Radeon HD 5830 Weirdness

[king_solom0n]

I bought a used Sapphire Xtreme Radeon 5830. I was using an Nvidia 9800GTX+ previously so I used driver sweeper to remove the Nvidia drivers. I installed the 5830 and the drivers. Everything seemed to be going well until I started playing Team Fortress. There was lots of screen tearing and little white dots all around. I tried changing the graphics settings but nothing I did seemed to make a difference. I tried some other games and I was getting the same problem. I've attached a screenshot to show what I'm talking about. Any ideas what it could be?

 

[ViRGE]

I hate to say it, but all signs point to a faulty card.

 

[king_solom0n]

Wow... that sucks. So no hope of fixing it?

 

[ViRGE]

You could try lowering your GPU and memory clocks, but usually those are temporary measures as a card will continue to degrade. The only real fix is a replacement.

 

[hdfxst]

is it just steam games that are doing this?what power supply do you have?

 

[king_solom0n]

is it just steam games that are doing this?what power supply do you have?

Yeah. I don't have games installed from any other sources. I have SilverStone Strider ST50F-ES 500w(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details).

 

[hdfxst]

you could download heaven benchmark or 3dmark11 or vantage and see if the artifacts are there.

 

[dajeepster]

yeah... about that... i wouldn't recommend buying any used 5xx0 series cards...

damn bitcoin miners.. :whiste:

 

[king_solom0n]

Thanks for the help guys. I'm gonna see if I can return it and get something else.

 

[Barfo]

yeah... about that... i wouldn't recommend buying any used 5xx0 series cards...

damn bitcoin miners.. :whiste:

This.

 

[dbailey]

Looks like your card is overheating... Next time it happens, pop the door off the side of the pc, reboot and restart game. If dots go away your pc doesn't have adequate cooling. Install extra fans etc to lower temps or leave door off.

 

[hdfxst]

it's probably a casualty of bitcoin,but steam has issues with 5830's.when you run a 5830 in crossfire you have to force 16x AA in CCC or when the game loads it freezes with a looping sound.This only happens with a 5830.when you look around do the dots move with you (this has happened to me in L4D)or are they random?This is why i suggested to try something that's not steam related

 

[king_solom0n]

it's probably a casualty of bitcoin,but steam has issues with 5830's.when you run a 5830 in crossfire you have to force 16x AA in CCC or when the game loads it freezes with a looping sound.This only happens with a 5830.when you look around do the dots move with you (this has happened to me in L4D)or are they random?This is why i suggested to try something that's not steam related

I wish I would have known about Bitcoin mining beforehand. The dots are random. I'm gonna try the Heaven benchmark when I get home tonight to see if it's any different.

 

[hdfxst]

in ccc what are the clocks set at?1000/300 is where those cards ran bitcoin the best and i'm wondering if someone flashed the bios

 

[KingFatty]

Temps temps temps - get a utility or use the built-in AMD utility to monitor your GPU temperatures and the VRM temperatures. See if they are overheating.

Your issue could be as simple as a loose screw on the heatsink or poorly placed thermal grease where the heatsink isn't able to do its job properly. maybe the previous owner screwed around with it and forgot to put the thermal tape back on between the heatsink and the VRM modules, or some other air gap is causing your temps to exceed.

So first step is to collect data so you have an idea what might be wrong. Symptoms can be caused by heat and not just a faulty card, but you won't be able to tell until you collect data.

 

[Rvenger]

Try an older driver like 11.8 as well. I had some crazy artifacting with 11.10 so I went back to 11.8 and everything is perfect.

 

[king_solom0n]

Try an older driver like 11.8 as well. I had some crazy artifacting with 11.10 so I went back to 11.8 and everything is perfect.

Using 11.8 causes blue screens. There's something with that driver. I wasn't able to follow all the troubleshooting steps you guys suggested, but I really appreciate the help anyway. I really don't have the time to see whats wrong with the card so I'll just use the 9800gtx+ for now. Thanks again for the help guys.

 

[Rvenger]

slap some new thermal compound on the heatsink