3dmar03 artifacts...

[KingNic]

Hey,

I'm getting artifacts in 3dmark03 in the water on game test 4, and the pixel shading in pixel shader 2. Is there any way to see if these artifacts will show up in other games? I tested out morrowind, since that has (I think) the same water shader, and there are no artifacts in it. The artifacts appear to be coming from the VPU core, rather than the memory. Downclocking the memory has no effect on them, while upping the core increases them.

If there's nothing to worry about with these artifacts, then I've succesfully gotton 6000 3dmarks with a 9800 pro, and I still havent reached its peak I don't think. Core is at 451, memory is at 378. CPU is a 2500+ 2048mhz, and memory is at 370mhz.

[MetalStorm]

Artifacting means there are errors being generated in the GPU, though this is commonly due to the memory - it just happens that the GPU renders the errors. The pixelshaders in morrowind are nothing compared to the ones used in 3dmark03, morrowind is a highly CPU intensive game so its likly that the graphics card isn't being pushed by the game at all, hence no artifacts. on more graphic stressing games, or benchmarks there still should be no artifacts, make sure your card is being propperly cooled - i.e make sure the contact with the heatsink is good and that you have good case cooling.

If its artifacting at stock RMA it as its faulty, otherwise reduce the overclock a bit, for it to be regarded as "stable" it shouldn't have any artifacts even after running at full load for a long time.

[KingNic]

Yeah it's OCd like crazy - and with a VGA silencer on it. Ach well, guess I aint gonna be going over 6000 3dmarks then :(

[oweneades]

If youre hitting 6000 points in 3dmark 03 with artifacts then if you could get it stable then it would be higher than 6000 as the gpu wouldn't have to redraw the artifacted pixels. 6000 is pretty good thou! Ok justread ur sig how you getting 6000 with a 9600 pro?!

[bleecher]

yeah, for your system you very, very, very! lucky to hit 6000 i woulda even said urs wouldnt even make 5000 especially at stock! i woulda said 4000 give or take a few

if u continue to get artifacts, aswell as what metalstorm mentioned above, you may have faulty pipelines on the card, but thats highly unlikly.

i wouldnt mind seeing ur 3Dmark03 score URL :)

[MetalStorm]

3dmark03 is a mostly GPU dependant benchmark, only test 1 benifits from a faster CPU but not by a lot.
Artifacts can slow down rendering as said, however, the increase in clockspeed usually out weighs this unless you are getting very heavy artifacting. One thing to note, artifacted pixels arn't redrawn, that is why they are artifacts, though one way to decrease small artifacts is to use Anti Aliasing as it samples the pixels more than once, however, this will reduce artifacts so long as the artifacts are being produced by the ram, as AA is mostly Core power.

[schumi_84]

Cos artifacts are caused by the core, it looks liket that your core clock speed is a bit high, and has nothing to do with the memory. If the memory is clocked too high then u get what is called 'sparkly' effects on the textures.

I reckon lowering your core speed will get of the artifacts, on my card 420 is the highest my core will go before i start to see artifacts.

[Fat Jez]

Download ATi Tool (http://atitool.ocfaq.com/). It is an overclocking tool for Radeons which checks for artifacts as it is overclocking and lowers the overclock back down until the artifacts stop (i.e. the overclock is stable). I used it to overclock my Radeon 9700 Pro to 385/360.

Best to run it twice, the first time run it for the memory, note the fastest overclock you get, reset it to defaults and do the same for the core. The shove both values back in and save the settings. It then sits in your systray and maintains the overclock. The advantage is that if you need to put the card into another machine where cooling is not so good, the card is reset back to defaults.

Cheers,
Stephen

[schumi_84]

ATiTool is the prgramme i use, very nice piece of S/W. The good thing is u can save all of your different clock speed configs, for when u want to O/C and when u don't.

Wouldnt use anything else.