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Artifacts on Ares2

Mepp0

Mepp0

Mepp0

Associate
Joined
17 May 2013
Posts
12
Location
Finland
Hello all, as most of you will notice im new here and this is my very firt post here and i am here now seeking your aid.
i have been having artifakts since day 1 (2 months) of owning this card but earlyer they only occoured for a few seks rarely but lately they seem to be all over the place almost all the time.
pic:
http://s1278.photobucket.com/user/Mepp0/media/PIXLELS_zps9760fb80.png.html?sort=3&o=0
i have searched the internets and also found quite a few helpfull tips and tricks from this forum, one of them beeing the following quide that has been produced by one of you http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335
and a thread in this forum with another ares2 owner with a moore or less completly different rig and encountering the exactly same issue (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18496457&page=2)
As im typing this im dowloading the drivers and applications thats in the amd oc guide and i will see if it will fix my problems. If it does i will reply here saying it worked and with what settings and hopefully this might help other persons encountering the same artifacts into mending their systems.
However im having a bad feeling about this as this morning when i booten my system it did not boot and a Q-Code 5d popped upp on the mobo digit numbers. I remedied this assuming it was a large D and ergo a memory issue--> opened the computer removed heatsink so i got to the ram and ensured that the combs where intakt, not scrathy and properly fastened.
In the process of doing this i noticed to my horror that i had applyed earlyer way too much thermal paste onto the heatsink/cpu and fixed this(now the cpu seems to iddle approx 7'C cooler then earlyer). However the computer did still not boot(black screen) so i used the go button on the mobo and it seemed to do the trick, got into bios loaded asus optimized settings and it booted properly after that.
However as im still having artifacts thats getting seemingly worse all the time its turning into a real problem. Assuming the amd oc guide wont solve my issue does anyone of you have any tips onto how i could possibly fix my system?
Any help will be deeply appriciated.
My system specs are as follows: Gpu:Ares2, Cpu:FX-8350, Ram:Corsair DDR3 XMS 4x4gig(part n:CMX8GX3M2A2000C9) psu: Corsair Hx 1000W, hdd (os installed on): Samsung 840 120gig. Mobo:Crosshair V Formula-Z.
driver versions are(well not for long as im following the guide mentioned above): Bios Version 1201 (date 12/14/2012), gpu:9.2.5.0. Cpu: 6.1.7600.16385 (driver date 21.6.2006)

Edit almost forgot, my Os is Windows7 home premium 64-bit
 
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This won't help much but this is starting to sound like an ongoing fault with the ARES II card.

I would be looking to RMA the card (you say you have had this since day 1), the link you provided for the other ARES II user also had this problem.
 
I'd be sending that back for an RMA straight away.

Have you tried changing clock speeds & memory frequencies? What speed do they both sit at in idle? Is it the same in game?
 
thank you both for your quick responses,
and as i said Any help is useful!
just before i was going to run the driver sweeper i realized that the other user in the thread i linked to already had done this a dozen of times so i decided to direct my attention for the time beeing into variables he had not given that much attention to, ergo the voltages the system is runing on ,ram, cpu and gpu. Going to tinker abit with these and if there wont be any results from this ill do the sweeper&oc procedure. For the time beeing i have Reduced the Gpu power target by 10% and no artifacting has appeared so far on to the desktop.
and Nuwidol the card is runing on idle @ Gpu Clocks changing from 501-600Mhz and under load @1120Mhz. Memory clock seems to be fixed @ 6600Mhz
 
ok so far my results seem alittle too amazin to be true but only time will tell so here goes: when i initially reduced the power target from 110% to 100% i saw a chane in that the artifacting only appeared when gpu was under load (ex playing bf3).
I have now further decreased the power target to 95% that resulted in the artifactin to become less evere, the originally black squares gruoping now seemd transparent, alittle brighter then the rest of the screen (no not darker brighter). i tryed to take a screen pick but it turned out blank. I have now further decreased the power target down to 91% (thats 19% less then asus given settings). An to my amazment i just managed to play an entire map of bf3 without the artifakts!
After this i cheked my gpu monitor and saw that the max gpu clock is now reduced to 1100mhz at peak and the gpu is still workin (actually at a moore stable load) at 99% load with only a average 2% fluktutation compared to the earlyer 5%.

