new Sapphire 6870 green sparkling artifacts

H

h41cyon

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 13, 2004
Messages
117
Just installed my new Sapphire 6870 and played some left for dead 2 and it ran flawlessly. I then booted up Battlefield Bad Company 2 and again I was seeing amazing framerates (compared to my old 8800GT)

But then, I started looking a little bit more closer to some darker areas within the game, those that were also texture, and there was small green flashes all over the place. Just single pixels on the monitor flashing on and off green. ... Crap. I might have just gotten a dud 6870... :(

I exited the game and was thinking maybe it was just Battlefield, but then I saw all those green sparkles in the menu for steam. Even opening up the startmenu in windows7 I saw the sparkles flashing in and out around the labels.

I've got it running furmark to see if maybe it needs a "burn in" period before the green sparkling goes away, but so far it's not helping.

Anyone else run into this? Does this sound like a bad card?

I was thinking there MIGHT be a chance i'm underpowering the card. I got a corsair vx450 (450W power supply) with the following system:

Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66Ghz) (65 W TDP)
Gigabyte P45 mobo
4 gigs of ram (2 sticks)
2 7200rpm harddrives
A dvd rom drive
aaand this Sapphire 6870

I'm thinking even under full load, I'm getting no where near the limits of my PSU.

So, return the card? (also, if u think I should, do you know if Newegg will let me get the Asus one instead?) Screw Sapphire :(...
 
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So, I rebooted my machine and noticed no sparkling on the window borders when windows loaded. Thinking the card might still be too "cool" to artifact, I've got furmark running again, and initially I see no green sparkles, I'm confused... I'm going to let it keep running and see if they come back...
 
Started up bad company 2 again and played for about 20 min and never saw any artifacts? ... Could it be gone???

Just started furmark again, and actually saw a few of the green sparkles, but not nearly as much....

Wait, as im typing this, i see green sparkles all around this window. Green sparkling is still there :(

Crap, RMA here we go..
 
Man that's too bad! Well at least you are covered for the RMA. The only thing that sucks is waiting for the replacement. Might want to keep that 8800GT as a backup for these situations.
 
If you have simply removed your old 8800GT and didn't clean off the drivers then that is a possible cause for your problems.

I went from an 8800GT to a 5870 a year a ago and had strange artifacting in some games and even using Firefox web browser. A driver clean out didn't help, in the end I did a complete clean install of Windows on a spare HD I had lying around. That did the trick and I have been using the 5870 flawlessly ever since.

If you have an old HD install a clean windows on it with the latest AMD catalyst drivers and see if it helps. This way you can be 100% certain if it is your OS or the card and you might save yourself having to RMA the card. Also you say you are nowhere near the limits of your PSU but it really depends on the make. A no brand cheap 600W PSU is still a POS if you are using a no brand PSU it might be the problem. Going from the 8800GT to my 5870 required a new PSU despite my old one being a 550W.
 
I can think of two things that you can try to see if it fixes it?

Check your video cable and if it's pretty standard then consider upgrading to a gold plated HDMI or HDMI to DVI adapter also with gold plating. Also a shorter cable can reduce latency to your screen which you should also consider and your screen itself might be putting out dud pixels which is another consideration I have come across before. I hope this has been help and Good Luck mate!!
 
Saw the same thing on mine, turned out to be a bad DP adapter. Unfortunately, the drivers are an absolute disaster with the VGA adapter (although it doesn't artifact)...
 
LCD Poster 2217 said:
I can think of two things that you can try to see if it fixes it?

Check your video cable and if it's pretty standard then consider upgrading to a gold plated HDMI or HDMI to DVI adapter also with gold plating. Also a shorter cable can reduce latency to your screen which you should also consider and your screen itself might be putting out dud pixels which is another consideration I have come across before. I hope this has been help and Good Luck mate!!
Click to expand...

gold plating doesn't really matter on a digital cable.
 
But definitely check the cable and plug, and try different plug and cable if possible, to rule it out.
 
I tried using the other dvi out and still same green flickering.

Already got an RMA going via Newegg. :sigh:
 
I'm getting a couple of these tomorrow, i'll let you know if I get the issue. Hope it's not brand related.
 
I don't think it's your Video Card itself...
I have a same problem i changed 5x 5970 cards and they all had green dots on my system, i changed them for different reasons....
I tried each and everyone in different system and they don't show green sparkling dots..

The dots are just random, you can never pinpoint when they will show up.. but im sure its something from my system either DVI cable, DVi port on the monitor, interference from something, PSU i did never bother pinpoint the source..
Cause as you see yourself its random and does not show up all the time..

But i can bet you that even the replacement card you will have the same sparkling green dots the problem lies somewhere else not in the card itself...
 
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