Used GPU Artifacting

[RosieDreams]

I just got this 3060 ti from Ebay on the 18th. I ran benchmarks, mem tests and everything checks out. I played through the entirety of Alan Wake 2 with no issues. But today as soon as I booted up my PC, the desktop had two flickering artifacts that only appears when hovering over certain selectable objects (like the Start Bars notification icon, or  menu options in my NX app. The Image with full screen desktop artifacting is my VM for work. But both cases of artifacting are happening simultaneously, so likely the same cause. I've since reinstalled my 1070 ti and haven't had the issues since. Is this guaranteed to be the 3060 ti's issue and I need to return it?

[Agall]

Are you using Displayport and if so, have you tried the other DP ports on the card to see if its same?

[Hinjima]

3 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

I just got this 3060 ti from Ebay on the 18th. I ran benchmarks, mem tests and everything checks out. I played through the entirety of Alan Wake 2 with no issues. But today as soon as I booted up my PC, the desktop had two flickering artifacts that only appears when hovering over certain selectable objects (like the Start Bars notification icon, or  menu options in my NX app. The Image with full screen desktop artifacting is my VM for work. But both cases of artifacting are happening simultaneously, so likely the same cause. I've since reinstalled my 1070 ti and haven't had the issues since. Is this guaranteed to be the 3060 ti's issue and I need to return it?

That looks like faulty VRAM.  Try to reinstall the 3060 and check again, might have been a loose cable or not seated correctly in the PCIE slot.

[jaslion]

Thats dead return it before the window is up

 

 

[RosieDreams]

12 minutes ago, Agall said:

Are you using Displayport and if so, have you tried the other DP ports on the card to see if its same?

I was using the one HDMI port the 3060 ti has for my main monitor and a VGA connected to my motherboard for the second monitor, as I don't currently have a Displayport cable. On my 1070 ti I was using an HDMi and a DVI to HDMI for the secondary. I thought maybe splitting the display output between the Motherboard and the GPU could've been the issue so I left the secondary monitor connected with VGA when reinstalling my 1070 ti to ensure it's the card and not because I split the output.

[RosieDreams]

12 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Thats dead return it before the window is up

 

 

That's kinda what I'm thinking. It doesn't feel worth the risk of troubleshooting and running out of return time.

[Agall]

13 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

I was using the one HDMI port the 3060 ti has for my main monitor and a VGA connected to my motherboard for the second monitor, as I don't currently have a Displayport cable. On my 1070 ti I was using an HDMi and a DVI to HDMI for the secondary. I thought maybe splitting the display output between the Motherboard and the GPU could've been the issue so I left the secondary monitor connected with VGA when reinstalling my 1070 ti to ensure it's the card and not because I split the output.

I've seen issues like this with a bad display connection, so why I ask. Always possible that one port is bad and/or incompatible with your adapter, since the 3060ti runs HDMI 2.1 versus 1070ti's HDMI 2.0. Always a possibility, if you're willing to test another adapter/cable. You can get some weird issues with adapting display output signals, this just feels like one of them in my opinion. 

 

If you have a TV, you could always validate the functionality of the HDMI with that.

[RosieDreams]

21 hours ago, Hinjima said:

That looks like faulty VRAM.  Try to reinstall the 3060 and check again, might have been a loose cable or not seated correctly in the PCIE slot.

I've now reinstalled the 3060 ti in my PC as the ebay seller wants proof it's his GPU that's the issue (ie. I didn't have GPUZ or Afterburner pulled up in the pictures to prove which GPU was in use). However now the artifacting isn't happening. When it happened yesterday, it was after two weeks of basic use and a lot of gaming. The issue is I don't have another 2 weeks too test. I'm not sure how to proceed since the artifacting didn't even happen when in a game and just on the desktop running basic apps. It seems incredibly unlikely to not be a dying GPU, right?

[RosieDreams]

22 hours ago, Agall said:

I've seen issues like this with a bad display connection, so why I ask. Always possible that one port is bad and/or incompatible with your adapter, since the 3060ti runs HDMI 2.1 versus 1070ti's HDMI 2.0. Always a possibility, if you're willing to test another adapter/cable. You can get some weird issues with adapting display output signals, this just feels like one of them in my opinion. 

 

If you have a TV, you could always validate the functionality of the HDMI with that.

