5870 Screen Tearing Please Help

J

JesusRice

n00b
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Oct 8, 2009
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Hello All,

I recently purchased a Sapphire branded ATI 5870, as I was replacing a GeForce card (and because it was about time anyway) I decided to format before installing the card. I installed Win 7 Ultimate x64, installed the drivers and began experiencing odd screen tearing. Figuring this was a Win 7 issue, I formatted again. This time installing Vista Ultimate x64, installed lastest drivers and the screen tearing happened AGAIN! This persisted during gaming, on the desktop and regular apps (Word, IE, etc). After disabling the A.I. feature the tearing stopped occuring during gaming. But tearing on Desktop, IE, etc still remains, I don't want to blame this on drivers as if I do waiting till they fix them will most likely take me past being able to RMA the card. Any suggestions?

Rig:
nVidia 680i SLI LT
Intel Q6600 Quad Core
Sapphire 5870
2x 2GB Corsiar
2x RAID 0 WD Velocilraptors
Rocketfish 700W PSU
(I know the PSU is not great, had one go bad needed a fast replacement. Although if you read this review http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/556 it is more then capable of pusing 700+W so I figure that may not be causing this)

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks!
 
What made you think it was the OS? Fast frame rates on low refresh rate monitors normally cause this from what I remember. I kinda ignore it now. You can try enabling V-sync in the game your playing and see if that fixes the issue but it will cap your frames at your monitors refresh rate.
 
Copyright said:
What made you think it was the OS?
Click to expand...

Besides drivers I could not figure out what else it could be, same reason I am here :(

Copyright said:
Fast frame rates on low refresh rate monitors normally cause this from what I remember. I kinda ignore it now. You can try enabling V-sync in the game your playing and see if that fixes the issue but it will cap your frames at your monitors refresh rate.
Click to expand...

Not sure if this is the case, I've always removed Vsync with my old GeForce to bump my FPS and never had an issue. Also this is no longer happening in any games since I disabled A.I. in CCC. Also I may not be explaining my problem this is not the traditional screen tear as in over lapping frams causing distortion, there are horizontal black/white stationary "tears" across the desktop and other windows (No longer occuring in games now only desktop/IE/Word etc).
 
Screen tearing is almost always linked to vsync. It has to do with your refresh rate and your framerate.
If you're getting too many frames per second (it's based upon matching the framerate and refresh rate), it can cause the problem you're talking about. I know it's more complicated than that...but it's linked.
Turn vsync on and see what happens.
What kind of monitor are you using and what's your refresh set to? On some HDTVs you're running at a refresh rate that isn't quite 60hz (59.4 hz or something similar) so you'll never completely get a perfect match. Your screen will still tear, but just not as much or as badly.
 
I apologize for the confusion this is not a traditional screen tear where the FPS put out by the GPU is farr exceeding the monitors refresh rate causing frame overlapping or "tearing". This is a black or white horizontal artifact that resembles a horizontal "tear" across the monitor.

Thanks :)
 
still got that Nvidia?
swap it back in and see if persists.

rarely drivers will cause that kind of issue, especially when not running 3d.
sounds to me like the card is calling it quits
 
Have you monitored your GPU and Memory clock speeds while you are getting your tearing? I am in the same boat and found the problem... however I am not sure how to remedy it. I have found that if I am at any other setting than the stock 850 core and 1200 memory, the card downclocks even further. How low.... try 157 core and 300 memory. Normal is 400 core and 1200 memory and my tearing is only when it drops down to those lowest settings. However when I start a game it automatically jumps up to the overclocked settings so the tearing goes away. Anyone know if this is by design and if so why does it not downclock to 157/300 if at the factory clocks? Guessing it is driver issue..... running 9.11 beta.:confused:
 
"Update"

So it seems that i read that there are 2 different 2D profiles used. 2D single monitor and 2D multiple monitor. I fall in the later so it seems that the drivers are working correctly at the factory clocks but once you set another speed in CCC it reverts to the 2D single profile which is apparently too low to run duals effectively. So if you are running a single monitor than this is probably of no use to you. :)
 
I'm using 7 x64 with a Sapphire 5870 as well, experiencing the exact same problem... VLC playback tears horribly on just about every video even DVD playback... Also, Any video games I play have horrible screen tear... This was not happening when I had my GTX260 core 216 in.
 
