Advice on 7970 issue

[danno81]

Hi All,

I have a problem on my 7970's I've recently noticed. I've had moments in Bioshock: Infinite when a square of the screen has rendered incorrectly, this remains until I restart the game. I thought it could be a bug with either the game, drivers or running in tri-fire. I tried updating to the newest catalyst drivers and only running a 1 card setup but it still happened.

Then I noticed that on grey screens I get blue pixels being rendered on and off in a sort of 'sparking' effect. (See video I just uploaded, best watched in 720p rather than the youtube default. This is just the background texture in the Steam application. It's the most obvious at the end of the video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXMywBzpcrc

The temps seem fine as well and the blue pixel effect happens when I'm on the desktop without any stress on the cards.

Has anyone else had this problem or is my card(s) screwed? Or possibly any troubleshooting advice? They're only about 6 months old as it is. The RMA process will be a pain I'm guessing if it's possibly a hardware issue.

Many thanks,

Dan

[HiVizMan]

Dan unless that kind of problem happens in other games, or during a stresstest or benchmark that really pushes the card then I would suggest it is not hardware but maybe driver or specific game code related. The latter you can check by visiting the BIoshock forums and see if other HD7970 users are reporting similar.

[danno81]

If it was just the one game I'd think that too. The problem is there are multiple pixel error on just the desktop (as seen in the video link in my original post). It's that problem that leads me to think it's a hardware issue. I was hoping someone was just going to say its a known problem or they had experience with it. I'd rather spot the problem early and get them replaced than wait until the go bang.

It still could just be a driver issue as you say though. But I would have thought its too blatant to have not be fixed.

[HiVizMan]

Video links I can not access sorry mate.

RMA the card.

[danno81]

OK, I tested all 3 7970 cards and there's only a problem with 1 (the one working as the display card). I'll RMA this one. I bought 2x 780 GTX's to SLI to replace the 3 7970's. It's a sideways move as I think the performance between both setups are probably like for like give or take. I missed the NVidia software suite and the NVidia 3D vision though so I'm happy with the change!

Now to RMA the broken card, and sell off the other 2 working ones. As soon as I get a replacement for the faulty one I'll sell that one off too, unless I can get a refund.