8790 Artifacting - Page 8

Hello ...

The default bios setting for the ATI 9700 is 405MHz. I'm 100% sure they won't under clock your GPU.

-Mat

i just got back from sending my laptop to sager for RMA due to artifacting issues

attached are pictures of what i got in battlefield, swat 3, and then my desktop after both...

most of the major artifacting occurs <5 minutes after starting a game, and this is with an industrial air mover blowing into the intakes on the bottom.

matt


Swat 3 artifacting


BF1942 DC mod artifacting


my desktop after exiting the games

well....it appears my artifacting joins your club....
It did it playing HalfLife Source...Computers Temerature seemed withen normal parameters.

THis is what happened upon exit.
System Appears Fine now. This is only the second artifacting incident on this computer.



edit:Fixed Image Address to the correct one

here we go again

So, I have once again been plagued by this problem...

Originally I had RMA'd the computer around December because of the artifacting issue. When I got the computer back from Sager, I immediately had to RMA it AGAIN due to a faulty main fan.. After that the problems appeared to have gone away with the artifacting, but again I wasn't really playing too many games at the time.

Fast forward a few months later, im out of college now until late august and I have some free time for games.. I assumed the problem was magically fixed but boy was I wrong. This is REALLY starting to piss me off

I have to RMA it YET AGAIN for a stupid problem which most likely won't be fixed even after another motherboard replacement. Thank god I have 1 month left on my warranty, I really hope that I'll get lucky and somehow end up with a working 8790. I really do love this computer, and it's a shame that so many people are having this problem. Sager seems to think that this is a rare problem, but with so many people having problems time and time again obviously there is something very wrong with the design of the 8790 and the mobile 9700 graphics chip. Excuse me while I pay UPS some more money to ship this damn thing to California.

i'm not using an 8790 but i know a good deal about graphics cards... you guys are getting artifacting from your memory overheating from what your screenshots show... if you allow the artifacts to stay on your screen they WILL become permanent as you'll permanently damage the memory chips on the radeons.

if you don't care about games and just want to get rid of the artifacting in general windows applications like internet there's another thing you can do alongside putting your clocks much lower; right click on your desktop and go to properties, click on the settings tab, click advanced, click the troubleshooting tab and put your hardware accelerations on the lowest or second to lowest setting. unless your card is permanently gone this will get rid of the artifacts.

My 8790 is artifacting severely now. I bought mine last July so my warranty will soon run out. It first started when I tried the Battlefield 2 demo. I figured the video card couldn't handle the game, but when I tried playing UT2004 at the same settings that I could previously play the game at flawlessly, I still got the severe artifacting. When exiting the game, I would still have dead pixels on my desktop that could only be fixed by restarting.

If I RMA, the warranty will likely run out before or soon after I receive it back. Should I worry that the new mobo could end up being worse and then get stuck with it?

alright, heres an update:

i sent my 8790 back a few weeks ago (a LOT of few weeks) for RMA due to artifacting, i was in the same boat as Kokeeno in that my RMA was about to exipre. but sager was nice enough to replace the motherboard, and according to them, they TESTED the board before they shipped it out and i recieved it friday.

after *accidentally* playing swat 4 for 4 hours straight last night, the artifacting problem has not yet returned (thankfully) and the problem seems to be fixed, only problem now is that fans dont turn off when it cools down enough/standby....

not a big problem though, everything is working well. thanks all. RMA is prob your only solution to this, and you better do it QUICK before it expires.

matt

I think this suxs, My warranty just ran out on june 8th and I am getting the artifacting anytime I run a game in Linux. I was speculating it was from the video bios update that was done for windows. I guess it's time for a new laptop. I don't the manufacturer is at the top of my list right now.

Yep, I'm starting to get the artifacting in games, although 2D stuff is still fine. Bought mine in May 2004, so I guess the warranty is gone. I guess desktop replacement laptops just get too hot or something. Time to sell this and build myself a desktop, me thinks.