After reinstalling the 3060 ti I cannot get the artifacting to come back. Before, it took two weeks of running basic programs and heavy gaming (Alan Wake 2 consistently maxed out the VRAM). Even then, when the artifacting happened it was on the desktop and Remote Desktop app, not in a heavy game. I was also running an undervolt/downclock at the time, both when I was playing Alan Wake 2 and when the artifacting was happening. I've now even overclocked the GPU Memory  a bit with Afterburner and ran Superposition and nothing is happening. I'm worried because I'm near the end of my return window and don't want to make the wrong call. I have had a few display issues before this GPU (main screen wouldn't wake from sleep unless I wiggled the HDMI on the Monitors end.) could it really be as simple as a bad cable or faulty monitor port?

[Agall]

16 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

After reinstalling the 3060 ti I cannot get the artifacting to come back. Before, it took two weeks of running basic programs and heavy gaming (Alan Wake 2 consistently maxed out the VRAM). Even then, when the artifacting happened it was on the desktop and Remote Desktop app, not in a heavy game. I was also running an undervolt/downclock at the time, both when I was playing Alan Wake 2 and when the artifacting was happening. I've now even overclocked the GPU Memory  a bit with Afterburner and ran Superposition and nothing is happening. I'm worried because I'm near the end of my return window and don't want to make the wrong call. I have had a few display issues before this GPU (main screen wouldn't wake from sleep unless I wiggled the HDMI on the Monitors end.) could it really be as simple as a bad cable or faulty monitor port?

I've seen enough faulty cables and ports to never rule it out. Its usually one of my first troubleshooting steps since its an easy variable elimination.

[RosieDreams]

7 minutes ago, Agall said:

I've seen enough faulty cables and ports to never rule it out. Its usually one of my first troubleshooting steps since its an easy variable elimination.

Not sure if this helps, but I did just remember that the artifacts wouldn't show on top of the mouse. That is to say, when I put my cursor over the artifacts, the mouse wouldn't distort and render just fine overtop of the artifact.

[Agall]

3 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

Not sure if this helps, but I did just remember that the artifacts wouldn't show on top of the mouse. That is to say, when I put my cursor over the artifacts, the mouse wouldn't distort and render just fine overtop of the artifact.

I don't think you'll be able to properly test this issue without a separate display and cable to verify that its neither of those. In that case, you're probably best off not gambling it and losing the return window, if it is a GPU issue. 

[RosieDreams]

17 minutes ago, Agall said:

I don't think you'll be able to properly test this issue without a separate display and cable to verify that its neither of those. In that case, you're probably best off not gambling it and losing the return window, if it is a GPU issue. 

I do have other monitors and cables, but I can't get it to artifact again. I wish it would just happen again so I could verify by swapping things around or I've heard if you screen capture while artifacting and the artifacts don't show up in the saved image, it's not the GPU. I've even removed the undervolt/downclock now and run Superposition since surely if it happened undervolted and on the the desktop before, it should happen running stock and stressing it. I may just have to send it back.

[Agall]

9 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

I do have other monitors and cables, but I can't get it to artifact again. I wish it would just happen again so I could verify by swapping things around or I've heard if you screen capture while artifacting and the artifacts don't show up in the saved image, it's not the GPU. I've even removed the undervolt/downclock now since surely if it happened undervolted and on the the desktop before, it should happen running stock. I may just have to send it back.

 

51 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

 I have had a few display issues before this GPU (main screen wouldn't wake from sleep unless I wiggled the HDMI on the Monitors end.) could it really be as simple as a bad cable or faulty monitor port?

It's possible your other dGPU is just less sensitive to this issue, which could be the root cause. If you're not already using DisplayPort and both ends have it, I'd highly recommend getting a cable.

[RosieDreams]

35 minutes ago, Agall said:

 

It's possible your other dGPU is just less sensitive to this issue, which could be the root cause. If you're not already using DisplayPort and both ends have it, I'd highly recommend getting a cable.

Okay, so it just happened again in on my Youtube Google Chrome tab, but as soon as I hit Win+Print Screen, it went away and wasn't captured?

[Agall]

1 minute ago, RosieDreams said:

Okay, so it just happened again in on my Youtube Google Chrome tab, but as soon as I hit Win+Print Screen, it went away and wasn't captured?

you can also try ctrl+shift+win+b to restart the GPU drivers the next time, but I still have a feeling its a cable/connection issue, more likely to be on the monitor end given the variables.

