Graphical glitch in some games - Help!

[MagR]

Hi

This is my first post on this forum and I hope someone can help me. I'm pretty new to gaming and system building and am experiencing an annoying graphics glitch in some parts of some games. The anomaly appears as large translucent snowflakes slowly swirling in some parts of games and is extremely distracting. Games affected include Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Crysis, The Witcher and Call of Juarez and the effect is the same at all resolutions and quality settings. Older games such as FEAR, Far Cry, Doom 3 and Prey do not appear to suffer from this. The corruption appears in the same parts or levels of affected games and as it is not random I have ruled out overheating, especially as I have an Antec Twelve Hundred case with 8 fans.

I've embarked on a systematic programme of replacing hardware one item at a time to find the culprit causing this glitch. So far I have replaced the graphics card (Sapphire Radeon HD 1GB 4870 to Pallit Nvidia 2GB GTX 285), processor (Core 2 Quad 6600 to Core i7 920 DO), motherboard (Asus P5Q-E to Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R), RAM (4GB Corsair Dominator to 6GB OCZ Gold), cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro to Akasa Nero) power supply (Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 650W to Enermax Revolution 85+ 1250W) and optical drive. None of the changes has fixed the problem. I now have a more powefull, faster system on which to watch this corruption!

I've also tried my system with a different monitor and DVI-D lead to no avail. I use two hard disks, a Velociraptor 300GB with a Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB as bach up. I've tried re-installing the operating system on each of these with the offending games and it does nothing different. I've even switched from Vista to Windows 7 RC1 and it makes no difference. Prior to reinstallation I always wipe the disks with with a program called Killdisk to get a clean start. No component is overclocked and I use AVG, A Squared and Ad-Aware for virusus etc. Drivers for motherboard, sound and especially graphics are up to date.

I'm now at my wits end as there is nothing left to change and I have enough spare hardware, none of which seems to be faulty, to build another rig.

One chap on another forum suggested my VRAM could be corrupted but it seems strange that two different graphics cards from different suppliers could have the same problem. I tried to use a video memory testing program but it did'nt seem to work with cards whose memory exceeds 512MB as both of mine do and the read me was very confusing so I gave up.

I'm now wondering if it's something simple that a newbie like me has overlooked. It wasn't until I went on a forum a few months ago that I managed to stop games tearing as I'd never heard of vertical sync!

Can anyone help?

Regards

Mag

[Infinite]

Hi, and welcome

What monitor do you have?

[MagR]

Hi

Thanks for replying. I'm using a iiyama E2208HDS which is a 22" 16:9 TNT panel. I also tried an old Dell 17" monitor and got the same result. I even tried a more expensive DVI-D lead with better shielding and gold plated connectors and that had no effect.

Regards

Mag

[Infinite]

You know what, I have no clue. What you have is practically the same problem on two entirely different machines. Just to make sure, these games are all legit, right? XD

Well it could be that something that you are installing is causing the problem. Maybe some anti-virus or something.
Try using a new partition, doing a clean install of windows (7 RC) just for a test. Then letting windows install its own updates etc from Windows Update, then only installing the lastest graphics card drivers and maybe sound drivers aswell. Then install one game that is causing the problem and see if you still get the errors.

[Singh400]

What kind of temps are you reaching while gaming, both CPU and GPU?

[Jay]

If you are sure its a hardware issue and if the temps are ok I would start by looking at the memory, I had a really odd issue where games would go black and white, or have odd lockups etc and it turned out to be dodgy memory. If its not the memory it could be the PSU and if all else fails it could be the slot on the motherboard. These glitches can be a nightmare to workout.

Could you take a screen shot of it?

[MagR]

What kind of temps are you reaching while gaming, both CPU and GPU?

Thanks for replying. Using Realtemp the cpu is idling at around 35 celcius and gets up to 55 cecius under load. Using GPU-Z the gpu idles at 39 celcius and the hottest I have had it under load is 70 celcius after several hours of gaming.

However I still get corruption if I am at the relevant part of the game just after switch on before anything has time to heat up. It seems to appear at specific parts of games irrespective of temperature.

Thanks again

Mag

[MagR]

You know what, I have no clue. What you have is practically the same problem on two entirely different machines. Just to make sure, these games are all legit, right? XD

Well it could be that something that you are installing is causing the problem. Maybe some anti-virus or something.
Try using a new partition, doing a clean install of windows (7 RC) just for a test. Then letting windows install its own updates etc from Windows Update, then only installing the lastest graphics card drivers and maybe sound drivers aswell. Then install one game that is causing the problem and see if you still get the errors.

