Pixelated Square in Game

Well in both cases I had to actually modify something for the game so I'm more inclined to think it was game specific and not drivers. GTA IV and Grid are both at least 6 years old and having 3GB of VRAM in 2008 would have been unheard of. Games probably just wet the bed at the concept of so much VRAM to work with and freaked out thinking I had almost none.
 
spirit said:
It could well be, but regardless the 14.4 drivers suck.
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The answers to my issues regarding that were also from 2012 when I searched for it, so I guess I'm answering my own question now in that it's not driver related.
 
Was playing WoW today and got the pixelated square again. I checked my drivers and they got changed back to 14.7. How does that even happen? I didn't touch anything and I don't remember them being asked to update.

[UT]_w5Y5oBY-ak[/UT]
 
Got it again today with 13.x drivers. I'm starting to think my card isn't entirely stable. I've done stress tests that don't bring it about but it will just happen randomly in game. I started to get a few pixels like what you see in WoW above when I was playing Skyrim. Later today it also just freaked out when playing WoW and was practically seizure inducing artifacts. Had to restart the game and then it was fine. I'm very mystified by all this.

I bumped my voltage up a bit and knocked the clocks down to reference levels instead of the GHz Editions speeds to see if it helps.
 
I know I keep bumping this but haven't really been getting any responses from anyone.

Happened again today, same thing. The little pixelated square that you can see in the WoW video. This time it was in CSGO. I reset the GPU back to stock clocks and bumped up the voltage when I had my last post. Since my last post, today was the first time I had the issue. I bumped up the voltage some more and ran Valley for a few minutes and my temperatures never broke 63, so I'm good in that department.

I'm really concerned my GPU is very slowly dying. I got it used from a miner (only in use for a few months though I think). And it looked brand new when I pulled it out. I've used it on the GHz Edition clock speeds and the default clock speeds and haven't really seen much difference in terms of my issue. I was also getting that issue seen in the GTA IV video a few times in WoW and other games but that seems to have either become less common or disappeared since I'm back on 13.X patch. I'm inclined to think that was a driver issue as a few others on Reddit mentioned the same problem.

Does anybody have any suggestions about what could be going on? Am I looking at a dying card or am I just having really crappy luck with drivers. Again, this issue is so spread out and impossible to recreate willingly. It just happens very occasionally. See the WoW video above to know what I'm talking about.
 
I'm assuming you have the latest drivers? I think AMD finally replaced 14.4 the other month.

Remove any kind of overclocks on the card and run it at stock for a while. It could be the card. The best way to tell would be to try out another AMD card in your system.

It might be the power supply. It's probably not in this case but it's always a possibility. Do you have another PSU you can try? (even if it's just a crappy one for temporary purposes).
 
spirit said:
I'm assuming you have the latest drivers? I think AMD finally replaced 14.4 the other month.

Remove any kind of overclocks on the card and run it at stock for a while. It could be the card. The best way to tell would be to try out another AMD card in your system.

It might be the power supply. It's probably not in this case but it's always a possibility. Do you have another PSU you can try? (even if it's just a crappy one for temporary purposes).
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I've been running it at stock clocks even with a bumped up voltage and it's still doing it. The problem is with any sort of testing the issue is so spaced out over weeks.
 
If Furmark can't? No other stress test will likely be able to do it either. It's tuff to nail this thru such a test as you say this happendes at various times. But you might get a result if you run Furmark as soon as this problem appears in a game.
 
Darren said:
I've been running it at stock clocks even with a bumped up voltage and it's still doing it. The problem is with any sort of testing the issue is so spaced out over weeks.
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I would suggest it is either the GPU itself or PSU then. Can you try another AMD card or PSU in your system?
 
spirit said:
I would suggest it is either the GPU itself or PSU then. Can you try another AMD card or PSU in your system?
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Not for an extended period of time over which the issue occurs. I'll just deal with it I guess. As long as it doesn't get worse it's really not too bad right now. I'm running with an even higher voltage bump now and I'm hoping that makes it go away.
 
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Did it again in WoW. I disabled VSync and it disappeared and then renabled and it stayed gone. This really sounds like a software issue in some form or another if something as simple as that makes it go away. The issue I was having before in my TF2 video and GTA IV video I think are the 14.x drivers being a problem because others on reddit mentioned they had that problem also with my card.

Edit: Also WoW will let me use my second monitor freely with the game open. Whenever I do this it locks the game to 30FPS and mutes it. That's totally normal. I did this when the square was present and it disappeared. Clicking on the game again and it came back.

I read something about corrupted VRAM being a possibility.

Also, turns out Afterburner is useless for downclocking because it's been running at GHz speed this whole time. Using CCC and knocked it down to stock clocks for real this time. Temps in FurMark were reaching about 72 degrees. Bit toasty.
 
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