You can disable the powersaving feature in the registry.

find EnableUlps>>>>>>set to 0, done.:D

My 5870 downclocks to 157/300 in 2D, but no distortion is noted, even with eyefinity.
It may just be a bad card????

Also change your connection port on the GPU and see what happens.
 
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Yes, I've tried several drivers including the latest (10/13), it's also worth noting that I force Vsync off and it doesn't seem to have any effect. I have also tested it with my 27" LG monitor @1920x1080 and my 22" samsung @ 1680x1050, both had horrible screen tear. At the same resolution with my GTX260 core 216 it looked FINE.
 
I wish I could say you were right, but it seems the evidence begs to differ. I've been getting <100 FPS in Counter Strike Source at 1920x1080 with vsync disabled, so I decided to throw in my neighbor's 4850 and test it out and now I'm getting consistent 170+ FPS with the same exact settings... There is clearly an issue with something here. My guess is poor drivers.
 
chipstien said:
Have you monitored your GPU and Memory clock speeds while you are getting your tearing? I am in the same boat and found the problem... however I am not sure how to remedy it. I have found that if I am at any other setting than the stock 850 core and 1200 memory, the card downclocks even further. How low.... try 157 core and 300 memory. Normal is 400 core and 1200 memory and my tearing is only when it drops down to those lowest settings. However when I start a game it automatically jumps up to the overclocked settings so the tearing goes away. Anyone know if this is by design and if so why does it not downclock to 157/300 if at the factory clocks? Guessing it is driver issue..... running 9.11 beta.:confused:
Click to expand...

I am experiencing this issue as well. Specifically, it seems the memory clocks affect this odd flickering or "tearing" issue. I can keep my core clock low in 2D mode (I've arbitrarily set it at 250), but my memory clock needs to be around 1125 to not get tearing/flickering...which is odd, considering that the stock memory clock is 1000.
 
I ran into something similar to this a couple weeks ago on a laptop. I removed the CCC, leaving just the driver, and the pages would tear and just act very clunky. I double checked device manager and the driver string showed the september driver installed. I ended up reinstalling the whole package again and removed just CCC again and it was fine after that.
 
It wouldn't be the first time I've heard not installing CCC caused issues.

They are fast and reliable these days. Other than the dumbass UI redesign they did this year they haven't had major issues in recent memory. .NET is not evil and CCC is part of the driver.
 
magoo said:
You can disable the powersaving feature in the registry.

find EnableUlps>>>>>>set to 0, done.:D

My 5870 downclocks to 157/300 in 2D, but no distortion is noted, even with eyefinity.
It may just be a bad card????

Also change your connection port on the GPU and see what happens.
Click to expand...

But are you running Dual monitors? If I disconnect one of the monitors than the tearing goes away at the 157/300. Only does it with duals for me. Also can you modify the registry to set a different clock speeds or just off and on. I dont want to give up the downclocking as one of the reasons i decided to go red for the first time was because Nvidia disabled downclocking when 2 monitors are present. Rather then fixing the damn issue they just got rid of the problem by disabling the feature. That is Nvidea for ya......:rolleyes:
 
Rocketfish 700 watt PSU in this thread...

However, power isn&#8217;t everything. Ripple and noise levels were far above we wanted to see, it doesn&#8217;t come with four video card cables, the video card cables don&#8217;t use 6/8-pin connectors and comes with just one year warranty (all power supplies from well-known manufacturers come with at least 3-year warranty in the United States). These flaws can&#8217;t be tolerated on a USD 165 product.
Click to expand...
 
However, power isn’t everything. Ripple and noise levels were far above we wanted to see
Click to expand...

Above what they wanted to see but still in spec.

it doesn’t come with four video card cables, the video card cables don’t use 6/8-pin connectors
Click to expand...

I dont need 4, nor do I need 8 pin connectors

These flaws can’t be tolerated on a USD 165 product.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But I did not pay 165 for this, I payed 70 at a time that a PSU was needed on the spot without being able to wait for shipping.