I tried the ATItool and it seemed to help. I really thought I was going to have to RMA this beast, but it looks like I might not. I underclocked by 90% (364.5/243). Initial factory settings were 410/270. Hope it can help some others out there. Also, in researching and trying to fix this problem, I put a ton of screenshots together from every setting on my computer I could find that might relate to artifacting (BIOS, Device Settings, DirectX, etc). There are also pics of the actual artifacting I was getting on the web page. If anyone that views the page sees any incorrect settings, PLEASE let me know.

CLICK HERE to see the web page and HERE is where I got ATI Tool.

Screenshot of my ATItool settings - NO MORE ARTIFACTS!!

Has anyone verified what memory is used in the 8790? Is it the EtronTech EM6AA320BI-3.3MS as shown in the service manual? If so, then there is something important to realize. Not even desktop Radeons clock EtronTech 3.3MS memory above 270 MHz. You must also consider the fact that the memory is most likely undervolted to 2.5v as opposed to 2.8v. We won't question the heat, we all know it must be suffering a bit. Considering these things, I have no idea why Clevo clocked the memory so high.

Assumming these problems do exist with the memory, its difficult to see why the core would need to be clocked lower than its already very low setting. But one possible reason is that the heat from the core migrates through the heat spreader to the memory chips.

An interesting test would be to run the "Find Max Mem" test from ATITool v0.24 with all the core clock combinations below. Be sure to set ATITool's artifact setting to detect the most artifacts (Lowest possible overclock). Run 30-60 min each with a full powered off cooldown between tests.

I do not think the lowest core speed in the list will produce the highest artifact free memory clock possible.

391.50 / 249.75
405.00 / 249.75
418.50 / 249.75
432.00 / 249.75
445.50 / 249.75
459.00 / 249.75
472.50 / 249.75
486.00 / 249.75
499.50 / 249.75

I hope someone can find the time to do this. Unfortunately I do not have the 8790, I've just taken quite an interest in this thread.

Ahhh... Artifacts

Well, my 8790 decided to artifact too. After the warranty expired. Fortunately, Sager decided to take my computer back anyways and fix it! So, when it comes back, I'll hopefully have a full working laptop to play with. I bought BF2, and I want to play it now!

I think inconel has posted the most intelligent and informative analysis in this thread thus far. Sending units back to the vendor is useless. The techs and engineers at the store should read inconels post and learn a thing or two (and maybe extend a helping hand to suffering owners). I think he's on the right track. If I have time I'll try to follow your suggestion, i, although I'm not very technically inclined. Clearly, the problem lies with the clock speeds in the GPU. Not knowing any better, I just randomly turned down my clock speeds with ATITool and have not seen an artifact since. My system freezes once in a while, which it never did before, but I'll take that over the artifacting crap that I was getting any day. I think people interested in this thread should focus on refining the clock speed combinations that produce the best tradeoff between underclocking and perfornace.

CLC

I remember the days of playing UT on my Sager 8880C with a Radeon 7500 Mobility AIW. It played just fine until I knew there was better out there. So do we really need the super-fast, highest overclocked possible computers (whether it be processor/video OC)? I don't think so. I still work on my desktop box all the time to do website design and internet surfing. It's a 750mhz with 384mb RAM. Runs without a hitch and the 21" monitor I have overcomes any shortfalls in may have in my mind.

To make a long story short, I underclocked my GPU using ATItool to the following. No artifacts or lockups since.

For Web Design, internet, word processing, etc: 86% (351/229.5)
For Photoshop, 3D gaming: 90% (364.5/243)

I just took things down by a percentage depending on what I am doing. Most of the time, I just need the 86% setting, so that is what loads at startup. Another thing is, I'm sure it saves on battery life a little too. Not that any of us are every off battery power with these beasts. Just some food for thought.

I still have some time to make up my mind though on RMA. Purchased 9/04, so we'll see how it goes. Good luck all on getting rid of artifacting. Hope this downclocking works just as good for you as it did for me.

