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Strange Artifacting - Please help

L

-LiQuiDPaiN

n00b
Joined
Jul 2, 2015
Messages
13
Hello hardforum! I have some sort of strange artifacting but I'm not sure what is wrong. Stress testing has not yield any errors.

So far, I have

1. Tested my graphics card, but it does not give any errors.
2. Take out the card and put in another, but the same issue occurs.
3. Uninstall and reinstall GPU drivers, same deal.
4. Clean installed windows 7

Here is a video of what the artifacting looks like. (Recorded with iPhone at 240 fps, slowed down by 500%)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKt68iawvmg

I started a post on Tom's Hardware a few days ago, no luck so far.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2693336/gtx-680-artifacting-stress-tests.html



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($499.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($26.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) ATX LGA2011 Motherboard ($289.99)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($110.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.99)
Storage: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.99)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($80.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 2GB Video Card ($524.99)
Case: NZXT Switch 810 (White) ATX Full Tower Case ($148.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair Professional Gold 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($176.98)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($18.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 OEM (64-bit)
Monitor: Asus VS248H-P 24.0" Monitor ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2278.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-23 12:40 EDT-0400
 
Where else does a problem show up? This can't be just about the mouse cursor going wonky for a split second?
 
Hmm... have you tried another monitor? Maybe another dvi/hdmi cable?
 
Hmm, sometimes i can see minor artifacting in games I play, its more rare than the desktop artifacts (EVE Online, Black Ops 2). The cursor running over the desktop and causing artifacts like that is more common however, like in the video.

I just tried switching the port I connected my dvi cable to. No dice.
I also tried using a HDMI cable, same deal.

I should also mention, This computer was built almost 3 years ago, was running fine until these errors started showing up about 1 year ago.
 
If you could take another video of gaming artifacts it might help us to make a better guess. Just going by the troubleshooting you have done this far it really looks like the card is defecting. Really need a better video to be honest
 
I'm not entirely sure what the cause of that is, maybe bad VRAM, but I have a stack of 680's in my closet that did the same thing and eventually failed altogether. None of them were under warranty to I was SOL.
 
-LiQuiDPaiN said:
The gaming artifacts are very random however, and when it does happen, its only something small.

However, I think I might have seen this type of artifacting before,

http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/de_dust20002.jpg

Got that image from this website about diagnosing artifacts.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html
Click to expand...

I have used that article to diagnose my last rma seemed pretty accurate to me.My card had this one http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/background010000.jpg. Both are labled as bad vram.

Another kind of video RAM artifact is an unexpected spike. When drawing in 3D mode, video RAM can be used to hold the three dimensional position of things in the scene. Bad RAM can shift those positions to a different spot. A spike is the result when one 3D position has moved while the others around it have stayed in their correct positions. It looks like someone has grabbed one tiny spot on some object in the scene and pulled it to another position thereby creating a long skinny spike. You can see some spikes in the image above like the ones which end near the word "lost".

Bad Video RAM

Arrays of dots or vertical and horizontal lines are another common video RAM artifact. In the image above you can see a few areas of dots on the doors. Most examples have more dots than in this image. This kind of problem can appear both in 2D and 3D mode.
Click to expand...

The diagnose doesn't seem to be very far fetched and to me could describe the issue you're having. Time to see about RMAing the card. Is it out of warranty? If it is, it's time to start shopping
 
It's very close to, In August. Is there some sort of testing to diagnose this issue for sure?


I had switched out my GTX 680 for a 8400 GS, which still artifacted... could be that both were defective.
 
-LiQuiDPaiN said:
It's very close to, In August. Is there some sort of testing to diagnose this issue for sure?


I had switched out my GTX 680 for a 8400 GS, which still artifacted... could be that both were defective.
Click to expand...

As old as that 8400gs is hell yea......But you getting the exact same kind of artifacts on BOTH cards is a head scratcher. With that being the case it would be prudent to buy a TEST card from bestbuy or Whatever is close buy on a credit card and make double sure that the problem goes away with the new card....Then you know to RMA the bad card and get rid of the temporary asap and either wait it out on the rma or buy a new card you been wanting to get anyway.

Now you said you tried changing drivers and new installs. Im assuming you at least tried using different whql driver versions and DDU to be sure leftovers are in no way a possibility. Driver problems on an operating system like win 7 would usually only show up in an actual game vs on the desktop like you had. Bad vram will show up on the desktop just like in your video, so the results Still point to a bad card.
 
