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Artifacts = death?

L

llmercll

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Messages
1,369
While playing WoW today my screen lagged a bit, and the top half had artifacts (some vertical lines) for a few seconds, and then returned to normal. I rebooted right after it happened and things have been fine since.

What I want to know is if artifacts are always hardware related, and if this is a strong sign my shits about to die. Or if other things like software or drivers can cause artifacts.

I had WoW minimized for a few hours and was watching youtube videos on battery life, something I don't normally do, then proceeded to continue playing WoW by "un" minimizing it. So I hoping some drivers or software just went a little nutty, but idk.

I don't overclock and my temps are always great...I went through a lot to get good temps because my old laptop with an 8600m gt failed from heat issues. My GPU temps never go above 75c, even under max use. I usually idle around 45-50c and browse around 53c.
 
It's often a sign of overheating or graphics memory corruption. I'd still try and dust it out if you can. It could be driver related especially since it was minimized for so long so I wouldn't worry at this point. If this is a laptop you may want to use a laptop cooler, my buddy's Alienware isn't playable due to heat if it's not sitting on one. I hate RAID in laptops the heat isn't worth it at all..
 
Yeah I'm using a laptop cooler, and like I said, my temps are great. 75c max is amazing for a powerful laptop gpu like mine, I usually see temps in the 60's and watch it always in-game through rivia tuner.

It can't be temps. I'm hoping the long minimize had something to do with it. anything drivers or software memory sounds good to me, that can be fixed without $$$
 
There's a high probability that artifacts are indeed hardware related. One culprit is heat but hearing you say that temps are fairly normal even under load....I'm going to have to say the card is nearing its service life.
 
Thing is the laptop is only a few months old. But it's a refurb model and the 3mo warranty is up.

so if it's failing hardware I'm going to shoot myself.

Been playing for an hour now still nothing out of the ordinary. If it were hardware, is there a typical path it would take? Like the artifacts would get worse and worse until it won't turn on, or they might come and ago, etc.
 
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llmercll said:
Been playing for an hour now still nothing out of the ordinary. If it were hardware, is there a typical path it would take? Like the artifacts would get worse and worse until it won't turn on, or they might come and ago, etc.
Click to expand...

Instant death, artifacts getting worse and worse, slow death, etc. So in other words, no typical path per se. Either way, that laptop isn't long for this world. Sometimes oven baking the laptop motherboard will fix the artifacting but generally not for long AFAIK.
 
Ugg doesn't sound good. Is there any diagnostic program I can use to further test my card? How about running furmark for awhile?

Another thing I noticed, the longer I kept WoW minimized, the more the "texture pop in" there is when I come back in the game. Usually I'll come back and ALL the textures will be blank, and slowly load up, I always thought it was kind of cool. only/always when I minimize for more than 5 minutes or so.

That makes me think minimizing effects the memory somehow, and always has on the card. I wonder if that means my memory has always been kind of faulty or weak, and is now starting to get worse, or it's just some software thing related to minimizing. Another thing, I use ntune to underclock when I'm not gaming, if that means anything.

You guys seem to think my laptops on it's last leg, it IS possible that it's software related though, right?
 
Not very likely that it's software related. Running Furmark would make the artifacts show up.
 
Artifacting is usually hardware related.

Usually you get it when components are overheating, if a component is run too hot for too long then it can do permenant damage to the component where it will either fail or continue to artifact irrelevent of temperature. Artifacting due to hardware almost always presents as either:

1) Randomly placed off-coloured pixels which is indicative of memory based artifacts.
2) Misplaced vertices (points on polygons) which caused deformed models, or the entire face of polygon missing which often causes black space, that is down to GPU overheating.

Other hardware based artefacts do occur but these are the 2 most reliable to go by

The best thing to do is run something like MSIs afterburner and log temperatures for the GPU, play a game (or run furmark) and when it artifacts again record the temps during the artifcating and post the results, also what card model you have.

Some game engines are a bit funny with alt tabbing, generally speaking though MMOs are built with alt tab in mind because so many people run them in windows and switch between browsers/chat and the game, so they tend to be the most reliable, it's no gurantee though. If you cant reproduce it since then especially with furmark it was probably a one off software glitch, if anythign will overheat your video card furmark will do the job, it's proven to be way more intensive on the video card than any game can be.
 
