7970 Artifacting

[Panopticon]

Last night I played battlefield for about 3 hours straight and in the map rotation we came to a new map I had not played yet. After a few minutes I noticed some long black lines coming out of doorways and extending out from players bodies... I figured uh oh my card must be getting hot or something so I checked temps in GPUz which was running in the background and my maximum temps were only 75c.

I did some searching online and found that almost all 560ti users had some artifacting (although with those cards it was MUCH worse see the youtube videos). Is it possible that this is an in game glitch/bug? The card was nice and cool and after I reloaded and played for another 2 1/2 hours I never saw this again (although I didn't come across that map again either). I have everything set to ultra and with the 7970 oc'd I get very smooth fps and no artifacting before or after this event. Should I be concerned about my card? Also if you have noticed this please chime in.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Whats your oc like?

 

[96Firebird]

The Nvidia issue was supposedly fixed with a driver update, but I've heard about these artifacts coming from both sides. I see them every now and then, I don't think Nvidia or AMD has gotten all the kinks out of this game yet.

 

[Panopticon]

Sorry it is in sig. Just the AMD overdrive OC of 1125/1575 +20 powertune. I have not had a single crash or any other performance issues that would indicate a problem. It is also not the "snow" or white dot kind of artifacting I have heard of its just long black lines extending out from some objects and only in the context of that one round of BF3.

I forgot to add that I attempted to take some screenies and the artifacts or whatever they may be do NOT show up in any of them, weird huh?

 

[nitromullet]

Run it at stock to see if it fixes the problem. Mine artifacts exactly as you describe at 1125 gpu. Memory will do 1575, but it's ECC so there is no telling if that's really a stable clock or not. Currently, I'm running my card at 1050/1475.

At 1125 it will artifact occasionally in BF3, but it will keep on playing. In Skyrim it will artifact and eventually crash. At 1050 it's completely solid with no artifacts or crashes.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Like firebird said, there are still kinks in this game for both brands. And ye, didnt notice your sig writing on this iphone4s. Sounds like a very ...limited problem, for lack of a better word

 

[Panopticon]

Hmmm seems I must need to test with more games I guess. I played Batman: AC the other night for a long session and noticed to ill effects at all. I might add that the highest temp I have ever recorded with this card is 78c and that was with sync off. When I keep vsync on it never goes above 75 gaming.

 

[96Firebird]

Do you remember what map it was?

 

[Panopticon]

It was seine crossing.

 

[nanaki333]

i had issues with 1 of my cards not detecting and not functioning properly when it did detect. turns out it was a mobo BIOS update i needed. sadly though...

said BIOS update killed my ability to reinstall windows with SATA set to RAID in the bios (single drive or an array not detectable).

 

[blackened23]

Sorry it is in sig. Just the AMD overdrive OC of 1125/1575 +20 powertune. I have not had a single crash or any other performance issues that would indicate a problem. It is also not the "snow" or white dot kind of artifacting I have heard of its just long black lines extending out from some objects and only in the context of that one round of BF3.

I forgot to add that I attempted to take some screenies and the artifacts or whatever they may be do NOT show up in any of them, weird huh?

I've seen this a lot with unstable OC's. You need to increase the voltage on your card, and powertune doesn't quite cut it. You can probably just go ahead and return powertune to 0.

I think there is a misunderstanding of what powertune does. It increases the TDP of the card but doesn't necessarily increase load voltage to what you need, and it also increases the threshold by which temperature relating downthrottling occurs. so download MSI afterburner and up to your voltage by 100mV or so. (1.2v should do it)

You need version 2.2 beta 10, run it with the -xcl parameter, reboot, then apply clocks and voltages.