Thanks for replying again. I'm not using pirate copies if that's what you mean. All the games causing problems are new from Amazon, Play.com or HMV. As regards your suggestion for a reinstall that is what I've tried several times but I'll have another go. Do I need to install Windows onto a separate partition? I've always ignored partitions as I'm not dual-booting.

I've managed to get a couple of screenshots but the forum rules prevent me from posting as I haven't had 5 posts yet so that's no use!

Thanks again for your help

Mag

[MagR]

If you are sure its a hardware issue and if the temps are ok I would start by looking at the memory, I had a really odd issue where games would go black and white, or have odd lockups etc and it turned out to be dodgy memory. If its not the memory it could be the PSU and if all else fails it could be the slot on the motherboard. These glitches can be a nightmare to workout.

Could you take a screen shot of it?

Thanks for your reply. The thing is though I've changed the memory, PSU and motherboard for new kit already and am getting exactly the same glitch as before.

I can't post a screenshot unfortunately as the forum rules say I havn't made sufficient posts yet - pity!

I'm starting to think it might be best to take it to a computer repairer who can swap all the hardware in and out again with their own which they know is working till they find the damaged component.

Thanks again

Mag

[Jay]

Thanks for replying again. I'm not using pirate copies if that's what you mean. All the games causing problems are new from Amazon, Play.com or HMV. As regards your suggestion for a reinstall that is what I've tried several times but I'll have another go. Do I need to install Windows onto a separate partition? I've always ignored partitions as I'm not dual-booting.

I've managed to get a couple of screenshots but the forum rules prevent me from posting as I haven't had 5 posts yet so that's no use!

Thanks again for your help

Mag

just post a link with a space or 2 in it to the screen shot, then i'll post the actual link for you.

try all your parts outside of the case and see how it goes.

[kalniel]

Have you tried without any anti-virus/spyware programs?

[Flash477]

The only thing that I can think of given that you have essentually built a new system and used 2 different cards would be driver related. Now I know that 2 different cards having the same issue is rare, but it could be the case.

I'm guessing that when you are seeing these issues you are running the games in DX10 mode? if so do you still get the same issue with DX9?

Check for updates to both the drivers and games, as either one or both may have issued a patch to fix these issues. Or in the case of the drivers, try some slightly older versions in case it is an issue with that particular driver version.

Also, what OS are you using?

[Singh400]

Thanks for replying. Using Realtemp the cpu is idling at around 35 celcius and gets up to 55 cecius under load. Using GPU-Z the gpu idles at 39 celcius and the hottest I have had it under load is 70 celcius after several hours of gaming.

However I still get corruption if I am at the relevant part of the game just after switch on before anything has time to heat up. It seems to appear at specific parts of games irrespective of temperature.

Thanks again

Mag

Well those temps are fine - have you OC'ed your GPU in anyway?

It sounds like video artefacts (snowflakes is a good indicator). But they can be caused by anything, improperly OC'ed hardware, high temps, interfering software (like AV).

[MagR]

just post a link with a space or 2 in it to the screen shot, then i'll post the actual link for you.

try all your parts outside of the case and see how it goes.

Here's the links:

http:// uploadingit.com/files/1368796_8b8j6/witcher%202009-08-30%2011-12-50-78.bmp]witcher 2009-08-30 11-12-50-78.bmp[/url]

http:// uploadingit.com/files/1368685_hpi6e/CoJ%202009-08-30%2011-19-56-84.bmp]CoJ 2009-08-30 11-19-56-84.bmp[/url]

I've put a big gap after "http://" - hope that is what you meant

The first shot is from The Witcher with all settings on high. The corruption is the green translucent blobs you see when you look at the tree. What the screenshot can't pick up is the fact they are moving so are extremely distracting.

The second shot is from the start of Call of Juarez at low resolution and settings. The corruption here is the translucent white blobs which are also swirling.

Just to reiterate I get these effects at the same point in these games irrespective of how long I've been playing so I doubt it's a heat problem.

On your second point do you mean I should literally take all components out of the case and run them on a table? What is this designed to test?

Thanks again

Mag

[MagR]

Well those temps are fine - have you OC'ed your GPU in anyway?

It sounds like video artefacts (snowflakes is a good indicator). But they can be caused by anything, improperly OC'ed hardware, high temps, interfering software (like AV).

Thanks for replying. I had overclocked my original Radeon 4870 card briefly before I found it made little difference so put everything back to stock speeds. The new Geforce GTX 285 has never been overclocked by myself and was not bought pre-overclocked.

Thanks again

Mag

[MagR]

Have you tried without any anti-virus/spyware programs?

Thanks for your reply. I've just done another reinstall of Vista and made sure the only software I also installed before installing one of the problem games was the Nvidia graphics drivers - no anti-virus etc at all. Result - unfortunately same as ever - big translucent snowflakes are still there.

Thanks again

Mag