bad card or?

[Theoddis]

I just got a sapphire HD 7970 oc with boost and have been noticing some artifacting but it never lasts maybe a fraction of a second like a quick flash (less than a second) every so often not enough to effect gameplay at all but its noticeable maybe once every 5-10 min or so
here is my rig
i5 3570k 3.4ghz
gigabyte z68ma-d2h-b3
16 gb corsair vengeance @ 1600mhz
sapphire HD 7970 oc
thermaltake TR2 850w psu
any idea whats going on i have tried underclocking, new drivers,old drivers, reseating the GPU on the mobo
i get a little artifacting in skyrim like every 30-40 min ill get a flash of artifacting but on games like WoW i get it every 5-10 min its a quick flash and never stays and my FPS doesnt drop. if anyone has any ideas on what this could be it would help
this is my first AMD card so i dont know much about them

 

[d1nky]

what does the artefact look like? I was told once that a block of colour is memory and pixels (snow like etc) is core.

The cases can differ but the usual causes are:
Fan issues, such as failure of cooling fan.
Unsuited video card drivers.
Drivers that have values that the graphics card is not suited with.
Overclocking beyond the capabilities of the particular video card.

and what temps are you seeing? gpu, vrm, cpu etc

 

[Frogger]

maybe : http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180644

 

[jboydgolfer]

I have been running AMD GPU's for years now, Before that was Nvidia. Essentially whatever is Cheapest, or Fastest. After the 6xxx GPU's AMD REALLY dropped in quality IMO. I have had 3 Powercolor LCS 7970's, and the first TWO had artifacts, coil whine, and sub-par performance for a Top tier GPU. This friday, My roommate is getting a Titan, and if it's a good price to performance Choice , I'll likely go that way , and Not look back until they get their Act together. As for the artifacts, Try a Down clock to see if it resolves the issue, or even driver rollback. 12.10 did the trick with the LCS7970 if I'm NOT mistaken. Good luck

 

[AndrewK]

I have had 3 Powercolor LCS 7970's,

^Found your quality problem...

 

[the54thvoid]

A graphical glitch every 5 mins or so isn't artifacting as most folk would understand. You would get proper artifacts a lot more regularly so every 30 mins or so in Skyrim - that is not artifacts.

If you overclock that card to the extreme and run some benches/games - you'll see regular and frequent artifacts usually followed by a driver crash. I would go with what other people have said and use either up to date drivers or more stable ones from the past.

Annoyingly, a driver that works for me might not work as well for you and vice versa - really depends on software and hardware configured on your machine.

Point in case is the very badly coded (for Nvidia) Tomb Raider. I had a terrible memory artifact that happened twice but it was game stopping. But it never reappeared and i didn't do anything to remove it....

AS for the Powercolor remark - I never had any problems with my 7970 LCS other than electrical buzz/whine - but that's down to a poor design from AMD. 7970 coil whine is common compared to older generations. Blame AMD, not Powercolor.

 

[Widjaja]

This is a known issue with DX9c games and the 7xxx series cards depending on driver even with a stock un-overclocked system.
Not known so much here on TPU for some reason.

The artifacting severity varies for driver to driver and different results depending on the model of 7xxx series card.

With 13.2 betas I did not have any artifacts in Skyrim but will get random CTD.
13.3 betas I have no CTD in Skyrim but get a very rare mess of polygons of various colours in the center of the screen on very rare occasions.
Very rare as in one play through over 4 hours will have none yet another will have one instance.

So far Skyrim is the only game which has exhibited any signs of artifacting with the current beta drivers which is better than the 12.11 beta 11 with CAP 2 that I used to use.
Planetside 2, Tribes Ascend are a couple which would exhibit this artifacting problem but do not anymore.

 

[Random Murderer]

If it's a quick flicker of an image the card has recently displayed, then it is the card changing clock speeds and clearing the memory buffer.
I get this every few minutes in WoW and LoL. If you'd like to get rid of it, you can turn VSync off or change the graphics quality of the game so your card always stays in one clock profile.

 

[Theoddis]

its a quick flicker where the screen looks like you went crazy with the cutting tool in photoshop and its never full screen just one object or area of the screen fails to render properly
my case is very cool(coolermaster HAFX), under load i dont go over 55c on CPU and GPU

 

[d1nky]

I have a similar problem with heaven, on a certain part near the dragon statue it has a flicker of an object. it even happened when I had the gts450 in, same part same place everytime. it drove me nuts thinking it was an artifact.

I underclocked, undervolted, driver changes, tried onboard etc.

and like someone said it may just be a problem with that certain system and the change of frequencies etc

I see artifacts as snow like pixels, irregular blocks of colour and that happen regularly.

try onboard graphics or other gpu see if it still happens.

 

[harkot]

I got exact same problem with my XFX 7970 DD ghz edition, I just get a quick flicker in a split of second, even when my gpu is idle, while im on desktop. I read somewhere that it can happen on 120 Hz refresh rate which I have but I'm gonna try to replace my DVI cable with HDMI and maybe that flickering thing will disappear.