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My old 9800 pro would artifact from time to time. That was 6 years ago......it's still running in my friends rig downstairs. It was the model that the rim around the processor was a mm or two to high preventing the HS from connecting properly. (Though I never had issue with that.)

Usually a driver update/reinstall or game patch would fix it.

So, it's not 100% guaranteed a hardware dying issue. If it were me, I'd reinstall (Drivers first, then..) my whole system and see what happens. That should rule out any "mysterious conflicts" if it is not a hardware issue.
 
I bought a used GTX 280 and it ended up overheating pretty bad. Good thing I got my money back. The guy claim it did have an overheating issue but he took it apart and cleaned it real good. Well good for him...wish the bastard told me that to begin with :(
 
I played games all day again today and things were fine. But when I was browsing the corners of my screen did something funny, like a flash. I'm ready to believe the cards dying.

Is there anything I can do in this situation? anything to make it last longer? any companies out there offer extended warranties that can be gotten after 90 days of purchase?
 
llmercll said:
Is there anything I can do in this situation? anything to make it last longer? any companies out there offer extended warranties that can be gotten after 90 days of purchase?
Click to expand...

Buy a new laptop. Nothing really to make it last longer besides keeping the GPU as cool as humanly possible. Dunno of any companies that does that.
 
Well it doesn't have to be that the laptop is dying, though it's definitely possible.

Minimizing a game and restoring it later can cause artifacts or even hard lockups depending on the game and drivers. Also the fact that the artifacts went away after only a few seconds seems to indicate a driver or game bug rather than a hardware error. If the artifacts were due to overheating, you would expect the corruption to get worse over time.
 
I think your should just keep an eye on noticing any artifacts from now on....but unfortunately there's not much you can do since it's a laptop. I'm not sure if you'll be able to swap out an onboard GPU without replacing the entire mobo
 
Undervolting might help if you can undervolt gpus??? Yeah I have a laptop with 8600m gt in it and it gets pretty hott. There is actually a widespread issue with those laptop gpus overheating most people bake em and they come back to "life"
 
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actually it's an asus g50vt-x5 and uses an mxm 9800m gs. I think repairs wont be as expensive since they wont need to replace the whole mobo. I hope so anyway =/

Last time i had my notebook repaired it costs me $250 =(

At least it hasn't done anything weird since the other day. Maybe I can get a few months out of it while I save up
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Artifacting is usually hardware related.

Usually you get it when components are overheating, if a component is run too hot for too long then it can do permenant damage to the component where it will either fail or continue to artifact irrelevent of temperature. Artifacting due to hardware almost always presents as either:

1) Randomly placed off-coloured pixels which is indicative of memory based artifacts.
2) Misplaced vertices (points on polygons) which caused deformed models, or the entire face of polygon missing which often causes black space, that is down to GPU overheating.

Other hardware based artefacts do occur but these are the 2 most reliable to go by

The best thing to do is run something like MSIs afterburner and log temperatures for the GPU, play a game (or run furmark) and when it artifacts again record the temps during the artifcating and post the results, also what card model you have.

Some game engines are a bit funny with alt tabbing, generally speaking though MMOs are built with alt tab in mind because so many people run them in windows and switch between browsers/chat and the game, so they tend to be the most reliable, it's no gurantee though. If you cant reproduce it since then especially with furmark it was probably a one off software glitch, if anythign will overheat your video card furmark will do the job, it's proven to be way more intensive on the video card than any game can be.
Click to expand...

the vertex buffer resides in video ram, you can get stretchy polies from bad memory as well.
 
OK, so a week later and no problems, at all. Been playing a lot of WoW and even some bad company 2 and everything seems fine.

Strangely, I had dinner downstairs with my laptop again, unplugged, watching flash videos (just like last time) and I got a few weird screen flashes afterwords. No artifacts, but everything on screen "flickered". It wasn't severe, but it was noticeable. It happened a few times in the hour after I brought my computer back upstairs and plugged it back in.

It looks like leaving it unplugged for an extended period is causing it...but I really don't know if it could. It'd be hard to believe the flickering screen now is just a coincidence. What do you guys think?

