7970HD GHZ Artifacts/Display Corruption when DX11 Features Enabled.

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Ikhalil83

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Sep 10, 2012
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Hey guys, upon running my newly purchased 7970HD GHZ Edition, I noticed that when enabling DX11 lighting/shading effects e.g. HDAO/MVSS in certain DX11 games (Batman: AC, Sleeping Dogs, Max Payne 3, Dragon Age 2) only, the display begins to exhibit these flickering black/transparent square artifacts all over the screen. Meanwhile in Battlefield 3 however, I get these smaller flickering pinkish squares all over the screen. Turning off the the DX11 (mainly the HDAO/shader effects) options seems to make the games run fine through all my testing so far; BF3 will artifact regardless of display settings unless I turn off DX11 shaders via a downloadable config file. After having tried different catalyst drivers 12.4-12.8 and even 12.7b, nothing seems to fix the problem short of turning them off so far. Has anyone else experienced what I am describing? I can run DX11 games, its just the HDAO/shader effects that seem to be causing the display corruption.

Now I don't believe its hardware related (I am not overclocking, and temps run between 65-75 degrees while gaming, I even tried under-clocking my card from its stock speeds and increasing the voltage via afterburner), as it is seemingly a driver/software issue and was wondering if I could receive some assistance/feedback on the matter. I usually run the games at 2560x1440, Vsync enabled, 4xMSAA, AFx16 and gamma untouched from default. All other non-DX11/DX11 games I have ran tested fine without corruption except for the ones mentioned. Everything else is up to date e.g. Direct X11 and etc. Most recent drivers (12.8) were installed after driver cleaner ran in safe mode to be sure. Also tried switching DVI cables and that didn't help. Furmark stress tests produce no artifacts, meanwhile 3D Mark '11 produces the display corruption, presumable from the DX11 effects enabled.

Here are my system specs:

Gigabyte G41UMT-USB3 MOBO
Core 2 Quad 9650 @ 3.3Ghz
7970HD Ghz Stock
Creative SB Xi-Fi.
8GB DDR3 Ram
850 Watt Corsair PSU
Windows 7 64 bit

Could my card be defective? RMA? Or is it a buggy/software driver issue? But if it was defective, why do games run fine once DX11 effects are disabled? I could really use some help on the matter, Ive tried so many different things and cant seem to figure this out, thanks guys.
 
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Well, I would still say it's probably hardware...There's not much else to do in troubleshooting, and probably you just got a dud, if it's a brand new card. It happens, unfortunately, however rare. I wouldn't waste too much time in starting the RMA process...

I assume you've idiot checked everything - your PSU is up to task? Everything is hooked up correctly, and connected securely? You've tried physically removing and reinstalling the card?
 
From my experience its normally due to hardware and not software. Try running the card in a different computer and see if it still does it.
 
Also tried switching DVI cables and that didn't help. Furmark stress tests produce no artifacts, meanwhile 3D Mark '11 produces the display corruption, presumable from the DX11 effects enabled.

Here are my system specs:

Gigabyte G41UMT-USB3 MOBO
Core 2 Quad 9650 @ 3.3Ghz
7970HD Ghz Stock
Creative SB Xi-Fi.
8GB DDR3 Ram
850 Watt Corsair PSU
Windows 7 64 bit

Could my card be defective? RMA? Or is it a buggy/software driver issue? But if it was defective, why do games run fine once DX11 effects are disabled? I could really use some help on the matter, Ive tried so many different things and cant seem to figure this out, thanks guys.
 
Okay well after further testing of various games, it seems that only a handful of DX11 games produce the display corruption, mainly those with HDAO/SSAO/Shader settings...but like I said not all games produce the corruption e.g. Deus EX/May Payne 3/Sleeping Dogs do while Metro 2033/Crysis 2/Saints Row 3 DO NOT. ALL the aforementioned games run fine with the card once I turn SSAO/HDAO off even with DX11; the flickering squares/patches dissappear and there is no more corruption whatsoever

This should be software/driver based, no? I am afraid to RMA the card just to order another and have the same thing happen, I think I should hang on to the card for a bit and really game on it and see what happens. What do you guys think? The only thing I have left to try is a fresh system reformat and install.
 
I don't find furmark to be a very good stress test for these cards. Crysis is a pretty good stress test. Thats one game that I always use to stress test my overclocks. I've heard that 3d mark works well too.

