Speckles in Dark Areas & Intermittent Black Screen (SOLVED)

[marblewave]

Hey there,

I thought I had a failing video card, but I've now replaced my 6970 with an RX480 and still have the same issue. In dark areas on my screen, I sometimes get little pixel speckles and when I'm watching videos (YouTube) or playing games I'll sometimes get a black screen for a couple of seconds. It never gives me a driver reset warning and has never crashed the system, but I don't know what it could be.

I've changed the HDMI cable, even tried a new monitor, all to no avail.

Thoughts I have now are:
1. Power supply
2. Ram
3. Motherboard

i5 2500K @4.5, 16GB 1333 ram (stock timings), P8P67 mobo

Any assistance would be wonderful!

EDIT: It seems to happen occasionally when doing other tasks, but not as often as more video/game related stuff. The monitor also does NOT go to standby. It's always active.

 

[Bacon1]

I'd guess either OS / driver issue, or failing PSU? If it can't supply enough power maybe its giving the corruption, but can't be pulling that much at idle, so I'd say probably corrupted OS / driver issue

 

[marblewave]

Hi Bacon1,

Thanks for the input. When I changed cards, the entire driver suite needed to be uninstalled and replaced, since the older card ran on the previous generation of drivers. That leads me to think it's not the driver.

If it's a corrupted OS, is there anything I can do without a clean install? I don't really want to go down that route unless it's a last resort.

I'm going to swap out my ram. If that doesn't help, I'll go the PSU route, since I can return it if it doesn't help.

Here's a video of how it manifests. Sometimes it's really bad like this example. Other times I can game for quite a while without seeing it. https://youtu.be/vCPkCfrm_Ec

 

[Bacon1]

If you are on windows 10 there are some options to "reset" your PC, there are some that require you to reinstall applications, so maybe avoid those for now and try the fast one that doesn't reset the whole thing.

Did you use DDU when swapping drivers?

So far you've switched:

GPU, Monitor, Cable

Right?

 

[marblewave]

Heya,

I tried GPU, Monitor, Cable, Ram. I ended up at the local shop, which doesn't happen to me too often! They said the mobo was dying and I ended up getting a new mobo, cpu, ram and case. I haven't seen the black screen issue since booting up the new components, though the speckles are still there.

Wonder if maybe it's two separate issues if I've still got the speckles. At this point, I've got pretty much a new system except the PSU, which is about 2 years old.

 

[marblewave]

Update: It started going to black screen again. Replaced the PSU and it's STILL there. Took the whole box, monitor and cables to the store. It was reproduced there and then they changed the PSU. It seemed to be fixed, but then I brought it home and there come my little speckles. Have yet to have a dip to black screen though.

 

[Piroko]

Hey, there's a chance that this could be caused by bad isolation of something inside of your case. Maybe unplug the front i/o panel and od drive as a quick test. Check if their cables are intact and that nothing metallic is touching the motherboard from the back side (wrongly placed standoffs) or the PCB of your hard drive (screws, cage).
Aside from that your best shot is probably a windows reset.

 

[marblewave]

Heya,

EDIT: Whoa the black screen is present on the onboard video too! So, the pixelation is gone, but the black screen persists. Now that's really confusing me!

@Piroko It's a brand new build in a new case, but the issue followed from the last build. It seems quite unlikely that I'd have a bad standoff or something when it's present in two completely different systems right?

I've removed the RX480 and gone to the onboard video. The issue is gone. So, now the question is whether I've had really odd bad luck that I had a 6970 that's 3 years old and a brand new RX480 that happened to have exactly the same failure.

Yesterday, thinking that since I didn't run DDU I'd make sure the drivers were in perfectly, I did the DDU and put the drivers back in. That's when the black screen seemed to start happening again. Could be coincidence though.

At this point, with the R480 out of the system and the issue gone, I've basically got a completely new computer. I've contacted XFX and sent them some video of the issue. They may just RMA it.

I will take the RX480 to the shop today and try it out in one of their computers, just to verify that the issue follows the card. If it doesn't, that's where I'd be completely stumped.

 

[Piroko]

Heya,

EDIT: Whoa the black screen is present on the onboard video too! So, the pixelation is gone, but the black screen persists. Now that's really confusing me!

@Piroko It's a brand new build in a new case, but the issue followed from the last build. It seems quite unlikely that I'd have a bad standoff or something when it's present in two completely different systems right?

Yea having the same issue in a new PC is very unlikely. A bad USB drive/dongle can have some weird effects, but I'm going to assume that you ruled that out with all of your previous testing.

 

[Bacon1]

Heya,

EDIT: Whoa the black screen is present on the onboard video too! So, the pixelation is gone, but the black screen persists. Now that's really confusing me!

@Piroko It's a brand new build in a new case, but the issue followed from the last build. It seems quite unlikely that I'd have a bad standoff or something when it's present in two completely different systems right?

I've removed the RX480 and gone to the onboard video. The issue is gone. So, now the question is whether I've had really odd bad luck that I had a 6970 that's 3 years old and a brand new RX480 that happened to have exactly the same failure.

Yesterday, thinking that since I didn't run DDU I'd make sure the drivers were in perfectly, I did the DDU and put the drivers back in. That's when the black screen seemed to start happening again. Could be coincidence though.