A couple of examples are provided to substantiate my previous post. Please understand these tests were done on a modified 8890, but the results will help us understand the importance of the relationship between core and memory clocks. The first run is with a core clock of 459.00 MHz. The second is with a core clock of 499.50 MHz.

So we will expect to have less artifacts at a lower core speed of 459.00 MHz.

Well... Let's take a very close look at the results.


2005-07-05 13:36:48ATITool v0.24 started.
2005-07-05 13:36:48Detected GPU Chip: M10 (4E50), 4 Pipelines, 128 MB
2005-07-05 13:36:48Temperature monitoring: not supported
2005-07-05 13:38:17Clocks set to: 459.00 / 283.50
2005-07-05 13:39:37Find Max Memory started...
2005-07-05 13:39:40Artifacts detected after 00:01.09.20 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:40Clocks set to: 459.00 / 282.38
2005-07-05 13:39:41Artifacts detected after 00:00.96.26 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:41Clocks set to: 459.00 / 282.27
2005-07-05 13:39:42Artifacts detected after 00:00.96.21 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:42Clocks set to: 459.00 / 282.15
2005-07-05 13:39:46Artifacts detected after 00:04.00.90 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:46Clocks set to: 459.00 / 282.00
2005-07-05 13:39:51Artifacts detected after 00:05.01.26 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:51Clocks set to: 459.00 / 281.81
2005-07-05 13:39:52Artifacts detected after 00:00.95.3 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:52Clocks set to: 459.00 / 281.57
2005-07-05 13:39:54Artifacts detected after 00:01.96.26 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:54Clocks set to: 459.00 / 281.25
2005-07-05 13:39:55Artifacts detected after 00:00.96.58 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:39:55Clocks set to: 459.00 / 281.05
2005-07-05 13:40:00Artifacts detected after 00:05.04.75 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:00Clocks set to: 459.00 / 280.80
2005-07-05 13:40:04Artifacts detected after 00:04.04.10 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:04Clocks set to: 459.00 / 280.50
2005-07-05 13:40:05Artifacts detected after 00:00.96.125 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:05Clocks set to: 459.00 / 280.13
2005-07-05 13:40:07Artifacts detected after 00:01.96.9 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:07Clocks set to: 459.00 / 279.82
2005-07-05 13:40:08Artifacts detected after 00:00.95.8 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:08Clocks set to: 459.00 / 279.64
2005-07-05 13:40:09Artifacts detected after 00:00.96.7 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:09Clocks set to: 459.00 / 279.45
2005-07-05 13:40:10Artifacts detected after 00:00.95.137 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:10Clocks set to: 459.00 / 279.00
2005-07-05 13:40:13Artifacts detected after 00:02.98.15 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:13Clocks set to: 459.00 / 278.59
2005-07-05 13:40:18Artifacts detected after 00:04.01.44 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:18Clocks set to: 459.00 / 278.44
2005-07-05 13:40:19Artifacts detected after 00:00.95.27 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:19Clocks set to: 459.00 / 278.10
2005-07-05 13:40:21Artifacts detected after 00:01.98.13 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:21Clocks set to: 459.00 / 277.88
2005-07-05 13:40:35Artifacts detected after 00:14.20.24 pixels don't match.
2005-07-05 13:40:35Clocks set to: 459.00 / 277.71
2005-07-05 13:40:40Scan aborted. Total runtime: 61 seconds.Artifact-free: 5 seconds.Core: 459.00 MhzMemory: 277.71 Mhz


