Artifacts in the Arrowhead Demo.

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

Try other drivers for gfx

Are you overclocking your graphics card?

Are you overclocking your graphics card?

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

Dear SpeedyDonkey of the internet,

I do not see any red lines and fail to see why you so boldly posted a picture that does not meet the 100kb rules?

Kind Regards Adumb

Dear SpeedyDonkey of the internet,

I do not see any red lines and fail to see why you so boldly posted a picture that does not meet the 100kb rules?

Kind Regards Adumb

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

those reds dots are a classic sign that you have activated FADE.

dont be so cheap and buy the real thing :mad:

i see the artefact (look right side around the tower and its all over screen)

imho this indicate faulty GPU memory or something along the line (could be even shader core if post processing is on)

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...

:)

those reds dots are a classic sign that you have activated FADE.

dont be so cheap and buy the real thing :mad:

Yes. He must have illegally downloaded the demo! Hang him!

Its usually overheating, see if you can force your fan to go faster. (I use Ati Tray Tools for GFX)

those reds dots are a classic sign that you have activated FADE.

dont be so cheap and buy the real thing :mad:

lol, you bought the demo? if i were you i'd ask for my money back...

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

Hey..i recently used my old ATI card..and got artifacts also.

However..i solved the problem lowering the speed of my Systems RAM (from 533 to 400)-because

1066 was faster than the GPU's Video memory..

If you want to test for GFX card stability or faults FurMark is a good tool:

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

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?

Once I had similar problem with Arma 2. I had white little squares randomly flickering over all screen. I fixed problem by completely disassemble my HD4870x2. I cleaned all dust from it and changed thermal coumpound. I do it every 3-4 months, because otherwise my vga draws artefacts or just BSOD's my system.

EDIT: Btw for me also graphic artefacts was seen only in Arma 2. Other games was running fine.

Once I had similar problem with Arma 2. I had white little squares randomly flickering over all screen.

Are you talking about these squares? I have them when video driver crashes. I have to restart my computer to remove them.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Once I had similar problem with Arma 2. I had white little squares randomly flickering over all screen. I fixed problem by completely disassemble my HD4870x2. I cleaned all dust from it and changed thermal coumpound. I do it every 3-4 months, because otherwise my vga draws artefacts or just BSOD's my system.

EDIT: Btw for me also graphic artefacts was seen only in Arma 2. Other games was running fine.

Could be heat problem.

As Dwarden wrote "cause they stress the GPU differently also ARMA 2 is for sure putting bigger stress on the VRAM part"

When i play ArmA2 or OA, my GPU are almost 100% load.

I did a test here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1695880&postcount=224

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?

The numbers don't matter Just set it to "Stability Test" and set it to fullscreen then leave it running and see if you see any graphical artifacts as it heats up. You can also monitor the temp. I don't know what the dangerzone for ATI cards is with temperature, so find that out. (for example Nvidia's is 105c, but I wouldnt let it get over 90c, that's too hot and probably means the card is jammed with dust.)

Be warned that if your card is dieing or overheating Furmark can kill it completely. But if it shows no oddities after running the Stability test until the temp stabilizes then your gfx cards hardware is fine and it is a software problem.

The numbers don't matter Just set it to "Stability Test" and set it to fullscreen then leave it running and see if you see any graphical artifacts as it heats up. You can also monitor the temp. I don't know what the dangerzone for ATI cards is with temperature, so find that out. (for example Nvidia's is 105c, but I wouldnt let it get over 90c, that's too hot and probably means the card is jammed with dust.)

Be warned that if your card is dieing or overheating Furmark can kill it completely. But if it shows no oddities after running the Stability test until the temp stabilizes then your gfx cards hardware is fine and it is a software problem.

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?

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?

If that's the case Id say its software.

Fur bench is stressing only OpenGL and only part of the GPU it's not capable reveal everything ...

You need run way more synthetic benchmarks to stubmle upon certain issue with GPU

and because heat doesn't matter i stick to the most likely faulty VRAM (Video memory)

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

those reds dots are a classic sign that you have activated FADE.

dont be so cheap and buy the real thing :mad:

Where i can buy the real DEMO? lol