Artifacting in 3D Mark06/11/BC2 with 6990 Quadfire. Drivers, Video Card or what?

SaViOr-

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
Messages
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So yesterday I got done putting together my new rig and I'm experiencing some weird artifacts. They appear on CPU tests 1 & 2 on 3D Mark 06, Physics & Combined test on 3D Mark 11, Vantage CPU Tests and it occurred once on BC2 when I went to do game testing.

Specs: (Blue bolded Items were installed yesterday, rest is transplanted from other rig)
Intel i5 2500K @ 5.0GHz 1.39v w/ Corsair H100 (fans in push config)
ASUS P8P67 PRO rev. B3
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
2x XFX 6990s
Corsair AX1200 PSU
ASUS VH238H x3 Eyefinity 5932x1080
WD Black 1TB HDD
ASUS Xonar DX w/ Audio Technica ATH-AD700
Corsair 600T Special Edition White
5x Silverstone FM121B Case Fans. 4x are used on the mesh side panel as intake fans to cool 6990s and 1x replaced the stock rear exhaust fan that comes on the 600T
1x 200mm Antec Big Boy to replace the stock front 200mm Intake Fan

Pictures (I only managed to get pics of '11 and one of BC2). The weird thing is that I took about 15 screenshots of the Physics test from 3D Mark 11 and the artifacts only showed up on about 4 screen shots, only 1 of 6 SS of Combines test showed artifacts and only 1 of 4 BC2 SS showed artifacts. The Pattern always seems to be 4 boxes, except for the lines on combined test.


http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l63/Ado7610/3DMark11Workload22011-10-1411-38-21-54.jpg

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l63/Ado7610/3DMark11Workload22011-10-1411-38-28-80.jpg

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l63/Ado7610/3DMark11Workload22011-10-1411-38-31-55.jpg

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l63/Ado7610/3DMark11Workload22011-10-1411-40-00-01.jpg

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l63/Ado7610/BFBC2Game2011-10-1409-35-31-33.jpg


What I've done:
-Originally had 11.10 Preview drivers, but had an issue so went back to 11.9 with CAP1
-Lowered CPU OC from 5.0-4.6, no change
-Ran cards at 880/1250 stock clocks (Bios Mode 1)-ausum, 900/1350 & 915/1400 1.2v - All had same results
-Used 20+ Powertune each time
-Ran Memtest (30 min) no errors

I haven't had time to do tests at Bios Mode 2 (830/1250) or to test each card indiviudally yet because I've been troubleshooting all morning and have a few exams coming up at 1PM :(. Figured I'd post this up before I left for class in hopes of getting a few more things to check/try when I get home. During all the testing I ran the H100 on High Mode, Rear exhaust on High, 4 Side intake fans on medium and the 6990s at 45% fan speed.

Any ideas what could be going on here? :confused:

Any feedback and/or suggestions are welcome! Need to get this figured out

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a bad card.. I had the same issues with my 6870 which is at MSI as we speak getting repaired/ replaced. It got worse over time.

Your PSU is more than adequate.. Did you try down-clocking the card to see if it works? What about the GPU temps? The manufacturers do a horrible job applying thermal paste to these cards.

Run GPUID and test using Kombuster or OCCT and see what your temps look like.. Those two applications will really stress your system and I suspect the artificating will be significantly worse and may BSOD your system..

If you just got the card, swap it out for a new one.

One last thing, is this a new OS install?
 
Test the cards individually, that to me looks very much like an issue with one of the cards.
 
I had a very similar issue with my 5970 when it was brand new. RMA'd it and the new one worked just fine. I'm betting on you having a bad card as well.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys! It was kinda what I thought too, a bad card. The reason why I didn't check the cards at first was because the artifacting was only occurring during the CPU portions of all the benchmarks, the graphics tests themselves all ran fine except for that so it threw me off a little. Just goes to show that it's always best to check the obvious culprits and go with your gut :p.

I believe the culprit is bad vram because it occurred with Bios 1 & 2 as well as when I downlocked the memory from 1250 to 1100. Newegg came to the rescue and I'm getting an advanced RMA card coming in on Monday.

Second card is running perfect. Got it up to 975/1475 with a slight voltage bump to 1.2 which got me P10433 in 3d mark 11, I re-ran the benchmark 10 times at that clock to ensure this one didn't have any issues and scores were consistently between 10410-10440. Backed the clocks down to 950/1435 for 24/7 use and couldn't be happier :D
 
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