HD 7xxx drivers for flicker/BSOD fix

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by vejn, Sep 10, 2012.

  1. hulawafu77

    hulawafu77 Guest

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    Have you contacted HardOCP about this? AMD fixed the GSOD quick when HardOCP made a ruckus about it. Right now it seems AMD doesn't do anything unless people strangle them with bad press. Even the cursor stutter, and pink screen wasn't fixed until nearly every forum with AMD users were pissed.
     
  2. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    It is, i asked in a other forum all users with 7850s got the same. Me included, but it also scared me at first.


    If it helps. As i already wrote i asked some peoples in a other forum(not english though) to do the test with their 7850 and they all had that 50 Random Blocks.
    Heres another thread in another forum about 7970 Owners. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1675582&page=2 they also have 50 Random Blocks. Imho i doubt it has something to do with the flickering.

    I also agree about splitting the thread. The flickering has nothing to do with BSOD or black screen of death.
    But it seems like many people are not caring about the flickering as long as the most "new and big multiplayer games" like BF3 do not have that issue. I think it's pretty damn anoying even if i see it only once in a month, it just doenst feel right.
    Don't forget to write AMD about that issue www.amd.com/report

    And here's my video about the Issue
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnb9t8FHo8.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2012
  3. Scyphe

    Scyphe Guest

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    Just for reference purposes:

    Test summary:
    -----------------------------------------
    50 iterations over 128 MiB of memory on device Tahiti
    Moving inversions (ones and zeros): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Memtest86 walking 8-bit: 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    True walking zeros (8-bit): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    True walking ones (8-bit): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Moving inversions (random): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    True walking zeros (32-bit): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    True walking ones (32-bit): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Random blocks: 11 failed iterations
    (12992 total incorrect bits)
    Memtest86 Modulo-20: 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Integer logic: 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Integer logic (4 loops): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Integer logic (local memory): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Integer logic (4 loops, local memory): 0 failed iterations
    (0 total incorrect bits)
    Final error count: 11 test iterations with at least one error; 12992 errors total

    Press <enter> to quit.
     
  4. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    What happens if you try it with your card at Stock settings?
     

  5. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    Windows 7 clean install

    I did a clean installation of Windows 7 on another partition and tested Tribes: Ascend with Catalyst 12.8. There was no effect on the severity of the artifacts. There were just as many of them as on my old (ie: primary) Win 7 installation with cat 12.8.

    I expected that to be the case, but I just wanted to rule it out for sure.
     
  6. Falkentyne

    Falkentyne Master Guru

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  7. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    wits end

    Well, I finally got the chance to test my 7850 in another computer. The artifacts did not go away.

    I'm at my wits end here. Despite others saying that getting an RMA replacement doesn't solve the problem, there aren't many options left besides waiting until there is a driver release that does not cause these artifacts.

    At least if a replacement still has these artifacts, I would be more confident with the thought that it's simply a driver issue, and that I should stop worrying.

    I'll wait until a few days before the RMA window closes. That ought to be enough time for AMD to release a beta driver that I can try before going through with the RMA.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2012
  8. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    You may not trust me, but im already on my 4th replacement and all had the same issue. The first 2 Cards i thought something is wrong on the 3rd the fan was to noisy, now im on my 4th and the "artifact/flicker" happend on all of them, testing XFX, Powercolor and Sapphire.
    The only thing i know is that it seems to be game-specific and that it doesn't happen on every game.
     
  9. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    hesitant to RMA

    Posts explaining that replacement cards are still affected, and the generally odd nature of the problem are why I'm so hesitant to RMA right now. I've seen enough similar posts to trust those experiences. I intend to wait until the last possible day before requesting a replacement. The artifacts are too inconsistent to not give AMD and Sapphire (and newegg) the benefit of the doubt.

    In the meantime, I will continue to fiddle around and test the card and other games to hopefully nail down a definitive cause. Perhaps AMD will release an "official" beta driver sometime this month, seeing as that's how they've been doing things lately (bi-monthly WHQL, monthly betas). A newer driver release might hopefully provide a fix, or if not, some new insight into this problem.

    An RMA wouldn't be too inconvenient for me, since I have a satisfactory card I can use while I wait. But I'd rather not do something that is entirely unnecessary, and in turn inconvenience newegg and whoever else is involved in the process.

    If I do ultimately decide to RMA, and the replacement is affected (but otherwise entirely functional), then I'll just settle and deal with it with more patience.
     
