Today I received my new Sapphire Radeon HD 6870. Now I'm experiencing artifacts under certain circumstances. Normally I would assume that artifacts occur when a card is under heavy load but in this case it's the opposite. System: Windows 7 64-bit, Catalyst 10.10e Idle stats: Core clock: 100 MHz Memory clock: 300 MHz VDDC: 0.945 V Busy stats: Core clock: 900 MHz Memory clock: 1050 MHz VDDC: 1.172 V The artifacts occur only with the lower voltage (0.945 V). Here's an example from Fallout: New Vegas: The same artifacts also occur in Need for Speed Hot Pursuit in the map view where you choose the races. And I also noticed graphical glitches in Windows itself. When I force the voltage to stay at 0.945 V more applications like FurMark or the ATT artifact tester show glitches, even if core and memory clocks remain unchanged at 100/300. So it must be related to the low voltage. Now I wonder if this is a hardware or software problem. As I already stated there aren't any artifacts under heavy load and with a higher voltage. Bad card? Incompatibility between the card and other components (mainboard, PSU)? Or is it just a faulty driver that doesn't increase the voltage when necessary?
Try using a different dvi port on the card, my card did that, only worse when I first got it, I changed to the lower dvi connection that fixed it completely. ps I didn't try all the tweaks you tried, so this may not be related at all, but worth a try.
Ah ****, i gues i gotta return mine too then, i have the same exact problem with my xfx 6870 black editions.