Just a note, I only had the artifacts once, and it only lasted for a second. But I've seen the "flicker" probably 5 times, both in game and while browsing. a few times tonight, and a few times last week. But nothing inbetween, no flicker, no artifacts.
 
Often going from 3d rendering such as an MMO, alt tabbing to watch a video, then alt tabbing back to 3D can have some nasty effects, especially so if the video was put full screen. I think things get left over in the video buffer briefly.

Sometimes you see it when swapping from game to game, like last night I stopped playing Warhammer online and loaded up L4D2 and i got the last frame of Warhammer display for a split second as L4D2 was loading.

Sometimes that happens with video as well but more often than not is doesn't come through as a clear picture but a garbled mess, maybe thats what you're seeing.

Artifacting is usually presistant, it will continue to happen if a component is too hot, or starting to fail, it's fairly "reliable" in this way, people use artifacting as a marker to stop overclocking and drop speeds back a bit.
 
Anyone think it could be my ram?

Distorted Graphics
# Bad memory modules often cause the screen to change colors and look wavy or flicker. Replacing bad RAM usually fixes graphics issues, unless the video card is damaged as well.
Click to expand...

That's EXACTLY the kind of problem I've been experiencing, it's actually not "artifacts" at all. Couldn't put it in better words...when I put my ear to the ram, I also hear a slight buzzing...

The machines still going fine, the flickering happens a bit more often...but only seems to happen if I leave my notebook on for long without restarting it...and usually happens after i minimize or maximize my WoW. Which I believe, points to ram.
Hopefully it's system ram and not video card ram...

I'm going to run memtest tonight. Wish I could take a screen but it happens so quickly I don't stand a chance.
 
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UPDATE


I ran memtest for 5 minutes, and the whole time was getting errors. 420,000 errors in 5 minutes.

memtest tests system ram, not video ram right?

and it is possible that bad system ram could be causing my problems?

So am I right to assume that replacing the ram will fix the problem?
 
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I tested both sticks in memtest 86+, individually.

One passed, and one gave the errors.

I took out the bad one and I'm going to play around with the good 2gb stick and see if my problem still persists
 
some laptops does that when overheated. my gx640 (with a 5850mobility) did that when i ran furmark for 2 long and shut itself down lol (although i was running linx at the sametime to increase the temp even more).

older asus gaming lappy do have heat issues. they have decent warranty incase something real bad happens (my cousin rmaed his asus g1s twice)

just run 3dmark or such and see if it happens again, normally it shouldnt unless something is dead/dying. last time i had a stock card go coocoo on me was x850xt.
 
llmercll said:
I tested both sticks in memtest 86+, individually.

One passed, and one gave the errors.

I took out the bad one and I'm going to play around with the good 2gb stick and see if my problem still persists
Click to expand...

Looks like you found the issue. RMA or replace the bad stick.
 
Yeah seems so. But is it uncommon or unlikely for bad ram to cause problems like mine?

when i think bad ram i think BSOD, not graphical distortions.
 
llmercll said:
Yeah seems so. But is it uncommon or unlikely for bad ram to cause problems like mine?

when i think bad ram i think BSOD, not graphical distortions.
Click to expand...


Bad system memory can cause the problems you were experiencing. It can also cause BSOD, HD corruption, instant reboot, your raid to drop a disk, and many other problems.
 
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GORANKAR said:
Bad system memory can cause the problems you were experiencing. It can also cause BSOD, HD corruption, instant reboot, your raid to drop a disk, and many other problems.
Click to expand...


Yep not to mention that the laptop is likely using atleast some of that memory for video ram which ends up explaining a lot.
 
Another thing I noticed, the longer I kept WoW minimized, the more the "texture pop in" there is when I come back in the game. Usually I'll come back and ALL the textures will be blank, and slowly load up, I always thought it was kind of cool. only/always when I minimize for more than 5 minutes or so.
Click to expand...

Since I took out the bad stick of ram, it hasn't been doing that anymore. When i alt tab back into my game the textures load instantly...interesting.
 
well now time to buy some new ram. and hope they are not doa like the ram i just got last week.
 
That won't be a prob. I'll just get some lifetime warranty sticks...

I'm probably just going to install a 32 bit OS and roll with that and 2gigs for awhile though
 
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