  10. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    well i guess we need to make some noise about this issue, otherwise it wont be fixed in any driver. Maybe we should collect videos about the artifacts we're talking about.
    I guess AMD gets thousands of e-mails everyday from users whining about artifacts. But most of them have nothing to do with our issue. We need to point out our issue and make some noise about it. But i dont know how to do that. The only thing i do is that i started writing AMD everytime i notice some flicker in some game, again and again and keep linking them to my starcraft Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnb9t8FHo8 (keep in mind it looks worse on video).
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2012

  11. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    Making some noise

    Most definitely. I've already submitted a thorough bug report to AMD describing my experience.

    Here is the link to the survey for Catalyst 12.8 where anyone who is experiencing these artifacts can do the same:

    http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EBF

    It's fairly straightforward and should only take a few minutes to complete. But it would of course be best to take your time and provide a lot of details. No idea how closely they look at these, but it's better than nothing.
     
  12. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    all the shadowmap flickers i've seen/read about i think come from geometry being in the wrong place

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]


    or are people seeing specifically textures, black spots, whole frames flickering?
     
  13. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    I had enough spare time today to record and edit a video showing the artifacts in Tribes: Ascend.

    It can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/ttWKNunJZ0k

    This video is cut down from 12 minutes and 37 seconds of video. The time between each momentary artifact varied from a few seconds to several minutes.
     
  14. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    strange. Thats the very first time i saw this in other colors than black. But it seems like it is behaving the same way. Do you have that with every driver? And how often does that happen? Does it happen in every game?

    But it seems to have something to do with shadow/lightning.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2012
  15. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    When using Catalyst 12.6, or 12.5b (and I think 12.4 also, but don't remember right now), Tribes: Ascend will be entirely artifact free.

    With Catalyst 12.8, an artifact will appear every few minutes. Occasionally, there will be separate artifacts that appear within a few seconds of each other.

    Other games, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution are not affected... regardless of driver version (as far as I can tell over several hours of play time). I chose to record Tribes: Ascend because, out of all games I have, it exhibits the artifacts consistently and at a fairly high rate. It's just a particularly severe example.

    Other games that exhibit colored (ie: non black) artifacts are Crysis 2 and PlanetSide 2 beta. In those games, the artifacts will often be the same color as the environment or some other in-game object. They tend to be very rare as well.

    Also, like Tribes: Ascend, the artifacts in these games vary depending on the installed driver version. With Catalyst 12.6, PlanetSide 2 is artifact free. I've yet to find a driver that completely removes them from Crysis 2 (9.001 September 4 unofficial comes very close though).

    In Alan Wake, I've seen both white and black artifacts, but never artifacts that are colored or textured.
     

  16. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    Thats very interesting to hear. Strange thing is that in Alan Wake American Nightmare i didn't had any Flickering. I think it also could be system related in witch games the flickering will happen. It's really strange. But it's nice to hear that drivers seem to change something. In my "flickergames" i hardly could see any difference between drivers.


    *edit*
    Have you already tested playing your video in slow motion? Could be interesting maybe you'll see smth which causes the flicker. In starcraft it looks like a bugged shadow for example.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2012
  17. acereborn

    acereborn Guest

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    I just finished Alan Wake and there might have been some artifacts with 12.8, but it was hard to tell with this title.

    I have also reported the issue to AMD. I hope they fix it soon.
     
  18. kn00tcn

    kn00tcn Ancient Guru

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    nice video, it's not lighting, the geometry just jumps to the wrong place for 1 frame just like my GTA4 screenshots (unrelated CF issue that the game has years ago)

    since some objects cast shadows, & shadowmaps are realtime, that's why people will see shadows flicker when it's actually some object
     
  19. AntiBaby

    AntiBaby Guest

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    still frames

    I went through my Tribes video frame by frame and extracted two frames before the artifacts, the artifact frames and two frames after the artifacts. After looking through them, I think that the artifacts look most like skewed geometry. In one example (artifact 8), the artifact is accompanied by what appears to be oversized, low-LOD foliage (palm fronds or fern).

    Many of the artifacts share a texture with the terrain or other in-game objects. When facing the sun, the artifacts appear to cast 'god-rays'... just like any other in-game object.

    I've uploaded a .zip containing the still frames to dropbox. Here is the public link:

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35919284/TribesStillFrames.zip

    Filesize: 40.7MB

    =============

    The artifacts in Alan Wake have been exceptionally rare and easy to miss when using 12.8 in my experience. They do occur for me though.
     
  20. tetris

    tetris New Member

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    FYI BSOD/GSOD with HD7970, up until 12.5 catalyst the 2d voltage was 0.85 and with 12.6 it went down to 0.8, that's causing the instability, even desktop crashed (while using flash while webpage browsing).
    AMD doesn't seem to give a crap about it tho.
     

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