AMD Radeon Sparkles

[Alistair]

I have had this in the past with dedicated Radeon Cards & am now having the same issue with the A10 7850K Kaveri.

If I run my desktop refresh rate at 50, 59 or 60 Hz, initially I do not have any issues then irrespective of what I am doing, surfing or media playback I get a momentary black screen then get these sparkles on my display. I have recorded a sample video in mp4 format from my phone to highlight what I mean.

If I change the refresh rate to 30 or 23Hz this doesn't happen.

I believe its Radeon specific as it didn't do it with either intel HD 4000 IGP or the Nvidia GTX 650 Ti.

Any thoughts on this?

Not sure if you can see it very well in the video?

[Alistair]

no ideas?

[kalniel]

I can't think of anything that's specific only to AMD cards. You could try turning off hardware acceleration in the web browser and turn off video card 'enhancement' of media play back - that solved several issues for us when we had a similar problem with an nVidia card.

[Alistair]

I can't think of anything that's specific only to AMD cards. You could try turning off hardware acceleration in the web browser and turn off video card 'enhancement' of media play back - that solved several issues for us when we had a similar problem with an nVidia card.

OK thanks will give it a try

[scaryjim]

I think it's most likely to be a software/driver issue tbh, so perhaps check for driver updates? or try an older driver even. The only thing I've run into recently with any problems on AMD cards was when I upgraded my stepson to a 4850 and firefox crashed the PC horribly whenever it did anything flash-based: some kind of compatibility issue between FF and the latest catalyst drivers: when I got him to use IE and Chrome it was fine... I have a Trinity laptop, a Llano HTPC, and have used 2 different discrete AMD cards in my desktop (including one in hybrid crossfire configurations), and haven't seen any such issues.

[Blackfudge]

Yeah as said before check your drivers i used to have this issue on arma where there would be sparkles everywhere but since updating them it seems to have gone.

[Alistair]

I am using the latest beta drivers & have tried the WHQL ones too same issue. Going to attempt to do another capture on my phone as it happens & update the video above. I had posted here previously but that forum seems to have closed now

[DanceswithUnix]

Sparkles are usually a video memory problem. Either the memory is being driven faster than it can cope or some fault has developed so it can no longer work as expected.

A nice image is written to the ram, when but sending to the screen a corrupted version is read back.

I had a similar problem with a 7900GT card some years ago which didn't cool half the ram chips properly so they got cooked. Replaced under warranty.
Seen it in other cards which were too old to be returned so they just got binned.

You might be able to underclock the video memory to get a stable picture. You might also be able to improve the cooling around the card.

Is the card overclocked at all?
Is the fan working OK on the card?
If you turn the machine off and take the card out, try blowing down the exhaust vents of the heatsink and see if it was bunged up with dust. Best done out of a window, can get really messy

[Alistair]

Sparkles are usually a video memory problem. Either the memory is being driven faster than it can cope or some fault has developed so it can no longer work as expected.

A nice image is written to the ram, when but sending to the screen a corrupted version is read back.

I had a similar problem with a 7900GT card some years ago which didn't cool half the ram chips properly so they got cooked. Replaced under warranty.
Seen it in other cards which were too old to be returned so they just got binned.

You might be able to underclock the video memory to get a stable picture. You might also be able to improve the cooling around the card.

Is the card overclocked at all?
Is the fan working OK on the card?
If you turn the machine off and take the card out, try blowing down the exhaust vents of the heatsink and see if it was bunged up with dust. Best done out of a window, can get really messy

Its an APU, not a dedicated card I have now. It has the stock cooler on it but I have ordered a Scythe Big Shuriken to replace it. This system isn't overclocked at all.

It doesn't do this at refresh rates of 30Hz & below.

If I change the refresh rate when i have sparkles ie 60 down to say 23 the sparkles go then back to 60 its ok until i start video playback or surf, browser is chrome

[DanceswithUnix]

Oh yes a Kaveri, how on earth did my brain not convert those words in your original post into a thought? Sorry about that.

OK. It still smacks of hardware fault to me though. Thing is on a new APU like that I am not sure that memtest86 will work, had problems with Trinity when it first came out. Had to use the right beta version. So, some more thoughts. I think I would do these in order:

Check the CPU temperature.
If you have an ASUS motherboard, use the "Mem-OK!" button to force the memory to stable timings. Then look in the BIOS to see what it did.
Unplug the machine, remove the ram, plug it back in again.
If the motherboard has 4 ram slots, have another read through the usually cryptic instruction on which slots to use to get dual channel as it isn't always obvious.
Ignore the instructions, try just one stick in there. If that doesn't work, try with just the other stick.
Swap the RAM with some sticks from another machine.
Slow down the RAM timings in the BIOS.

[Alistair]

Oh yes a Kaveri, how on earth did my brain not convert those words in your original post into a thought? Sorry about that.

OK. It still smacks of hardware fault to me though. Thing is on a new APU like that I am not sure that memtest86 will work, had problems with Trinity when it first came out. Had to use the right beta version. So, some more thoughts. I think I would do these in order:

Check the CPU temperature.
If you have an ASUS motherboard, use the "Mem-OK!" button to force the memory to stable timings. Then look in the BIOS to see what it did.
Unplug the machine, remove the ram, plug it back in again.
If the motherboard has 4 ram slots, have another read through the usually cryptic instruction on which slots to use to get dual channel as it isn't always obvious.
Ignore the instructions, try just one stick in there. If that doesn't work, try with just the other stick.
Swap the RAM with some sticks from another machine.
Slow down the RAM timings in the BIOS.

I think I may have sorted it.

CCC
Properties Digital Flat Panel
removed the tick from Enable ITC processing

APU temp OK
2 memory slots onboard - had issue with the dedicated card in the previous post which had different motherboard, cpu & ram. The only things that are constant currently are the case, psu & hdmi cables.

Hopefully, the ITC processing is the answer.

I am moving this from the Silverstone GD05 with 500W Strider PSU to a Tendraw H124 Mini ITX Case with 150W Pico PSU on Wednesday (hopefully).

[Alistair]

I seem to have found the issue..

I have my HDMI cable going from the TV to the AV Receiver fed in the wall cavity.

I bought a new cable & tried that externally & everything was OK.

I then attempted to feed the new cable through the cavity by taping it to the existing one & pulling it through. Discovering that my Electrician had joined 2 x 2 metre HDMI cables together with an adaptor.

I tried the old cables externally individually & joined together via the adaptor without issue.

I can only assume it was some sort of electrical interference causing this.

I will feed the new one piece 5 metre cable into the cavity soon & hopefully this should be OK

[DanceswithUnix]

Thanks for the update. I have only seen HDMI cables either work or drop out completely, so well hunted down!

[Obraxis]

I was going to say it could be a GFX cra RAM issue. Glad you found the problem