At this point, with the R480 out of the system and the issue gone, I've basically got a completely new computer. I've contacted XFX and sent them some video of the issue. They may just RMA it.

I will take the RX480 to the shop today and try it out in one of their computers, just to verify that the issue follows the card. If it doesn't, that's where I'd be completely stumped.

Very strange. I'd say try swapping to another PCI-E slot if your mobo has another, maybe the one you are using has a bad pin or something.

Was your Edit before or after removing the 480 completely from the system? If its still black screening without the video card and just onboard... very very strange :O

 

[marblewave]

The edit was after the comment. Sorry I should have put it at the bottom.

The RX480 was completely removed. The speckled type look went away but the dips to black screen remained.

I went to the shop and after some diagnosis found that my SSD was failing. We imaged over to a new one, which brought back more consistent benchmark results. The old one was dipping down to 30MB/s sometimes and the new one is consistently over 300MB/s. We figured maybe if the SSD was unable to feed the vidcard sometimes or something weird it could perhaps manifest as black screens.

In the shop, it all worked great. Brought it home, doing some file management... black screen. What the actual &$#*!

The guys in the store have no idea. At this point, the only consistencies I can think of are:

1. They used a DVI connection to a monitor at a different resolution at the store and I didn't see the black screen or speckled pixels. I use HDMI at home. I have tried 2 different HDMI cables and a different monitor (other monitor used display port). Same black screens.

2. It's in the OS somewhere and that's why all this hardware hasn't fixed it. I couldn't find an option for a reset of Win10 without ditching all the apps. There's an option to keep personal data, but says apps will be wiped. Does this also mean my installed programs like games, office etc or just apps from the app store?

Thanks so much for trying to help!

 

[Bacon1]

The guys in the store have no idea

Very strange :\

Yeah looks like there isn't an option to install without removing applications. If you don't have many apps installed you might want to go that route. It will keep the games installed through IIRC, you'll just have to reinstall steam and tell them where the installed folder is. Might want to research that a bit first, I keep most games installed on another HD.

 

[marblewave]

Gotcha. At least 5 guys at the store were also stumped by this. Makes me feel a bit better that I haven't totally lost my PC chops and that this issue is indeed super weird. haha

I'm not unwilling to do a reset, but it's really tough to find the time to focus on it with a four year old running around. Ah the good old days when clean installing an OS could be considered a nice Saturday haha.

 

[Pseudoics]

Speckles are a sign of digital video signal degradation near the point of total failure (blank screening). This is probably a cable quality/length issue. How long are your cables? Resolution? interference from something? You need thicker AWG wire for reliable runs longer than 3m. Since you said they used DVI at the shop (perhaps a shorter cable too) my money is on that. Try short DVI. Or a 26/24 gauge HDMI cable.

 

[marblewave]

I'll grab a DVI cable from work today. The weird thing is that I bought a brand new 4k panel and used display port to hook it up. It also had the same issues. (I did try HDMI there too)

I returned the new monitor, since it seemed to suffer the same issue and kind of ruled out monitor/cable at that point.

I took a screen shot of the speckles and it wasn't present in the file. It's only in the transmission of the video signal. The blackouts could be correlated or completely separate.

I run at 1920x1280 on an LG L246WP. Admittedly, it's a super old panel and I've done some repairs to it over the years, including having to change the firmware manually to correct an HDMI issue that was present in all of those panels. That said, I ran successfully on the HDMI for two years before any issues showed up and again with the other new monitor showing the same issue, it's really got me stumped.

 

[marblewave]

Here's a video of the speckles, just so folks can see what I see. https://youtu.be/UJJUPkSPt3k

If I do a screen cap of that area, no speckles.

I assume that the screen cap (print screen or snip tool) is using the same data that's coming directly out of the video card frame buffer right? Would that lead to even more confirmation that it's between the output of the card and the monitor? If so, why would it be present on two monitors with two different cable types?

 

[marblewave]

I just removed my new SSD, put in one from work, formatted it and clean installed Win10. After the clean install, I simply loaded the 16.7.3 Crimson drivers. The black screen issue is still there. This time it was happening to me in file explorer.

 

[marblewave]

After all of this, I went and got yet another monitor, thinking that it might actually be a weird 3 part issue. 1. Drivers causing black screen 2. Monitor ALSO causing black screen and speckles due to failure (or pending failure).

The new monitor shows no signs of pixelation or black screens after about an hour of tests.

Thanks all who chipped in with suggestions! All in all, I think this cost me about $1200 more than it should have, since my mobo, cpu, ram, case and PSU were likely all fine. I guess the up side is that my system was 5 years old and I can justify it as "about time" anyway

 

[namx01]

After all of this, I went and got yet another monitor, thinking that it might actually be a weird 3 part issue. 1. Drivers causing black screen 2. Monitor ALSO causing black screen and speckles due to failure (or pending failure).

The new monitor shows no signs of pixelation or black screens after about an hour of tests.

Thanks all who chipped in with suggestions! All in all, I think this cost me about $1200 more than it should have, since my mobo, cpu, ram, case and PSU were likely all fine. I guess the up side is that my system was 5 years old and I can justify it as "about time" anyway

Great that you got it fixed. Since you had done everything else I was going to suggest moving it to a different electrical outlet not on the same circuit just to see if it still occurred.