HD 4850: Bad hardware or software?

Finamenon

I have had a problem with artifacting for about a month now. My video card is an HD 4850 xfx brand. Several elements however have led me to believe that the problem is not hardware related, however I would like the opinions of more experienced people. Here are some of the facts:

1) The problems involve textures stretching oddly or a multicolored checkerboard pattern either across the screen or superimposed upon various textures.

2) The problems did not occur until I switched to Win 7 ultimate.

3) The problems are identical in all games tested (Dragon Age, World of Warcraft, The Witcher)

4) The temperature on my video card never goes higher than 50C

5) Using benchmarking programs furmark and lightsmark has been unable to produce a single artifact in several runs at max settings.

Here is the strange part

6) If I alt-tab out of game or use a console command to reset the graphic engine, the problems immediately disappear and stay gone for anywhere from 30 seconds to an hour.

I've heard varying theories, from bad VRAM, to directx11 on win 7 being a pile of arse. Again this happens in all games (except fallout 2, but that seems to be natural given its low settings). What do you guys think?

UZ7

Have you tried switching to other drivers?

Finamenon · 11-07-2009, 02:02 | posts: 6 | User is Offline

Yes I have tried 4 different sets of drivers, from the newest catalyst to the previous 3. They all have the same errors. Sorry for not mentioning that in the original post. Sometimes I forget about the simple options XD

bokah · 11-07-2009, 02:23 | posts: 1,028 | User is Offline

prolly oc'd version and w7 actually puts it in use, producing bad timings

those symptoms are pretty common on badly clocked cards

rflair · 11-07-2009, 04:31 | posts: 592 | Location: Canada | User is Offline

Windows 7 does not come with the latest DX run-times, have you tried updating DirectX?

What are the 3D speeds of your card?

Yakubblackbeard · 11-07-2009, 09:48 | posts: 4 | User is Offline

I had the same problem. I cleaned out the fan/heatsink with a can of air.
I also lowered my memory clock to stock or just below.

It helped, but I honestly think its a driver issue because it didn't start happening until I switched to cat 9.9

fischju · 11-07-2009, 10:03 | posts: 1,866 | User is Offline

Try using Rivatuner to underclock it a bit, at least to 4850 stock clocks. (625/993)

Finamenon · 11-07-2009, 10:29 | posts: 6 | User is Offline

According to my Catalyst Control Center, my timings are at 625/993, and the memory is at the bare minimum. I have also tried updating directx but it tells me I have the latest version.

Finamenon · 11-07-2009, 13:32 | posts: 6 | User is Offline

After rereading the comments here, I looked again into what rflair said. Instead of using the regular installer for directx, I manually installed it again. So far, so good. I think that was the issue. I will reply again if the issues arise once more. Thanks everyone for the advice.

Finamenon · 11-07-2009, 16:22 | posts: 6 | User is Offline

Apparently I jumped the gun, I still see the issues in World of Warcraft. Oddly enough they stopped completely in Dragon Age. I'm more confused than ever.

sykozis · 11-07-2009, 16:33 | posts: 3,338 | Location: USA | User is Offline

My HD4850 didn't like WoW at all. I had constant artifacts, flickering, etc. There is some issue with the graphics engine in WoW that Blizzard refuses to fix....only solution I've found, was switching to nVidia.

IPlayNaked · 11-07-2009, 17:06 | posts: 673 | User is Offline

Are the graphics issues flickering shadows? That's a shadow bug common to ATI hardware in WoW, just turn the shadows down a notch or two.

Finamenon · 11-07-2009, 17:47 | posts: 6 | User is Offline

No, I do not use shadows in games typically unless they are forced on me. The graphic bugs are stretching textures and occasional checkerboard rainbow colored boxes.