 

[tweakboy]

Either the card is defective. Or the VRAM is getting too hot.. Did you OC ? di you chek your temps while on load..............lgl

 

[blackened23]

Either the card is defective. Or the VRAM is getting too hot.. Did you OC ? di you chek your temps while on load..............lgl

Yes, he's oc'ing, and i'm 99% sure its a voltage issue, and he's not modifying the voltage in a proper fashion. Powertune doesn't increase load voltage. I've seen this a bunch on my MSI lightnings, when overclocking without adequate increased voltage i'd get pink and yellow dots on my screen while gaming. I needed +100mV to get 950 stable.

 

[Panopticon]

I am going to install a bunch of games from my steam library and do some more widespread testing. Based off of the amount of users that have had issues with artifacts in bf3 over a wide range of cards there could just be an issue with that game. I played bf3 for 1.5hrs and AC for an hour and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I really want to keep my oc at 1125 at least because it makes my minimum fps much better with ultra settings. My eyes cant tell the diff between 45fps and 60 for the most part but if i get dips into the 30s im not happy.

 

[bryanW1995]

Either the card is defective. Or the VRAM is getting too hot.. Did you OC ? di you chek your temps while on load..............lgl

Do you even know how to read?

 

[Tempered81]

glitch in the game, not an artifact due to overclocking/heat. Try different drivers. Theres about 4 or 5 different drivers out for the 7970 right now.

 

[Panopticon]

Ah I thouht i had the latest and greatest release 1/9. Really looking forward to a nice driver update to squeeze some fps here and there. Funny how having a high end card makes you an fps junkie.

 

[Tempered81]

you probably do have the latest build, but not every build is going to be perfect in every game's scene. Sometimes u gotta drop back to a different driver if something breaks, even if it means a slight decrease in performance - just to not have the crazy black lines everywhere.

 

[blackened23]

glitch in the game, not an artifact due to overclocking/heat. Try different drivers. Theres about 4 or 5 different drivers out for the 7970 right now.

There's only 2 valid drivers. The one on the installation cd and the one on the AMD website.

DO NOT USE 6xxx DRIVERS ON THE 7970

 

[Silverforce11]

I sometimes get that glitch in BF3 as well, briefly and it goes away if i spin the camera around.

 

[badb0y]

Do you have a video or a screen shot of the artifacts?

 

[Panopticon]

weird that it doesnt show up in screenshots Ive noticed on youtube people made a physical video of their monitor to show the issue in some cases

 

[nitromullet]

I've seen this a lot with unstable OC's. You need to increase the voltage on your card, and powertune doesn't quite cut it. You can probably just go ahead and return powertune to 0.

I think there is a misunderstanding of what powertune does. It increases the TDP of the card but doesn't necessarily increase load voltage to what you need, and it also increases the threshold by which temperature relating downthrottling occurs. so download MSI afterburner and up to your voltage by 100mV or so. (1.2v should do it)

You need version 2.2 beta 10, run it with the -xcl parameter, reboot, then apply clocks and voltages.

Thanks for the tip. I gave that a shot, and it seemed to help my OC. I ran my card at 1125/1575 with no errors/artifacts at 1200mV.

I had to use Trixx to get the voltage to stick after a reboot though. I used the -xcl parameter and got the higher clock option, but Afterburner would reset the voltage to stock upon reboot.

 

[Obsoleet]

Everyone I know who bought that game says its glitchy (NV and AMD users). I stayed away simply due to my friend's 'reviews' of it. This isn't constructive but my guess is that you have a new card, with one of the biggest technical bombs of a game in recent memory.

 

[NumericalMethods]

I needed the voltage bump in my signature to get rid of those black bars you describe. Definitely a GPU artifact as far as I'm concerned. If I run stock voltages and then minimise my game window and bump the voltages, the bars are removed instantly.

I have found that nothing stresses my card like the Witcher 2 at 1920x1200, Ultra settings with uber sampling on no vsync. It consistently gives the highest GPU utilisation, causes the highest temperatures I've seen (BF3 - 75*C, Witcher 2 - 80 +*C) and causes the greatest amount of vdroop from the power circuitry on the card.