Solved? BF3 Artifacting - GTX 560 - Mesh Quality

D

Ducay

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 24, 2004
Messages
336
Hey all, so over the past few days I've been getting some nasty artifacting in BF3 (as many people have been encountering). Odd thing is, that it only happens on large maps (Firestorm, etc); and only after a few rounds. It also doesn't happen in any other games, OCCT, or Furmark (even with Prime95 running at same time)

Running a GTX 560; with i5 2500k on Asus P8-Z68-V


Trial and error:

- 285.62 Drivers - artifacts
- 285.38 Drivers - artifacts
- With and without MSI afterburner installed - artifacts
- Overclocked - artifacts
- Stock clocks - artifacts

The only thing that gets it to go away is turning BF3's "Mesh Quality" to Medium or lower. Having it on high or ultra causes it to start artifacting. So hopefully this is a short term solution, I haven't had the artifacting return since dropping the mesh quality level, but I woudln't be surprised if it comes back. Anyone else have any input?

Here are some pictures of the issue, which, as mentioned, only starts after a few rounds and on the larger maps. (Obviously the draw distance and these maps has something to do with it). Oddly enough as well, if I use an "IR" scope in game, the artifacting goes away while using that scope.



 
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Scratch that solution. While going from ultra/high to medium would stop the artifacting, it would then later reoccur on medium. Then switching from medium to low would get rid of the artificating for a while as well. I'm starting to thinks its got something to do with memory perhaps.
 
which card do you have zotac?

Mine is overheating and needsmore air as it only happens after an hour or so, I think I fixed it with a duct we will see.
 
Have you tried running Heaven 2.5 with everything on max? I saw artifacting there quite obviously even though other tests were fine.
 
I thought this was a known bug in the game.

Green flashing textures after playing on the server for a while. Isn't this same thing happening on both AMD and nvidia?
 
could temporally running out of vram cause something like this? I know when I was trying to see how little vram I could get away with by using a lot of it up before starting a game my screen flickered and went wonky at times. once I freed that vram I was using for other stuff and restarted the game it would never mess up like that.

try leaving the settings the same and just using a really low res just to see.
 
My problem is similiar to yours. I would be able to run for about an hour and then see in-game visual anomalies similiar to what you screenshotted, exit the game and they would continue in a 2D environment causing system hang for 20-30 seconds at a time followed by more visual anomalies. Restarts were the only fix. Reducing mesh and shadow quality did not fix, but rolling my driver back to 280.26 did. Yea, I have to click through that nag when I start BF3, and I lose 3 fps, but whole system instability is more important to me than driver crashing and a small drop in frames. Of course, YMMV.
 
cannondale06 said:
could temporally running out of vram cause something like this? I know when I was trying to see how little vram I could get away with by using a lot of it up before starting a game my screen flickered and went wonky at times. once I freed that vram I was using for other stuff and restarted the game it would never mess up like that.

try leaving the settings the same and just using a really low res just to see.
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Considering the obvious texture implications of the much larger maps, it definitely could be this issue. The only problem is there are tons of people running 768MB cards and are fine on High/Ultra. I know of other identical cards (same batch even) that run perfectly with a quad-core Q6300. I'm planning on swapping that buddies card with mine on the weekend to confirm its not the card being faulty (which Im already 90% sure of).


tlc4tvm said:
which card do you have zotac?

Mine is overheating and needsmore air as it only happens after an hour or so, I think I fixed it with a duct we will see.
Click to expand...

Yes I have the a Zotac GTX 560; but I'm only hitting 60c under full load; Ive got a very well vented case, I don't think the card (or GPU itself) is getting too hot....could be an idea though.
 
Well, as of my previous post in this thread I thought I had it sorted, but the problem crept up again. After doing a bit more reading I had an interesting idea.

Several manufacturers released a BIOS update for their cards, and the primary 'fix' for these cards was an increase in voltage from 1.00 to 1.04. I am using a Galaxy 560ti 1GB and there is no such BIOS update available for me, not that it really matters because I still use Afterburner for a custom fan curve and OCing. So, I took my perfectly-stable-for-hours-using-Kombustor overclock profile of 875/[email protected] and gave it another bump up to 1.050. For the first time I was able to go through FIVE MAPS without a crash, but I did have a few hiccups. Gave it another bump to 1.062 and haven't even had a hiccup after two full hours.

Naturally, my card overclocks higher (currently testing at 950/2250@1037 Kombustor stable, WoW stable, Crysis 2 stable, blah blah EVERYTHING except BF3 stable) but this is certainly a weird issue. I had to up my fans a bit to compensate for the extra heat as well. 285.xx still unstable for me no matter what I do, but at least I can play the damn game now with 280.26.
 