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Could be the motherboard as well, I just had a friends rig that was artifacting with a GTX 660, so I went over and swapped it for my spare R9 270. He then complained it got even worse, and at that point we tried a new board. Now the 660 is working fine with the new board, unfortunately the 270 got killed by the old one and now is a paperweight.
 
Clock the gfx card a little lower and see if helps.
Try vram and gpu separately.

ps is the card clean of dust?
 
Hmm... Well I also checked to see if the artifacts appeared on another monitor, still occurred.

I also cleaned the card with compressed air last week, so it should be clean.
 
Try putting the card into a different PCI-E slot. It might be your motherboard.
 
The cards GPU or memory may have aged such that it cant maintain the same clock speed without issues.
This is often caused by letting it get too hot by...
not cleaning it, overvolting too much, not having high enough fan speed, the heatsink paste has gone off.
etc

You may be able to get it to work by increasing the voltage a little if temps are ok.
Or it may need a little better cooling, this sometimes works.
If not, reducing the clock speed is the fix as per post 13
 
ok the video looks a little weird to me . it shows your mouse moving outside a monitors frame physically. how exactly did you shoot this anyways ? is it a video of a video ?

As your pointer passes over the anomaly , I can physically see the pointer go the outside of your monitors asus bezel ..
- looks like a faked problem to me.
 
He might have overscan enabled and the screen isnt configured correctly for it.
 
glenn37216 said:
ok the video looks a little weird to me . it shows your mouse moving outside a monitors frame physically. how exactly did you shoot this anyways ? is it a video of a video ?

As your pointer passes over the anomaly , I can physically see the pointer go the outside of your monitors asus bezel ..
- looks like a faked problem to me.
Click to expand...

I think you're mistaking the Windows taskbar as the bezel...

What I'm doing is running the cursor over a facebook chat and the taskbar, which seems to initiate the artifact for me.
 
I tried putting the graphics card in another pci-e slot the other day, still seemed to occur, I can try again though.
 
I also tried underclocking the core and mem clocks with afterburner.. didn't seem to help.

The gpu already underclocks it self at idle?
 
Hmm, interesting.

It's just that it was working without an issue from when I built it in 2012 until 2014ish.

Just got a GT 730 from Fry's the other day, I'll try seeing if the issue still occurs.
 
Hmm, I am stumped, The issue still occurs with the GT 730. Could this be a ram issue then.

I tried switching the card to another PCIe slot, still occurs.
 
-LiQuiDPaiN said:
Hmm, I am stumped, The issue still occurs with the GT 730. Could this be a ram issue then.

I tried switching the card to another PCIe slot, still occurs.
Click to expand...

Well it was a smart move purchasing a "testing card" local. You can at least rule out the other card being bad with 1 month left on the warranty. One thing you haven't tried is different operating systems. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso throw this on a usb or dvd and do a clean install. Let windows update do all the driver installing and don't bother installing any other software. What this will achieve is it will totally rule out software one way or the other. If it doesn't work then we know to start looking more closely at your hardware that hasn't been swapped yet..like the motherboard

Make an image backup before trying a different os and it should only take a few minutes to see if the newer software still has same issues.
 
Last edited:
primetime said:
Well it was a smart move purchasing a "testing card" local. You can at least rule out the other card being bad with 1 month left on the warranty. One thing you haven't tried is different operating systems. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso throw this on a usb or dvd and do a clean install. Let windows update do all the driver installing and don't bother installing any other software. What this will achieve is it will totally rule out software one way or the other. If it doesn't work then we know to start looking more closely at your hardware that hasn't been swapped yet..like the motherboard

Make an image backup before trying a different os and it should only take a few minutes to see if the newer software still has same issues.
Click to expand...

Hmm, well I had a Win 10 Installation on another drive, booted to it, it still artifacted, slightly different from Win 7 though.

However, once I went to Device Manager and Uninstalled the driver, the issue went away.


I tried this back on the Windows 7 install, once I uninstalled from device manager, it went away as well.
 
LigTasm said:
Could be the motherboard as well, I just had a friends rig that was artifacting with a GTX 660, so I went over and swapped it for my spare R9 270. He then complained it got even worse, and at that point we tried a new board. Now the 660 is working fine with the new board, unfortunately the 270 got killed by the old one and now is a paperweight.
Click to expand...
This is starting to look like only idea left....you can try running your board bare as possible like with only i stick of ram to rule the ram out...but im more inclined to go with the board at this point
Fuck its all there is left
 
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