Edit: And the gpu is now also working at a max temp of 55'C instead of 71'C it earlyer has been, and the current gpu voltage is 1257mV.
i have also removed my ram OC of 2000mhz and set it to 1000mhz and my cpu oc from 4,8Mhz to a bone stock state where it adjusts its core speed between 1,7-4,2 mhz according to load
 
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If you can, try downclocking the memory to 6000mhz to see if that reduces the problem. A stock 7970 has memory clocked at between 5500mhz & 6000mhz. Most games won't even give much of an increase with higher memory clocks.
 
thanks again for all replys, seems like the general fix for this issue at hand would be an rma,
if the card aint working properly by the coming thursday im going to go for that.

Update on findings, artifacts are back and theyr angry for trying to be dismissed :( , however every single time i change the power target the artifakt changes moore or less instantly afterwards (during the day i have encountered a whole lot of new variations).
Im now runing on 80% power target(cant go any lower so thats that ill try bumping it upp alitte) and artifakts are appearing on desktop, changed in bios cpu and ram to auto optimize themselfs for the time beeing as it didint seem to have any effekt on the workings of the artifakts. (now at ~4,4 and ~1880)
i got a feeling my gpu voltage is ridicculosly hig under load @ 1.44Volts for some reason, does anyone have any insight on what a 7970 actually should be able to work at when oc'd as this little puppy seems to go for that voltage automatickally disregarding power targets?
i also attempted to run the card with x-fire disabled resulting in the artifakting getting exactly halved, instead of a square it appeared as a triangle or a rectangel.
ill keep on tinkering in bios on gpu voltage settings as it seems to have an instant response onto the artifakting.
i will also try adjusting the memory.
 
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i got a feeling my gpu voltage is ridicculosly hig under load @ 1.44Volts for some reason, does anyone have any insight on what a 7970 actually should be able to work at when oc'd as this little puppy seems to go for that voltage automatickally disregarding power targets?
Click to expand...

Those volts are way too high, I thought the maximum you could adjust them to on the ARES II was 1.4v. Using around 1.25v should give very good performance.

I would stop now and RMA the card.
 
Thats exactly what i was experiencing on my MSI 7950

Random square patches/blocks, in game, on the desktop, browser, pretty much anywhere. Sometimes I'd have 2 "patches" sometimes it would move to a different monitor, I sent it back and it was confirmed as bust.

I'd tried alsorts, different drivers, rolling back to older ones, reinstalling windows, trying the card in a diff PCI-E slot, clearing the cmos...underclocking it! But randomly it always came back!
 
Kaapstad said:
Those volts are way too high, I thought the maximum you could adjust them to on the ARES II was 1.4v. Using around 1.25v should give very good performance.

I would stop now and RMA the card.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for all the replys

i got to admit that at the point a person with your experience says that you where not aware of them even geting that hig (over 1.4) im geting a strong feelting that RMA is the only way to go. Especially when im considering the fact i have Never (not even once seriousley) increased the volts, only tried holding them back during my experiments yesterday.

Update on situation: Problem still ongoing, noting i have tried has worked, took down memory a few hundred mhz and like wise the gpu clocks about 80. (differnet runs with different numbers).

however i did not take the memory down to the suggested 5500-6000(sorry for this but it started to be past midnight and i was feeling sad...) for the reason that i got this card is because it should be Able to run at those speeds its set at on stock and if it does not cope with settings similar to the asus given im feeling screwed so to speak. might as well have bought some standard ed's and gone for a tri -xfire (7970mayby?) with aftermarket watercooling perhaps?

However, i carried the whole station to my local reseller who i bought the ares2 from and asked them to have a look. They will confirm the gpu to be busted or magicaly mend it with gremlins and rainbows (im having real hopes for this).
Whatever the outcome is going to be within the next days ill keep this thread up to date regarding how they possible repaired it, what was causing the issue or how well the rma system works with Asus.
 
Today i got my computer back from the local dealer, and to my surprise they have managed to fix the ares2 artifakts!
Following is a "nutshell" version of what they did.
The cause of the artifakts were hig voltage,
and the hig voltage was mainly caused by the following:the mobo asus crosshair v fomula z and partially my OS win7 , (and possibly the Overclock of the Cpu).
What they did to fix it: Installed a new corsair force ssd with a fresh copy of W7(v8) booted from it, Uppdated the mobos bios from 12.01 to 14.13, and reset the cpu to stock @4.0 ghz.

one of the softwares they used was Passmark to figure out the problem
Just to clarify the impact on Voltage settings this has made:

Before gpu was runing around/between (depending on load) 1,355V +-0,1 and peaking @ 1,44 V, voltage was pretty unstable under load and changing rapidly.

After: Gpu peaks at ~1,26V runs a lot moore stable under load.

test results also states that the gpu was runing with ~5% moore performance with a new copy of W7 ?!

