Need help diagnosing graphics problems

[Alex74]

Started having some graphics problems since I started playing the newly released Starcraft 2. Being aware of the problems people have had with overheating, I'm hoping that's not the issue here.

Games I've identified which have the problem are

Starcraft 2: Effect corruption
*image of bright lines on SC2 screen removed*
Effect is worse in real time, quite annoying but at least I can play the game.

Supreme Commander 2: Screen corruption

Looks like the vertices are distorted and splashed everywhere?

GRID: Total Screen corruption
Menu -

In game -

This is the worst case yet.

Crysis:
Now here's the interesting one.
Here's Crysis running in Directx 9 mode:

And now those same locations running in Directx 10:


Notice that Directx 10 renders perfectly, but Directx 9 causes total corruption! I get exactly the same result with Crysis: Warhead.


To try to verify this 'Directx 9 fails' problem, I tried running 3DMark 06 and Vantage (each using 9 and 10 respectively i believe). But to no avail, 3DMark 06 ran perfectly, as did Vantage.

I've also confirmed that these other games appear to work without faults:
Fuel
Fallout 3
Counterstrike Source
HL:Lost Coast.


All of this has been tested using catalyst 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, and i'm now very confused. So any help from the great gurus of the graphics card forum would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: Oh, system spec!

Core 2 Duo E6550
4GB RAM
HIS HD4670 1GB
Creative X-FI Xtreme Audio (i think)
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

 

[Alex74]

Hi, thanks for responding I actually ran the updater earlier, wonder why i didnt think of the full redist.

Didnt make a difference though I'm afraid

My fear is that having spent a reasonable amount of time idling in starcraft 2 menus, the card may have overheated and thus been damaged (as seems to have been the case with some other cards). Being that this isnt the most powerful card around, and it has a fair cooling system, i'm not entirely sure that that's the case.

Hopefully there's something else I've missed that can be tested before I give up, call it bricked and scream RMA

 

[Alex74]

So everything was fine before the starcraft install ?

Well i installed SC2, then the next day installed a patch for it and updated drivers to 10.7 cats at the same time (stupidly on reflection). It was after the patch/driver update that the problems started. So it seems either:

1. The card got fried the day before when i left it alone for a while
2. The patch caused a problem
3. The driver install was bad

That's why i've tried the different drivers from .5 to .7, but no help.

hmm check to see if it is overheating and what temps its running at and maybe try reinstalling the drivers maybe currupt.

Been reinstalling drivers all day been using driver sweeper as well. Just played a large game of SC2 with AI, card didnt go above 50C.

just so you know my AV found a virus on your first link to a picture

oh.. i imagine it's a false positive, but i'll remove the link for now and do a scan anyway thanks for letting me know.

 

[Alex74]

ahh fair enough. I'm afraid not, nobody local enough with a PCI-E desktop and all of the other rigs here are old-school AGP

The really strange thing is that it's so selective on the titles that have problems. Also only Starcraft 2 seems to have what i would guess are problems around the pixel shader, where all of the other games seem to have vertices corrupted. I can't see a common theme.

Also, just tested Portal and Fear 2 also work fine. So confused now

 

[Alex74]

dropped both GPU and Memory down to about 3/4 of normal in Overdrive and tried GRID, no difference

 

[Alex74]

I would try installing one of the problem games again.

Sorry, forgot to mention I reinstalled GRID (10GB download ) earlier to no avail.

Cheers for all the responses, any ideas for a solution or at least a known cause are appreciated

 

[Alex74]

DO you have a spare HDD so you could install another windows on there and try again from scratch.

if it works then you know there is a problem with your main OS if it don't then get someone to try it for you if it still does the same RMA it

hmm..didnt think to test the OS. I have a 32 bit windows 7 install on another partition I could test with. Will give it a go now

 

[Alex74]

Very interesting, looks like you were right, SC2, GRID and Crysis DX9 all work perfectly under the 32-bit install. I installed Cats 9.12 on here when i first loaded it up, saw no point in updating the drivers if i wasnt gaming here. They seem to be working rather well now though

I'm in two minds now whether to work through the later drivers as bigjimmyuk suggests or just leave it and format the other partition..

At the very least this hopefully means I dont have to worry about an RMA process and can solve the problems here and now

 

[Alex74]

In future, you should just use the "check integrity of the game cache" option, I think it checks the hashes of all the files and redownloads any that don't match.

fair enough, never really trusted that function, but i guess it's there for a reason. I suppose i wanted a 'from scratch' install there, for all the good it did

I would definately try updating the drivers on that partition and seeing if a particular driver set bricks the card again, If not then go ahead and do a reinstall of the os on the other partition and you should be good to go.

Few things can cause unstable os's such as a unstable overclock,dodgy driver,failing HDD,Sudden power off such as a power cut etc etc.

i would imagine the problem lies within the driver or the Direct X binaries. You could always also try to locate the cause of the problem. Uninstall all ati drivers, re-update direct x again (even tho you have already done it once)

Possiblity that the starcraft game also included a direct x runtime update that did not apply properly which caused it to fail in which event try restoring your computer to an earlier timeline to see what happens.


Good luck and keep us posted and what you decided to do and what happened

P:S did you find anything on that first picture after my anti virus found something?

Didnt find anything on the picture, so i think that was a false positive. Lost the link to the picture though so cant put it back up

I did as you suggested and installed Cats 10.4-10.7. Formed a little suite of programs to run:
- Crysis Directx 9 benchmark
- A Terran-heavy Starcraft 2 benchmark (seemed to be the race which caused the most graphical problems)
- A lap around the nurburgring in a DBR9 on GRID

All Cats checked out ok, no problems whatsoever. Definitely makes it the OS then


Having had time to think about it, I have an idea of what the problem might be: When I initially installed windows 7 64-bit, I had the problem that upon initially restarting to boot into the ending parts of the installation, the screen would go black. So I had to boot into a 'safe mode' installation and disable the display adapter, which would allow me to avoid the 'black screen of death' installation.

Since then, any time I uninstall drivers, the screen will go black when windows 7 64-bit switches to its own default graphics driver. This means that in order to restart, I had to 'guess' that the uninstallation was complete, then push the power button to shut the computer down. Then I have to boot up in safe mode to disable the adapter before I can actually go back into windows and install the new drivers.

Having uninstalled on 32-bit (where the default driver seems to work ), i think maybe i didnt wait long enough before shutting down, thus screwing up the driver uninstallation. Only problem is I ran driver sweeper after every uninstall, so that maybe casts doubt on that theory..

After I re-install 64-bit windows, I'll try to write a little program that automatically disables the adapter when the driver uninstalls.


Anyway, long winded post over, I'll get it all re-installed and post back when (if?) it's all working again

 

[Alex74]

Sorry for the lack of updates, i didnt have time to reinstall windows before yesterday. All sorted though, reinstalled windows 7 and the card's running perfectly in all programs which had touble before, now on 10.7 Cats .

Wouldnt have thought to test the OS, so many thanks to everyone who gave suggestions.

Still not entirely sure what the initial cause was, but I'm just glad it's working at this point