Lots of artifacting on my HD3870X2

Beerdude26 · Apr 15, 2008, 06:21 PM

Hi all, I've recently gotten a SAPPHIRE HD3870X2 512MB GDDR3, and after some drivers issues I got it to work. Unfortunately, I am experiencing graphical corruption and -artifacting on several games, such as:
- Call Of Duty 4 (a lot)
- Crysis (rarely)
- Mount & Blade (rarely)
- Half-Life 2 Mods (rarely, mainly with transparent textures)
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (a lot)

All these games are ran at 1152x864 at max settings (so that includes AA, AF, and other tidbits and features).

If I leave my fan to automatically cool the card, it reaches around 60°C-70°C. If I use RivaTuner to manually set the fan speed a bit higher, it'll go down to 45°C-50°C. The main problem is that the artifacts keep occuring regardless of temperature.

This is a completely new card and there isn't any dust on it, and airflow is good.

Anyone have some suggestions?

[hobo]eclipse · Apr 15, 2008, 06:28 PM

post your complete specs plz, including power supply, very likely to be PSU issue

maybe a reinstall of the direct x 9.0c redistributable available here.

unpack/run the .exe and reboot

tcman · Apr 15, 2008, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beerdude26

Hi all, I've recently gotten a SAPPHIRE HD3870X2 512MB GDDR3, and after some drivers issues I got it to work. Unfortunately, I am experiencing graphical corruption and -artifacting on several games, such as:
- Call Of Duty 4 (a lot)
- Crysis (rarely)
- Mount & Blade (rarely)
- Half-Life 2 Mods (rarely, mainly with transparent textures)
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (a lot)

All these games are ran at 1152x864 at max settings (so that includes AA, AF, and other tidbits and features).

If I leave my fan to automatically cool the card, it reaches around 60°C-70°C. If I use RivaTuner to manually set the fan speed a bit higher, it'll go down to 45°C-50°C. The main problem is that the artifacts keep occuring regardless of temperature.

This is a completely new card and there isn't any dust on it, and airflow is good.

Anyone have some suggestions?

What videocard did you have before? Make sure you have uninstalled the older driver of your last videocard properly by using Driver Cleaner in Windows Safe Mode.

I suspect the problem could be the videocard itself, probably defective videomemory. Your psu (the GameXStream 850W) is more than sufficient for the videocard and those temperatures up to 70 degrees celsius shouldn't cause the artifact you are now having in the mentioned games.

What you can do is try the HD3870X2 in another computer (maybe a friend of yours can help you if you do not have a second pc system). If the videocard also shows artifacts in another system, then it's time for rma.

Also try to lock the pci-e clock at 100mhz in the bios and see if it helps (this certainly will help if you are overclocking the cpu).

Good luck.

[hobo]eclipse · Apr 16, 2008, 01:16 AM

thats my bad i didnt see the specs there, some better suggestions from tcman for sure

Beerdude26 · Apr 16, 2008, 04:53 AM

Cheers for the suggestions guys

I installed Windows XP, installed the .NET Framework and then installed the drivers that came with the card, so there were no previous drivers installed.

I'll ask a friend of mine to test the card in his computer.

EDIT: Not overclocked btw

And I already have the latest DirectX 9.0c updates

Beerdude26 · Apr 17, 2008, 10:09 AM

Update:

Seems like the newest ATI CAT 8.4. drivers managed to cut down on the artifacting a bit, at least down to a playable level. It seems as if the artifacting occurs when the GPU Usage peaks above 90% (monitoring via RivaTuner)