The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition [page 221/301]

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harvardguy

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7. October 2012 @ 17:17

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Congrats Kevin, nice work!

Russ, that explosion photo on the last page was interesting - so you came within 1.5" of finding out how dangerous life can be, to quote Steve? If it dented the metal like that - what would have been the effect on your head - implantation of CD substrate? LOL

Originally posted by Sam:
plenty of people who don't post will read - be honest, how many times have you needed to google something and found the answer in a discussion thread just like this one, but not needed to sign up and post?

Amen to that. At least 50% of the info is buried in those threads, from my experience. Now that I think about it - correct me if I am wrong guys - google does not seem to bring up newegg reviews, which have been an incredible source of information for me. If not, I wonder why not?

Since everybody is now taking their monitors apart, meaning Sam with his brilliant fix of the 30" Dell, and Kevin just now bringing to life his first-ever laptop, here is a very interesting web page I came across yesterday researching on-screen sparkling.

He found the VSCAN controller, and adjusted the VSCAN voltage by turning the potentiometer 140 degrees counter-clockwise. You can read the short web page for more pictures and his adjusting procedure, which involved turning the set on and off as he changed the potentiometer. Kudos to him, and kudos to Sam and Kevin.

His voltage adjustment fix has held for 4 years since he first put up the web page. He has had almost 1/2 million hits on his site and he updated it last month, which was fortunate for me - it appeared #3 on the google search list.

Pretty impressive.

The reason I was searching, is that I just noticed some sparkling two nights ago, playing an old title in multiplayer mode.

I have never played the multiplayer version of COD World at War, the Treyarch title of a couple years ago. I got on it and I was amazed by the large maps, the overall very nice graphics, and I loved the WWII weapons. (You don't really have to level up very much to get a decent weapon. That's another reason I like the Vietnam map of BF:BC2, and also Counter Strike including the new Counter Strike Global Offensive which is only $14.99 on steam. You can play those games without all the levelling up you have to do on the others, to be competitive regarding weaponry.)

So as I was saying, I noticed some minor sparkling. That made me wonder if my graphics card was giving out. I have two in my rig, but I have crossfire disabled temporarily. The 7950 is so powerful, even at stock 800 clocks, I don't need it right now for my 2560x1600 gaming, since I finished Sleeping Dogs.

So I was doing some google research on sparkling, and there is much more on the subject in the newegg graphic card reviews than there is in google - you very quickly go back to 2002 on the 4th google lookup page. But the web page on top came up #3 on the search list.

But - thank god - my sparkling issue seems to have been only related to that title.

I had turned off my OSD (on screen display) after punkbuster kicked me out of one server two nights ago. Last night I jumped on BC2 for about 4 hours. I never turned on the OSD which involves starting MSI Afterburner, and then starting Rivatuner.

Last night I was thrilled to see that I had ZERO sparkling. Back to very beautiful graphics. I don't know what my frame rate was, but everything was smooth. From prior game play with the OSD, I always get fps of at least mid 40's in that game. I also didn't know what time it was, since I usually depend on the clock in the OSD, lol. Anyway, I finally quit a little after midnight, after about 4 hours of game play.

When I quit the game, I went smoothly back to the desktop. Back to desktop - no computer crash.

So what, you ask? What is remarkable about that? Well, for the last two months, I was never able to exit to the desktop without a reboot.

Here are the list of the very confusing symptoms, ONLY from that one title, BC2:

1. Each HIS IceQ 7950, individually, with crossfire disabled, stops reporting gpu load and gpu temp on the OSD within 10 minutes - I have never had that happen on any other title. The gpu load non-reporting extends to gpu-z logging. When I open the log in notepad, the load information disappears after about 10 minutes as I scan down that column.
2. In crossfire, within 10 minutes I have had BSODs and hangs and artifacts, which a month ago caused me to think I had ruined both cards right after expiration of the 30 day return on the second card. It caused me to take apart my crossfire, run only one card at a time, and ultimately to switch the cards so the least sensitive was on top, allowing me to disable crossfire and run the title for about 3 hours before a hang.
3. With crossfire disabled, one card allows only 10 minutes before a hang, the other allows up to 3 hours. The hang can only be solved through a reboot - task manager won't start.
4. But on either card, if I exit BEFORE the OSD stops reporting gpu temp and load, the exit is normal. In fact, before the OSD stops reporting gpu temp and load, I can alt-tab to desktop, and that also works as per normal. (To repeat, neither alt-tab nor simple exit the game can be done without reboot, once the OSD stops reporting gpu temp and load.)

I have posted about it - what I called the apparent driver incompatibility between the latest Catalyst and BF:BC2. I posted about it here, also over on the gaming thread, and I posted about it a few days ago in my second 5-egg newegg review of the HIS IceQ card and how it plays Sleeping Dogs, since that is the new free game that AMD is giving away with that card.

And I have been at least partially wrong on every post. Last night I learned that while Catalyst may be involved, without the OSD, it was smooth sailing. Longest play ever without a hang, and effortless exit to desktop.

So apparently it is an incompatibility with either MSI Afterburner, or Rivatuner, or Punkbuster, or all three. It never occurred to me to take the OSD out of the equation. You guys probably would have thought of that right away. That is the first thing I should have done, not the last.

LOL

Furthermore, the issue of minor on-screen sparkling, as evidenced by the disappearance of that symptom last night, seems to just be a title-related issue, to my vast relief.

I had thought that maybe I had a voltage regulation problem, like the guy in the pictures at the top, which made me wonder if I should buy the MSI Lightning 7970 card with add-on daughter board for voltage stability, price down to $400 - plus with that card I would also have to buy a $100 DP to dual dvi adapter = total investment $500. If the minor HIS sparkling is just World at War, that's an older title, and nothing newer has had that problem except on other brands, including Gigabyte, so I'll just ignore it.

So I learned last night: If you have a sudden problem, look at every variable, and for crisake turn off your OSD, plus try a different game. Duhhh. :\

Rich


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