Anyway back to the reason I am posting.

I believe I have solved my problem, I used ATIs Auto-Overclocking feature and it did away with the tearing for a while, it came back slightly a couple hours later and I realized I had not changed my monitor to 75Hz, did that and have not seen it since.

You can disable the powersaving feature in the registry.

find EnableUlps>>>>>>set to 0, done.
Click to expand...

I am going to also do this as all my tearing accurred in 2D power saving mode and OCing and playing 3D games remedied the situation for at least a while with the tears re-appearing ONLY after it clocked back into power saving mode.
 
Hello,

I recently have had the same problems with my xfx 5870 (screen tearing).
I discovered it stops for me if I disable aero on vista(64bit). The problem I think is the powersaving mode on the 5870, I can't disable it. I tried everything I read, including the register change (enableulps=0) and overclocking my card. I'm running catalyst 9.10 currently. If anyone has any idea how i can disable powersaving I would be glad to hear it.
 
I also have the screen tearing issue, dual moniter setup, windows 7 64bit. I have flashed my xfx 5850 card to the msi unlocked bios and am using the afterburner software. I think sort of have it figured. i created an overclocked profile for 3d and for the 2d profile i set it to default clocks. in windows, the default clocked profile automatically goes to power save 400/1000 clocks and screen tearing is now gone. in 3d it kicks up to my overclocked settings and looks fine.

The only thing i have to figure out is howcome it goes to the 150/300 when ive launched a game and im in the menus. it really glitches out at the low clocks there. id rather avoid turning off power saving features if i can avoid it. since my machine is on for a lot of the time.

anybody know how to get into the auto settings fan control area in msi afterburner? i was in there the first time it came up and now i cant find where to bring it up again.
 
gonna try doing all my overclocking using Radeon Bios Editer and see how that pans out, i should be able to modify the 2d clocks there and the 3d clocks without afterburner software or other junk. looks i can control the fan speed peramaters there too.


I guess how i should approach this is use the afterburner to find my max stable overclock first. then dial it back a bit and throw those settings on my custom bios. I would imagine thats how the factory overclocked cards do it.
 
gah, looks like the 5850 is not officially supported in radeon bios editer yet. perhaps ill go back to stock clocks till they get that fully suppported then. It isnt like i NEED to overclock, i get good gameplay in crysis at stock.

these 58xx cards are the bomb diggity.
 
I had the same problem, got really annoying. I disabled overdrive and started using Afterburner. Set 3d cloks to my oc, and 2d to default, which ixed it. Afte some playing around it seems to be tied to the memory changing clocks, not the core. Currently my card goes to 400 core at idle, 600 when areo effects kick in, and 1060 in 3d. mem doesn't change at all for 2d, and goes to 1300 for 3d, only time I get the tearing now is right when a 3d app opens or closes.


Edit: Shit, didn't realize this was so old, found it on a google search when trying to figure out what was going on.
 
If anyone is "listening"...
I've been fighting the tearing/flickering issue on a new VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 5870 since May without any luck. I've tried everything mentioned in this thread and many, many more. The bottom line is on my dual monitor system when using IE8 on the left monitor I will randomly get the tearing/flickering problem on one or the other monitor when the Memory Clock de-clocks from 1200MHz to 900Mhz and will get the same affect when it resets back to the default of 1200MHz. Nothing corrects the problem - profiles are ignored; disabling ATI in CCC 10.6 is ignored; tried Afterburner no success; contacted ATI/AMD and they won't help! My "guess" is that the GPU BIOS needs to be flashed to remove the other lower clocks' settings that are at the 900MHz level???? But I cannot find anyone who has a BIOS! As far as I am concerned the VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 5870 is headed for the junkpile when I find a good video adapter that will successfully work with a dual monitor setup without any issues... Any suggestions?
 
Issues of tearing/flicking have been corrected with the successful flash of the GPU's BIOS with the Memory Clocks settings of 900MHz reset to 1200MHz. This eliminates the jumping back and forth between the two frequencies and consequently eliminates the tearing/flickering! Radeon BIOS Editor (RBE) was utilized, but you must set the ATI WinFlash utility to have Administrator privileges or it will not work!
 
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