SpeedyDonkey

Dear internet, I recently downloaded the new ARMA2 Demo through steam. When I start the game and come to the main menu I see strange artifacts randomly all over the screen. They are shaped like small red dots in the following pattern: . . . . . . . . . The dots in game are closer to each other and there's plenty of 'em! I dont seem them during the loading screen, or in the map editor, but as soon as I'm ingame they shine at me. I haven't seen them in any other game. I downloaded ATI's latest drivers like a week ago, and i have DirectX 11. Specs: Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Fractal Design Tesla 650W 80+ 500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Svensk OEM Samsung SH-B083L Blu-Ray läsare & DVD-brännare, Svart PowerColor Radeon HD5770 1GB PCS++ Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) Value Select DDR3 1333MHz AMD Phenom2 X6 1055T plz halp! with love, Speedydonkey

Alright so I was playing around with the video settings in game. And by switching anti-alaisaing OFF in ARMA, I was able to get rid of those red stripes... BUT instread I got different looking artefacts and other glitches. See this screenshot to get an idea what it looks like Hmm so what can I make of that? Why is anti-alaisaing having such an effect for me?

Yeah, to me it feels like it's with a certain type of engine or a certain type och technology where these errors occur (and where they occur, they're constant) Do you know of any benchmark test that might be more able to detect faulty VRAM and other parts of the card that furmark misses? Part of why my frustration is that I don't know what to look for. Just now i noticed glitches in one of the 3D presentations under "Graphics" -> "3D" in the Catalyst control center

I did as you said and ran the stability test. The temperature peaked around 86c and stayed there. No artefacts in that test. Just now I uninstalled the drivers and ran "Driver Sweeper" in safemode before installing the latest drivers from powercolors website again. No luck, same problems as before. So seeing that the card passed the temperature benchmark, in combination with the fact that the artefacts always show up immediately should rule out heat as a probable cause for the problems, correct? Is there anything else i could test and try to trace weather this is software or hardware related?

Hey guys, thanks for the input! I tried that benchmark program and it seemed to run fine (I'm not so sure what numbers I should be looking for) How do i lower the settings for my card? I went into the Catalyst Control Center and under the option ATI Overdrive I see the following: High Performance GPU clock settings: 875 MHz High Performance Memory clock settings: 1225MHz Enable Manual Fan Control: (not selected) Current Values GPU Clock: 157MHz Memory Clock: 300MHz All these are on default factory settings, and I have't changed a thing. Everything in the overdrive settings is gray so I can't change a thing even if I so wanted to. Could it be that the factory settings are too high? This seems highly unlikely to me. Especially considering that this same exact card worked fine on the ARMA2 demo a couple of weeks ago. Any ideas?

Ok guys i just tried the older ARMA demo and yep, same beautiful red dots there too! Both are based on the same engine, so In a way it only makes sense for the problem to appear in both versions. But how come team fortress 2 works like a charm? http://www.freeuploadimages.org/images/rnzkzqtsfrp49hb2q.jpg

Interesting, Since i bought the computer it's been to service twice, first it was the RAM memory that went bananas, and then it was the motherboard. Is there any way for me to verify that it's hardware related? So far I've only seen these red dots in this ARMA demo (im downloading the other ARMA demo as we speak) The only other games I've got installed are dirt 2 and Team Fortress 2 and both seemingly run well. Im not saying you're wrong Dwarden, I'm just looking for a way to verify it... :)

I am unable to resize images due to unrelated computer problems. Should I make a new topic for that or are we, as civilized forum members able to discuss both problems in this thread? I would prefer the latter. Thank you very much for your input, I look forward to more of your contributing and joyous messages Mr Adumb. Yours truly, SpeedyDonkey

Nope, havent touched the settings of the card at all. I uninstalled the drivers from ATI's website and downloaded and installed the drivers from PowerColor's website, but no luck - still the exact same problem! Below is a screenshot of the issue I'm faced with: They sort of fade back and forth, depending on the light in the screen. I should've taken one where they're even more obvious but I'm sure you get the point : ) http://www.freeuploadimages.org/images/1pdwdc31tnawchbh85vk.jpg 130 kb

Hi guys! I have read this entire topic now and I’m glad to see so much talk about LFS (Live for speed) Roughly three weeks ago I was enjoying a fantastic race when I had to pit, unfortunately I spun after refueling my vehicle due to the high speed I had in the spin I hit the wall with incredible impact (roughly 150 km/h) As a result of this the vehicle flew up in the air, landing quite near the two green dumpsters seen in the picture below (the car landed upside down). After this event I really started to play around with the idea of repeating this stunt but with all the four wheels on the ground. I fear that landing on the dumpster would tip the car over, or in worst case break the front wing off. So I figured it’d have to land between the two green ones. I’ve been thinking of different ways to achieve this. This first picture illustrates the gap in the fence which is the ideal spot to hit (obviously). Here you can clearly see the path _I THINK_ my car took the one time I actually got there. This is an edited picture of how I imagine it to look if I land properly. And in this final picture you can clearly see the speed which is required to successfully master this stunt. So far I have NOT successful with this, so I’m asking all of you pro’s of your opinion. Also, sorry about the graphics I'm on a laptop. INFO: Track: Blackwood GP Weather: Sunny (NO WIND) Car: FBM thx.

why so serious?