Sadly to me it sounds like you have a bad card. I assume that the system worked fine with the last card that you had? If so how did you uninstall the drivers from the previous card?
 
I uninstalled drivers in windows, rebooted in safe mode, ran driver cleaner pro then rebooted back into windows and installed catalyst 12.8. Well, not to rule out the card, but if the card was bad why do some games run fine with DX11 effects enabled while others do not? That seems strange, no?
 
Ikhalil83 said:
I uninstalled drivers in windows, rebooted in safe mode, ran driver cleaner pro then rebooted back into windows and installed catalyst 12.8. Well, not to rule out the card, but if the card was bad why do some games run fine with DX11 effects enabled while others do not? That seems strange, no?
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Not really, some games will stress the card differently. I bought a bad open box 7970 a few months ago. When I tried the card it ran furmark fine but would artifact like crazy in Crysis. I saw artifacts in a couple of other games but it took longer.
 
HybridHB said:
Try down clocking?
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And the Award for the Person who read the original post most dilligently goes to... :p

OP, Just out of curiosity what videocard are you replacing.

I remember reading of a similar issue which ended up being a registry entry that still tied to a prior Radeon card. Once they did a few things in the registry and a clean install via driver sweeper (like you did already) the user was able to get their 6870 fixed in that other thread. I just don't remember what was done and what thread that was. Sorry :(
 
Lord_Exodia said:
And the Award for the Person who read the original post most dilligently goes to... :p

OP, Just out of curiosity what videocard are you replacing.

I remember reading of a similar issue which ended up being a registry entry that still tied to a prior Radeon card. Once they did a few things in the registry and a clean install via driver sweeper (like you did already) the user was able to get their 6870 fixed in that other thread. I just don't remember what was done and what thread that was. Sorry :(
Click to expand...

Thanks for reply, I replaced a GTX570. Which pretty much gave me no problems.
 
Ikhalil83 said:
Thanks for reply, I replaced a GTX570. Which pretty much gave me no problems.
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For shits and giggles, do you have a spare hdd, try doing a install of windows on another hard drive to see if on a clean install if this issue is resolved. If so you can reformat your current install or at least feel some form of hope that there is a fix somewhere. If on another HDD and fresh install your still getting artifacts, it is likely hardware.

Make sure you have the latest bios flashed on your mobo and that your bios settings are fine, e.g. primary video should be set to pcie and not pci etc...

AMD cards seem to be more sensitive to that than nvidia cards.
 
The problem is is that gigabyte never released an updated bios for my MOBO model as it is a bit on the older side so that is out of the question. And a clean install now is pretty much my only option before I decide to RMA or maybe wait for catalyst 12.9 and see if things improve from there. What I don't understand is, how can the card be defective if all the games run fine except for when enabling SSAO/HDAO through DX11? Shouldn't that purely be a software issue? DX9/10 run flawlessly, so does DX11 as long as I don't enable SSAO/HDAO...and then again that is dependent on each game...it works for some while not working for others.
 
Its not a driver issue, nobody else has those problems with current drivers.

The artifacts you are seeing are the same artifacts I have seen in the past when cards overheated for long periods of time (failed fan) and cook themselves leading to artifacts when doing certain tasks/certain games.

In your case whatever part of the GPU that handles the SSAO/HDAO is probably defective, just RMA it.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Its not a driver issue, nobody else has those problems with current drivers.

The artifacts you are seeing are the same artifacts I have seen in the past when cards overheated for long periods of time (failed fan) and cook themselves leading to artifacts when doing certain tasks/certain games.

In your case whatever part of the GPU that handles the SSAO/HDAO is probably defective, just RMA it.
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Guess what? IT WORKED! After nearly 2 days of troubleshooting without any luck, a simply reformat and clean install of everything removed the problem! I no longer see any corruption when running unigine benchmark with all the DX11 effets enabled. Currently have sleeping dogs downloading and will test further but so far it looks promising! I had a feeling my card wasn't a dud!
 
I use a XFX 7950 and get artifacating no matter what randomly. Even on games with low graphics.
 
Ikhalil83 said:
Guess what? IT WORKED! After nearly 2 days of troubleshooting without any luck, a simply reformat and clean install of everything removed the problem! I no longer see any corruption when running unigine benchmark with all the DX11 effets enabled. Currently have sleeping dogs downloading and will test further but so far it looks promising! I had a feeling my card wasn't a dud!
Click to expand...

W00t :cool:
 
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