Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

I've been putting up with this problem for a while now, as it's fairly inconsistent and only vaguely annoying, but I figured I ought to find out what's wrong before something inevitably explodes.

The bug seems to be Source-specific (at least, I've not noticed it in any other games), and can come and go from one day to the next. The only effect I can see that it has is that it makes lots of little holes appear and disappear on in-game models, so quickly that it almost looks like static. I've got a short video below to illustrate what I mean:



I've tried the obvious things like restarting my PC and updating graphics drivers, but none of them seem to have worked. I'm currently using an ATI Radeon HD 4870, with the display driver version 11.6.

Any ideas, Mr Internet?

Those are artifacts. Are you overclocking your GPU? Source is somewhat sensitive to GPU overclocking.

Dives wrote:Those are artifacts. Are you overclocking your GPU? Source is somewhat sensitive to GPU overclocking.

No, I'm not. Any ideas on how to fix it?

It can be caused by overheating of the GPU as well. Maybe install a temperature monitor (I like Real Temp) and see if your card is nearing its labeled maximum safe temperature when running source games.

If it's fine temperature wise, it can be a sign of a damaged or dying card. I hope that's not the case.

Hmm, the built-in temperature monitor in the ATI catalyst suite claims the card is generally only at 55-60°C, well within reasonable limits (Real Temp doesn't seem to be compatable for some reason).

Aye, overheating is my guess, too, though there's a chance that some of your GPU's RAM may be dead/dying. I had (nearly) this same thing happen to me with an old GeForce 4800, except that, instead of little black dots, bits of other textures got painted on the model. If there's enough time between now and when you bought the card to do a replacement or RMA, I'd suggest doing so.

Those be memory or PCI-E artifacts. Source is extremely sensitive to some types of instability. Check if your VGA is properly seated in the PCI-E slot, if it's not tilted down, if there's no dust and other dirty stuff on the exposed parts of the PCB. Also check your temps under load (no way it's 55-60°C when loaded). Here's how to do it:
1. download GPU-Z from techpowerup.com
2. run it, switch to second tab and check "Continue refreshing ..." box

3. game until you see weird stuff
4. exit game after a while and click on the little box with GPU temperature until it shows maximum

Everything under 90°C should be fine, but GPU temp so high MIGHT mean some other elements that don't have a temp sensor are heating up too much.

Also, if I had to guess, those don't look like "memory chip damaged" type artifacts. Those usually show up relative to screen area, not on 3D surfaces.

xoqolatl wrote:Those be memory or PCI-E artifacts. Source is extremely sensitive to some types of instability. Check if your VGA is properly seated in the PCI-E slot, if it's not tilted down, if there's no dust and other dirty stuff on the exposed parts of the PCB. Also check your temps under load (no way it's 55-60°C when loaded). Here's how to do it:
1. download GPU-Z from techpowerup.com
2. run it, switch to second tab and check "Continue refreshing ..." box

3. game until you see weird stuff
4. exit game after a while and click on the little box with GPU temperature until it shows maximum

Everything under 90°C should be fine, but GPU temp so high MIGHT mean some other elements that don't have a temp sensor are heating up too much.

Also, if I had to guess, those don't look like "memory chip damaged" type artifacts. Those usually show up relative to screen area, not on 3D surfaces.

It would be odd if it were overheating, as sometimes the problem starts as soon as I boot up and launch a game, and sometimes it doesn't show after hours of gaming. In any case, I played for a good amount of time, and the GPU reached just under 80°C at its peak.

The card is fairly old by this point, so I'm not too worried if it is a symptom of it beginning to die, it's just a minor annoyance.

A while back I remember getting errors and artefacts like this on my 8600GT. Shortly after, it melted and died.

Yeap, i had an old radeon x9800 or what ever. It did this in source, later got bands of bad pixels and then died.

Strange that the artifacts seem to be confined to just that one model, though.

dissonance wrote:Strange that the artifacts seem to be confined to just that one model, though.

I see artifacts on the rocket launcher too, and those two are all the models shown in the video.

Dives wrote:

dissonance wrote:Strange that the artifacts seem to be confined to just that one model, though.

I see artifacts on the rocket launcher too, and those two are all the models shown in the video.

Yeah, it happens on all models, sorry if I didn't make that explicit.

ad_hominem wrote:It would be odd if it were overheating, as sometimes the problem starts as soon as I boot up and launch a game, and sometimes it doesn't show after hours of gaming. In any case, I played for a good amount of time, and the GPU reached just under 80°C at its peak.

Well there's your problem.... my 7800GT died in the same way... it ended with lots of buggy and crappy glitches....
i could not fix it i ended up in buying a new gtx260..

As long as it's below ~100°C there's nothing to worry, the silicone melts around 145°C and that's apparently the weakest/first to be damaged part of a graphics card. Even if it's 100°C for months, it shouldn't deteriorate any faster than if it's 20°C, the main cause for deterioration is change in temperature, so from 20°C to 95°C × 1,000,000 times.

A wild guess would be that the artifacts are caused my damaged vram.