Stock clocks of the GTX cards:

550Ti - 900
560OEM - 552
560 - 810
560TiOEM - 732
560Ti - 822
560Ti448 - ???
570 - 732
580 - 772
590 - 607

If yours is higher, it's OC from the factory, and you might need a manual V bump up or bump MHz down.
 
But if it was an GPU core OC or Vcore issue (ie one too high/too low), wouldn't the issue occur on pretty much all the maps since they all push GPU usage to ~100%?

I could see the OC on GPU memory being an issue that would cause such issues, since GPU memory doesn't get slaughtered on the smaller maps like it does on the large maps.
 
Ducay said:
But if it was an GPU core OC or Vcore issue (ie one too high/too low), wouldn't the issue occur on pretty much all the maps since they all push GPU usage to ~100%?

I could see the OC on GPU memory being an issue that would cause such issues, since GPU memory doesn't get slaughtered on the smaller maps like it does on the large maps.
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From a standpoint of electricity and circuits, I'm with you, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense why that would work, but apparently it was enough of an issue for some manufacturers to relase BIOS updates. When Nvidia releases the next driver update, of course I'm going to back the voltage down again since I don't like compensating driver issues with voltage.

My mem gets almost maxed no matter what map I play. I had to back down from from high/ultra to medium/high because when a big map came up I would run out of vram (I have the 1GB model). The memory overclck I have doesn't add any frames, but when I would sight down an IR scope I would get a moment of stutter, after the memory OC that went away. I'm lucky, I can go up to 2400 before seeing artifacts in Kombustor, but I figure if it doesn't increase performance why bother stressing it higher.
 
Ducay said:
But if it was an GPU core OC or Vcore issue (ie one too high/too low), wouldn't the issue occur on pretty much all the maps since they all push GPU usage to ~100%?

I could see the OC on GPU memory being an issue that would cause such issues, since GPU memory doesn't get slaughtered on the smaller maps like it does on the large maps.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I do see your point. Perhaps something non-obvious going on that nVidia has identified.

edit: two posts down quotes the post I was referring to.
 
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xorbe said:
Yeah, I do see your point. Perhaps something non-obvious going on that nVidia has identified.
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Thats assuming Nvidia has identified what is going on....

Its a weird issue that isn't happening to all 460/560 cards, but only some, and seems to be linked to i5/i7 chips as well (again, no hard and fast rule).

Havn't seen any official recognition of it from Nvidia or EA, which is a little disconcerting.
 
From this thread on the nVidia forums:


I want to give everyone a quick update on some of the bugs mentioned in this thread:

1) Battlefield 3 bugs - So far we have been able to reproduce the major Battlefield 3 issues and have marked this as must fix for the upcoming driver in November.

2) Video Playback issue in Windows Media Center/Movie Maker/Media Player - This issue has been fixed and will definitively be included in the next driver release in November

3) R280.xx or later Firefox/IE9 TDR issue - We have ordered some of the retail graphics cards that have been mentioned in these threads to resolve this issue. However it would be of great help to us if anyone who is facing this problem can send us their graphics card to diagnose internally at our Santa Clara office since the cards we have been tested so far do not seem to show the TDR issues end users are reporting in this forum. We can pay for shipping both ways and I can probably get some free game codes to offer you for your time. Please PM if you would be willing to do so. You must be in the USA however since international shipping can complicate things.



So, for those willing to part with their cards, let nVidia know, and you might be able to get some free games while helping solve the problem.
 
Wickedout2011 said:
From this thread on the nVidia forums:


So, for those willing to part with their cards, let nVidia know, and you might be able to get some free games while helping solve the problem.
Click to expand...

I would have jumped on this except that I thought it was my MSI Hawk Talon 460GTX and RMA'd it to them. If they return my exact card with no fault found I will not hesitate to send it to Nvidia's office in Santa Clara.
 
mhenley said:
I would have jumped on this except that I thought it was my MSI Hawk Talon 460GTX and RMA'd it to them. If they return my exact card with no fault found I will not hesitate to send it to Nvidia's office in Santa Clara.
Click to expand...

Well I just wanted everyone to know! I think I'll make a thread for the folks here so they can see what's going on. I just got my EVGA GTX 560 a few days ago.

And I'm sure nVidia has many users cards with them now. Give it a few days or more until we hear anything about a fix.
 
I couldn't find a "I have this problem" link, but there is a +1 next to the number of people reporting they're having that issue. I also like how they provide users hope by stating "The Battlefield team is monitoring this service."
 
I have a GTX 460. On Ultra settings I get like some triangular glitch that follows the cursor around. It's rainbow colored and only appears on certain spots depending where I'm pointing. If I drop to High it never appears. I don't know if it's the card/psu/ or the recently discovered glitchy 285 drivers (I'm getting the desktop crashes while using Firefox).

Could it be my PSU is going? (750 watt Coolermaster) I've only encountered something similar like this once before years ago and it was right before the PSU died.
 
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