7970 red dots/artifacts around stuff

[Vario]

I run my 7970 Gigabyte Windforce OC stock at the 1000/1200 clocks. Im using Catalyst 13.9.

I just started getting red dots around various areas of firefox windows (pictures) and then in starcraft 2. Its not overheating, it doesn't get over 70*C, and thats uningen valley benchmark for 3 hours to test it when I first bought it. What do the red artifacts usually signify? dying card or is it a driver issue? Any ideas? Also its a Gigabyte brand but bought off ebay. Can I RMA it? I have the retail box. Bios is flashed to stock, I didn't have any luck overclocking this thing and gave up long ago so its totally stock and its been stock for months.

I couldn't overclock my memory past 1225. Maybe it has defective ram? My core went to 1140 which is average for a 1.17 voltage locked card. I didn't keep the overclock except for 3dmark11 because it clearly isn't a good card for overclocking despite its awesome looking cooler.

Theres just little red dots on stuff, like 1 pixel.


I am looking at their site and it looks like its a 3 year warranty. I will have to remove the card to get the serial and ill check it.

 

[Vario]

Looks like I am covered until 2016. Should I keep using it and see if red dots continue or RMA? How fast and how well does gigabyte RMA? I have this card looking brand new, no dust (filters), factory bios installed, box is clean, perfect. etc. The bios is the original. Everything but original receipt and I might not have the manual, don't remember. Is Gigabyte pretty good about RMA? This card also sucks at overclocking in CCC so I wonder if its unstable stock.

It looks like they only want the card, don't care about any of the other things in the RMA so I just have to send the card no box nothing else. Anyone ever RMA a Gigabyte graphics card? Whats the probability they will replace?

 

[manofthem]

Man that sucks. I'd try the usual stuff: driver reinstall, try in another pc, if that helps maybe an OS reinstall. I seem to remember somewhere saying that artifacts in 2d mode is vram related (not sure though) and usually calls for an RMA. I haven't had to deal with Gigabyte, but if they are as good as Sapphire, you'll be in good shape.

For my 7970 RMA a while back, they only asked for a copy of the invoice from where I bought it; they didn't want the box or accessories. Again, that was sapphire.

If the dots persist and/or get worse, RMA ASAP.

Anyway, I hope it works out for the best for you.

 

[Vario]

Man that sucks. I'd try the usual stuff: driver reinstall, try in another pc, if that helps maybe an OS reinstall. I seem to remember somewhere saying that artifacts in 2d mode is vram related (not sure though) and usually calls for an RMA. I haven't had to deal with Gigabyte, but if they are as good as Sapphire, you'll be in good shape.

For my 7970 RMA a while back, they only asked for a copy of the invoice from where I bought it; they didn't want the box or accessories. Again, that was sapphire.

If the dots persist and/or get worse, RMA ASAP.

Anyway, I hope it works out for the best for you.

I am guessing its vram too because it cant tolerate any vram overclock at all. It evidently does it both in 2d mode and 3d mode because its doing it in mozilla firefox and in starcraft2. I'll play some skyrim tomorrow and see if it happens, that should stress it because I have a lot of texture mods. I don't have an invoice or anything but I have an ebay purchase order, its a used card. Think they will care?

 

[The Von Matrices]

From my experience, if you have single pixel issues or lines on the screen, that's a memory issue. If it was a core issue either the card would crash or it would have weird geometry on the screen. Fortunately, Gigabyte is very good with RMA service; I would send it back rather than waiting for it to get worse.

 

[Vario]

From my experience, if you have single pixel issues or lines on the screen, that's a memory issue. If it was a core issue either the card would crash or it would have weird geometry on the screen. Fortunately, Gigabyte is very good with RMA service; I would send it back rather than waiting for it to get worse.

Okay I will start it up tomorrow and use my 7850 in the mean time! They only seem to require the SN to RMA it, nothing else so it should be simple.

 

[Vario]

I'll swap out the 7970 to 7850 cards with the ITX platform and put the 7850 in and do some starcraft on the ITX with the 7970. If it shows up again or worse I'll RMA. I am thinking I should let it get a bit worse so it happens 100% of the time so they don't reject the RMA. Is that a good plan? I have till 2016 and again, I don't overclock this card at all. Voltage locked so there is no point to it.

 

[BiggieShady]

I am thinking I should let it get a bit worse so it happens 100% of the time so they don't reject the RMA.

If it's bad memory chip and most probably it is, you can test huge chunk of your total VRAM with MemTestCL https://simtk.org/project/xml/downloads.xml?group_id=385#package_id907 which should show errors. If it's error induced by inadequately cooled memory chips, errors can come up after few iterations.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

I run my 7970 Gigabyte Windforce OC stock at the 1000/1200 clocks.

1200MHz is not stock for that model 7970. Stock is 1000/1375.


from GURU3d review of your card-

Now the reference cards are clocked at a 925 MHz core frequency but this is the OC model, and Gigabyte factory clocks the product at 1000 MHz for you. The GDDR5 memory runs at a default 5.5 Gbps (that's 1375 MHz effective data rate as GDDR5 has a quad data-rate, so effectively that quadruples that number). The memory is running on a 384-bit bus.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_radeon_hd_7970_oc_windforce_review,5.html

 

[TheGuruStud]

It's the driver, possibly. I had this problem crop up out of nowhere after a few in place driver upgrades. At 1st it only happened when OCed, so I suspected hardware failure, but then it was being retarded at stock. So, I did a full driver clean including removing all of windows' stored versions (you know how it likes to auto install after boot). Problem is solved and that was several driver upgrades ago.

It's likely happening in Firefox b/c of hardware acceleration.
Also, I would use the newest betas. Some of the whql crap gave issues sometimes for me (makes no sense but betas work perfect for me.)