining PCI-e lanes). Plus, with that mobo the SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 controllers share the PCI-e 2.0 bandwidth with the primary PCI-e x16 slot.

And that secondary graphics slot is called "PCI-e x16, running at x4" because the slot can accept a full x16 card directly without modification. A normal PCI-e x4 slot would not have accepted an x16 card directly without major modifications.
 
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I had that once, try a mobo bios update and download all the latest drivers for the mobo. Then spend money or time down to fix the issue.
 
Weenaboy said:
Well I got a refund on the card which was nice. Annoying thing is I paid US$260 for the Powercolor and now I can't seem to find a reference 5850 in stock anywhere in Sydney for less than $US320. There are a bunch of non reference ones like Gigabyte and Powercolor at ~$US300 but you can't change the voltage on em.

So at this price range would I be better off just buying a 5870 at $US360 or a 470 at $US340? Taking overclocking into account as well.
Click to expand...

I would grab a 5870 if I were only paying an extra $30, that is unless the 30 breaks you, and you can't afford that new PSU.
 
My monitor's only 1680x1050, I think I'll just grab a MSI 5770 for now and OC it to tide me over until Southern Islands, then grab a new card, a psu and 3 monitors.
 
Artifacts = video card memory issue, usually overheating. If you have the case open with a fan pointed in perhaps the card's heat-sink is full of dust? If the artifacting is reduced after underclocking this may be an indication of this. But it could just be faulty memory I suppose...

Never heard of an underpowered PSU causing these types of issues, usually the system will just shut down / crash.
 
SlipperyPete said:
Artifacts = video card memory issue, usually overheating. If you have the case open with a fan pointed in perhaps the card's heat-sink is full of dust? If the artifacting is reduced after underclocking this may be an indication of this. But it could just be faulty memory I suppose...
Click to expand...

Not that it matters now, but I don't think it was heat or dust seeing as the card's load temps were 65 and it was brand new.

SlipperyPete said:
Never heard of an underpowered PSU causing these types of issues, usually the system will just shut down / crash.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I thought too, it's what happened back when I had some crappy generic PSU that couldn't handle my 9800pro.
 
Well I grabbed a MSI 5770 today. Got the same artifacts in Jane Nash at High to a lesser extent, also artifacts in the same place in Crysis to a lesser extent. Getting the feeling its a problem with software/drivers and not physical damage as both cards have the exact same problems in the same specific places.

Though if memory is what causes artifacts I have a suspicion these artifacts are caused by these shitty non reference designs. Why the hell do none of them have any kind of cooling on the RAM and VRM's when the reference ones do? This cutting of costs by removing voltage regulators and adding crappy third party coolers is just pathetic and annoying, especially since it doesn't even look like you can buy a reference 5850 in Sydney anymore.

I'm gonna rma this 5770 tomorrow, the performance is just underwhelming it doesn't even feel like much of an upgrade over the 8800gt I have. Either that or I was spoiled by the 5850. I'm gonna keep a lookout for cheap 5850's. Might get a gigabyte since their twin fan design seems like one of the less crappy non reference designs.
 
yeah I think that PSU is a little on the low side for that setup... but I could be wrong...

have you tried the GPU in another computer?
 
Ok I should probably edit the thread title or something but here are the reasons it's not my PSU:

No difference between oc'd cpu and stock (a wattage difference of about 100w according to the antec power supply calculator)
Tested system using an Antec Signature 600w I borrowed from a friend which didn't help.
Having exactly the same problems to a lesser extent on the 5770.
 
The problem with the TP series is it's the older multi 12v rail design, and provides a smaller percentage of it's peak power on the 12v rails than in modern designs. That system is probably stretching it to it's limits considering every component of significant draw is using the 12v rails.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I'm still leaning towards PSU not cutting it, even though you tested two.

My reccomendation:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

There is a $10 promo code and a MIR.

Single 52A 12v rail = win.
Click to expand...

Thanks but, American deals are great and all, and Newegg seems pretty awesome, but I'm in Australia.

Also I'm not entirely convinced that an Antec Signature can't handle a 5850. Or at the very least, that it is exactly the same as a 5 year old TP 480.
 
Im pretty sure my power supply is getting pushed to it's limits as well, and I'll grab a new psu once it's more a necessity than a luxury. Thanks for the links.
 
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