It is with great plesure that I wish everyone here a good easter.

plz elaborate what you mean. TIA / Yours truly / Sincerely Speedydonkey

Please don't be such haters. It's not spam. its pure sexy, sexy in a very prude and innocent way. Also worth noting is the fact that the image is hosted in Czech Republic, by the good people of Bohemia Interactive Studios. Lets not pretend to be moderators, mate.

Hello mate. Yes this was discussed a few pages back. And according to the forum scientists there is no way a human eye can spot a difference between a 100kb picture and a 500kb picture, and due to the fact that most people these days are on 56k modems, the increased file size of the images posted here could very well crash the interweb.

Just a question; why on earth would one want to share a forum account with others? Usual forum accounts dont have other rights than others, unless ur a Moderator or other Hidden-forum-participant. Posting under the same account is a bit weird as there's 2 different persons on 1 name; What is the purpose, if one at all, to use the same account? (I know that you asked the Moderators, but it's simply a question drawn up) I bet you'd like to know that sickboy, I bet you would ;o)

Hello. I am wondering, if a forum account can be shared between two lovers involved in any type of relationship?

#4 is the last chance before a ban. But one could get banned with less than four as well? Elaborate please.

Fluent: Swedish Finnish English norwegian not so fluent: danish german have studied for some time but suck at it: Russian

Jupp, inside you'd definitely need a good external flash - maybe even with a slave, just as I wrote. The Canon 430 Ex would be a good choice as the reflector adapts automatically to the current focal length (and even adjusts for the crop factor). In your original post you wrote about possibly shooting outside, tho - with enough sunshine you'd be quite fine with the kit lens. I'd rather have gone for the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 - it's cheap, really sharp, and 28mm on a 1.6 crop camera is (imho) just a bit lacking (equal to 44mm - almost no wide angle! ). The 17-50 on the other hand equals a 27-80mm lens, which is just perfect for a good alround lens (indoors and outside). ah what is wide enough really depends on what you intend to shoot. In the near future im planning on taking a lot of portrait shots, and do not need such a wide lens for that. Â Being the amature that i am, this felt as a good step from the kit lens for me =D This thread discusses the 28-75mm and people generally seem very happy with it. Granted most of them have other crop sizes as many have 30Ds and 5Ds but one can find quite a few shot withh 350/400 as well = ) People seem to think that it has great value and is very very sharp. obviously being a fairly cheap lens, it has its downsides, such as that focusing isnt as good as an expensive canon with USM etc =)

You should rather raise the ISO by one step than use the widest aperture. The kit lens is not the sharpest anyways, and at full aperture it's worst. Using an aperture of 8 or (if possible) higher will give much better results. Just use ISO 200 (or even 400 if the setting isn't too critical and you shoot in RAW mode) and make sure you've got enough light to get a shutter speed of at least 1/200 for good results (nobody's really standing still in any group of 3+ people). The internal flash is only good for close shots in small rooms  - for a big group inside you'll need a good external flash that is able to light the whole scene even at a wide angle and at the distance you'll need to capture the whole group. Also you should think about using a focal length of about 35mm instead of 18mm. That would be about 50mm equivalent on a non-crop camera, which results in less distortions. So my recommendations: ISO 200, focal length 35mm, f8 or higher if possible, a good external flash or enough natural light to get a shutter speed of at least 1/200sec. Use a tripod. The kit lense is a low quality lense. Good (and cheap) for a start, but for anything serious get some better lenses (Tamron 17-50mm f2.8, Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM, Canon 17-40L f4,...). I've stopped using the kit lense completely since I got my Canon 50mm f1.4 USM. It has no zoom and with the 80mm equivalent focal length only it is sometimes hard to get a good shot, but the difference in quality (sharpness, ambient light photography, bokeh) is more than enough to compensate for that. F8, ISO200 and shutter speed of 1/200 indoors in medium light sounds..  DARK. even when cranking up the exposure in pp of the RAW. at least with my version 18-55 kit lens. I've orderd the Tamron 28-75mm 2,8. I've heard mostly good things about it on the canon forums. =)

depends how far from the object you'll stand obviously. But shooting indoors generally means crappy lighting. So I would stick to a low f number as possible, maybe i've had bad luck, and bad memories from indoor shots : p but since you'll be away from the object, and have it at widest.. im guessing it wont be your main problem. but not knowing how much light etc you have to play with, its much better to try it out and check in the computer what it looks like. =)

Thanks for the kind words mates!! I would say, make sure to take advantage of having it on widest (that being 18mm). By doing so you get the aperture size to 3.5f. You'll need it wide to get everyone in the picture, and the 3.5f to keep the ISO level down as low as possible (this is indoors, on a sunny day outside one might even need to crank it up a notch). If you have a tripod that helps (one can get the cheapest ones for not too many euros, obviously pro tripods are much more expensive). And usually when taking portraits you need a fill in flash. The built in flash is probably not gonna be strong enough. But play around with it before you shoot (in the settings you can change the power of the flash) Oh and if you really want to be sure to take a good picture, you could scout around like a few days before the actual shot, and try it out at the exact location, so that you have all the settings nailed down (you don’t wanna have to tune everything in when you have 15 ppl waiting for you)

A mate of mine just got an old mini cooper and we figured it would be fun to go to the countryside and take a few shots.