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Looking for some help!

AndyMeps

AndyMeps

AndyMeps

Associate
Joined
13 Jul 2011
Posts
7
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Hey all! This is my first post on OcUK Forums and unfortunately its a "I need help!" topic. A few weeks ago I got my new PC, I spent more than I was originally going to but I assumed it would be worth it (below are my system specs).

The first day of using it went pretty-much perfectly, had a few graphics issues with Crysis 2, but updating to the new DX11 patch fixed those issues; from then on I've had multiple issues, textures in a range of games (WoW, Crysis, Crysis 2 and now Starcraft 2) occasionally flashing (turning pure white for a split second), strange - what I would assume are - mesh glitches (for lack of a better word) appearing on screen for very short lengths of time and games crashing out all-together (Crysis and Metro 2033 did this often).

I'm currently uploading a YouTube clip of Starcraft 2 showing the latter issue. I've upgraded and downgraded my drivers for my graphics card to no avail, the temperature of my entire system (CPU, GPU, RAM etc) does not go above 60 degrees under full load (according to Asus Thermal Radar and Gainward EXPERtool). I'm looking for advice, is this definitely a graphics problem? I'm assuming it is but I don't want to return it to OcUK and look a fool / waste time because its my MoBo / CPU / PSU... Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot the problem?

System Specs:

Intel i7 2600k (Sandy Bridge) @ Stock Speed
Asus P67 Sabertooth Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8Gb (2x4GB) DDR3 1866MHz
Gainward Phantom GTX 580 3GB
OCZ ModXStream 700W PSU
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD

Thanks in advance, Andy
 
Hello and welcome to the forum :)

I'm starting to think your gpu could be problematic, especially as your getting graphical issues during game play, but hopefully the video show give a better idea.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRS8JcdiJM

Its only 10 seconds but its uncompressed Fraps footage so it was nearly 800 Mb... anyway, have a look, its on the left hand side, several of these glitches. The issues I've had in every game have been varying, in SC2 and Crysis 2 its been issues such as the above, in World of Warcraft i've had REALLY strange issues in areas with lots of pretty graphics, as if the graphics card is struggling to render everything quickly enough, the FPS drops to 2 - 15 FPS during this, then after a few seconds the screen will just go black, then come back at 60FPS and run normally! :S

Edit: Thanks for the quick reply!

Edit 2: Things keep coming to me; the issues with WoW have only been in the past couple of days, no hardware / software changes for over a week. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason in the issues I'm having, the first issue I had with WoW seemed to be restricted to glow effects (weapon enchants / item glows / fire transparency turning to black squares), alt-tabbing out and in fixed that.
 
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That looks like the artefacting I used to get when I had a dual card setup and one of the cards overheated.

From what you've said you don't have any temperature issues but I'd say it still looks very much like a problem with the graphics card. Faulty VRAM maybe...
 
BillTheButcher said:
That looks like the artefacting I used to get when I had a dual card setup and one of the cards overheated.

From what you've said you don't have any temperature issues but I'd say it still looks very much like a problem with the graphics card. Faulty VRAM maybe...
Click to expand...

I've looked at the temps whenever anything has crashed out or shown errors and the GPU temp through Gainward's tool shows it at ~50 degrees.

My old PC is old, I don't think it'll be able to run anything with the graphics card to test the card outside of the rest of my new PC. Might ask a friend if I can hijack his rig to test it in. Percentage wise, what are the chances (in your opinion) this is a hardware / graphics card issue? Once again I appreciate your input, the symptoms until recently have been to vague to put my finger on (the first few days games would just crash out, with no error message returned, just a crash to desktop and a "xxx has stopped responding" message. : /
 
Have you tried any benchmark tests and check comparisons. Something like this, Furmark or Crysis2 benchmark, may help. Also, what was the last thing installed prior to your graphics problems starting.
 
Idleman said:
Have you tried any benchmark tests and check comparisons. Something like this, Furmark or Crysis2 benchmark, may help. Also, what was the last thing installed prior to your graphics problems starting.
Click to expand...

Downloading FurMark now, will get back on that; don't think I had any changes, hardware or software between my first issue with Crysis 2, "fixing" it and new errors appearing, maybe I was just fortunate to not have any issues on my 2nd day of using the PC... They do seem to be getting more frequent the longer my PC is on, and generally over the past few weeks.
 
Never used FurMark before, any recommended settings?

Just did what was ticked on first start up:

Edit: *Snip* don't think this image is needed any more.
 
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Heaven and 3D Mark 11 are normally good indicators for GPUs, but looking at the vid, and from what you have described in your post, i would say that your GPU is not working 100% properly :(
 
Alright then, I'll pester a friend to let me have a trial run of it on his PC, if it shows similar symptoms, its case closed and I'll get in contact with OcUK about returning it. Thank you for the help. I'll update this when I get somewhere :)
 
If it's a hardware issue I'd expect to see the same sort of flickering in FurMark/OCCT/3DMark or any other benchmark that uses the GPU.

Just try FurMark on the default settings and see what happens.
 
BillTheButcher said:
If it's a hardware issue I'd expect to see the same sort of flickering in FurMark/OCCT/3DMark or any other benchmark that uses the GPU.

Just try FurMark on the default settings and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Just ran FurMark on the benchmark preset: 720 (as I don't have a 1920x1080 monitor); got to ~60% complete, running at ~62FPS, temp hit around 80 degrees and my PC crashed to a blank screen with my fraps FPS indicator still showing in the corner, waited a couple of minutes then held the power button to shut down...
 
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