(ps: im stating the cpu as "possibly" due to the fact that they rested it in junction with the bios update and therefore might not be the culprit here)

so in other words if anyone else stumbles onto the same problem you might wanto consider to begin your repairs by uppdating your bios.

They ran passmark test with the new copy of win7 and my old (3months old) win7, during the day 8-17 they saw no artifakting in neither os systems but noticed that my copy of w7 gave 5% less 3d performance.
 
Mepp0 said:
Today i got my computer back from the local dealer, and to my surprise they have managed to fix the ares2 artifakts!
Following is a "nutshell" version of what they did.
The cause of the artifakts were hig voltage,
and the hig voltage was mainly caused by the following:the mobo asus crosshair v fomula z and partially my OS win7 , (and possibly the Overclock of the Cpu).
What they did to fix it: Installed a new corsair force ssd with a fresh copy of W7(v8) booted from it, Uppdated the mobos bios from 12.01 to 14.13, and reset the cpu to stock @4.0 ghz.

one of the softwares they used was Passmark to figure out the problem
Just to clarify the impact on Voltage settings this has made:

Before gpu was runing around/between (depending on load) 1,355V +-0,1 and peaking @ 1,44 V, voltage was pretty unstable under load and changing rapidly.

After: Gpu peaks at ~1,26V runs a lot moore stable under load.

test results also states that the gpu was runing with ~5% moore performance with a new copy of W7 ?!

(ps: im stating the cpu as "possibly" due to the fact that they rested it in junction with the bios update and therefore might not be the culprit here)

so in other words if anyone else stumbles onto the same problem you might wanto consider to begin your repairs by uppdating your bios.

They ran passmark test with the new copy of win7 and my old (3months old) win7, during the day 8-17 they saw no artifakting in neither os systems but noticed that my copy of w7 gave 5% less 3d performance.
Click to expand...

Kaapstad said:
Those volts are way too high, I thought the maximum you could adjust them to on the ARES II was 1.4v. Using around 1.25v should give very good performance.

I would stop now and RMA the card.
Click to expand...
 
just making a closing to this thread with the final results.
summary:
gave the ares2 back to my local dealer date 6.6 and they sent it the same day to asus (card shipped to germany).

the local dealer supplemented me with a gtx 550 during the waiting period.

made some calls during the waiting period, ect. to speed things up but always when i got into contact with a person from asus they referred me to the dealer who sold me the card so no help there from asus.

final outcome, got yesterday date 8.8 my new ares2, card seems to function flawlessly giving out approximately 20% more points then a titan&i7 setup on 3dmark firestorm extreme.
However, the liguid cooling cell had a scratch/damage going diagonally halfway across the entire cell where the black paint has been scratched off and the cooling cell structure is damaged/bended. however this has a very small impackt if any on the temp even under full load. Also somekind of plastick&glue concoction was stuck onto one of the cooling pipes and onto a whole side corner of the card itself alongside the pci bus side.
Also no amendments was made from asus for the time i waited for the repairs to be made. I did not either get any knowledge of what actually was the official cause of the defekt.

during this time i got into contact with a asus person who clearly knew little about computers but was extremely helpfull. and as the artifakts i was having appeared on my computer screen (also happens to be asus) they sent me a brand new screen within 5 workdays from the conversation and picked upp the "defekt" screen in exchange for the new one. i never did the trade tho even as the package delivery guy stood in front of me as i knew there was nothing faulty with the screen and it was the gpu that was the culprit.

result? Very mixed feelings, seems like asus has the capacity to make an extremely good customer experience regarding lcd&led screens but when it comes to computer hardware its pretty,
well
i dont think over 60 days is a reasonable waiting time for computer parts especially when it is regarding a higer end component.
Therefore i cannot reccomend getting asus gpus,
but i can recommend getting asus lcd&led screens
 
Asus, great products and poor customer service. And it's that poor customer service that prevents me from buying Asus products, if like you I lost my head and spent £1K on a premium video card I would expect customer services levels to match that premium price tag.

Glad you got it sorted, quite often when video cards artifacts the situation is pretty terminal (or at least that's how it's been for me in the past). Just remember Asus does give you a 3 year warranty with that component so if it plays up again down the road don't be afraid of sending back.
 
also thanks to everyone who helped me with the problem i had,
without you it would certainly have taken me several more days if not weeks to come to the conclusion to return the card.

and if anyone who's reading this has the same problem,
for the love of god ASK FOR A REFUND from your local seller and buy an similar card from them so they don't loose any sales and you don't have to wait 60 days for a solution.'
 
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