2005-07-05 13:41:55ATITool v0.24 started.
2005-07-05 13:41:55Detected GPU Chip: M10 (4E50), 4 Pipelines, 128 MB
2005-07-05 13:41:55Temperature monitoring: not supported
2005-07-05 13:42:15Clocks set to: 499.50 / 283.50
2005-07-05 13:42:48Find Max Memory started...
2005-07-05 13:42:52Clocks set to: 498.46 / 284.54
2005-07-05 13:42:55Clocks set to: 499.50 / 284.63
2005-07-05 13:42:58Clocks set to: 499.50 / 284.85
2005-07-05 13:43:01Clocks set to: 499.50 / 285.19
2005-07-05 13:43:04Clocks set to: 499.50 / 285.75
2005-07-05 13:43:08Clocks set to: 499.50 / 286.20
2005-07-05 13:43:11Clocks set to: 499.50 / 286.88
2005-07-05 13:43:14Clocks set to: 499.50 / 287.55
2005-07-05 13:43:17Clocks set to: 499.50 / 288.00
2005-07-05 13:43:49Clocks set to: 499.50 / 288.56
2005-07-05 13:43:50Scan aborted. Total runtime: 61 seconds.Artifact-free: 61 seconds.Core: 499.50 MhzMemory: 288.60 Mhz


Are the results what you would have expected? Probably not. Our memory is very upset when core speed is dropped to 459.00 MHz.

The tests were only performed for a duration of 60 seconds, but its more than enough time to prove our point. We need to understand that there are many factors to consider. We can not just clock down our memory speed and expect things to be better. Clock your memory too low and it will no longer be able to handle its timings and refresh rate set in the BIOS. From the above results, we see that lowering core clock speed causes similar problems.

Ok, right now my laptop is sitting with sager (finally got it sent out, and I believe my warrenty expires in a few days.. so if this doesn't work.. I seem to be screwed). My main issue was the video, tho I did send it back for other issues. Anyway. I mainly operate under Gentoo Linux. In fact, I haven't used windows since I got out of school in may. I rarely play games on it now due to the artifacting, but I even get it while doing email, or even in a terminal screen on the command line. I am using ATI's binary drivers. I also have it when I play some videos under mplayer using the opengl driver. My question is, does any one know how to underclock the video card in linux? I'll look into this more in a few days. I think I might do this when I get it back anyway, since I'm not much of a gamer, and when I play, I normally have the most powerful machine, so underclocking isn't a problem. Thanks for any replies

GPU Damaged?

My 8790 is 13 months old and I just started getting severe artifacting after it has been running awhile. I underclocked it to 310/230 and it seems to be working ok for now. Is my GPU damaged? Is underclocking just a band-aid fix? I have an extended warranty and can get it repaired if necessary. I would appreciate any advice on what to do.

Thanks, Mike

I am using the Omega drivers and have the latest bios.

what drivers are you running what Bios set.

I started another thread on a problem I've just noticed, but I suspect it is related to what is being reported here.

Update: This morning I booted up to logon and the external came on, although it flickers like crazy. Then after a few minutes it went blank. Recalling the heat issues people have mentioned here, I put my fans on max via Fn-F10 and... the external display came back almost immediately - it did not wait for temps to go down (I wasn't running MobileMeter at the time so I don't know what the temp was when it wasn't working). I am using it now, with flickering and resolution issues, e.g. some lines of type are blocky. As soon as I hit Fn-F10 to set the fans back to auto, the flickering immediately gets worse, again, apparently, unrelated to the actual temperature of the cpu/mobo but to the setting of the intake fans. I suspect that if I leave them on auto the external display will shut down again.

I have an early model 8790 purchased in March '04, upgraded to the WSXGA+. I've never had artifacting on the laptop LCD, but then again I don't tax it with the kinds of games mentioned here, mostly Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and Anarchy Online. I'm gonna mess around with the drivers a bit, but I just wanted to post my experience here to add to the knowledgebase.

sigh...

Of course after that long a$$ post I looked in the ATI control panel and found the setting responsible for the flickering:



It was checked for some reason, so I disabled it. I guess I'm not part of the club then, although I really feel for you guys. For what it's worth, after three visits to the Sager offices I feel that they are extremely helpful and accommodating, and that they will do and are doing whatever they can to satisfy their customers. They are a small company, and the techs there wear many hats it seems. As with any "customer service" interaction the customer has to do his share, i.e. provide accurate information, follow up... and be nice. They will treat you as well as you treat them. Sager still rules AFAIC.