[RosieDreams]

19 minutes ago, Agall said:

you can also try ctrl+shift+win+b to restart the GPU drivers the next time, but I still have a feeling its a cable/connection issue, more likely to be on the monitor end given the variables.

I've gone ahead and swapped the cable out and changed to the second port on the monitor since things are happening again. We'll see what happens. I wish I had a display port cable here to test with, but no such luck.

[Agall]

4 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

I've gone ahead and swapped the cable out and changed to the second port on the monitor since things are happening again. We'll see what happens. I wish I had a display port cable here to test with, but no such luck.

Your local retailer should have displayport cables, I'd recommend using DP over HDMI any day for gaming. I notice latency issues with HDMI every time I use it, but this is on high refresh rate and high framerate setups.

[RosieDreams]

2 hours ago, Agall said:

Your local retailer should have displayport cables, I'd recommend using DP over HDMI any day for gaming. I notice latency issues with HDMI every time I use it, but this is on high refresh rate and high framerate setups.

I checked the back of my monitor and unfortunately I only have two HDMI ports and one VGA. I'm only playing at 60fps more often than not anyway though. I found someone on Reddit who had the same artifacting in Chrome that I just experienced and tried the fix they used (switching Chrome rendering from default to OpenGL) but that makes the screen artifact horribly on the secondary monitor (the one using my iGPU). Is it possible that extending my display from the dGPU on my main monitor to the iGPU on my secondary is causing artifacting?

[Agall]

1 hour ago, RosieDreams said:

I checked the back of my monitor and unfortunately I only have two HDMI ports and one VGA. I'm only playing at 60fps more often than not anyway though. I found someone on Reddit who had the same artifacting in Chrome that I just experienced and tried the fix they used (switching Chrome rendering from default to OpenGL) but that makes the screen artifact horribly on the secondary monitor (the one using my iGPU). Is it possible that extending my display from the dGPU on my main monitor to the iGPU on my secondary is causing artifacting?

There's a lot of variables to shotgun, until you've tested all of them, its hard to say without doing it myself. That involves taking any variable, liek the browser, cable, monitor, dGPU, etc, and testing another option.

[RosieDreams]

18 hours ago, Agall said:

There's a lot of variables to shotgun, until you've tested all of them, its hard to say without doing it myself. That involves taking any variable, liek the browser, cable, monitor, dGPU, etc, and testing another option.

So after some more extensive testing (benchmarking, stress testing and comparing my performance with others online. The 3060 ti seems like it's performing normally. I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. I also found out that the black rectangles on Chrome is a Chrome issue that others have had recently. So that at least wasn't part of the same issue. That still doesn't explain why the black and various colorful rectangles appeared on my Remote desktop as well as the two on my main desktop that appeared when hovering over various ui elements. I thought that if it was dying VRAM, running some games that max out my VRAM for extended periods would make the issue resurface. Do you know if dying VRAM typically artifacts and then stops? 

[Agall]

3 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

So after some more extensive testing (benchmarking, stress testing and comparing my performance with others online. The 3060 ti seems like it's performing normally. I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. I also found out that the black rectangles on Chrome is a Chrome issue that others have had recently. So that at least wasn't part of the same issue. That still doesn't explain why the black and various colorful rectangles appeared on my Remote desktop as well as the two on my main desktop that appeared when hovering over various ui elements. I thought that if it was dying VRAM, running some games that max out my VRAM for extended periods would make the issue resurface. Do you know if dying VRAM typically artifacts and then stops? 

VRAM artifacting is very specific, I've only personally seen it when testing VRAM overclocking over the years. Usually you'll see it first before it crashes from an unstable OC.

 

A way you could test this is in a software like MSI Afterburner, grossly underclock the VRAM and turn down the max TDP of the GPU and you should be able to test for that. If it stops occurring when doing so, then there may be credence to a VRAM module that isn't properly cooled, and is having thermal issues. If that still doesn't resolve the RDP artifacting issue, then its likely software related.

[RosieDreams]

28 minutes ago, Agall said:

VRAM artifacting is very specific, I've only personally seen it when testing VRAM overclocking over the years. Usually you'll see it first before it crashes from an unstable OC.

 

A way you could test this is in a software like MSI Afterburner, grossly underclock the VRAM and turn down the max TDP of the GPU and you should be able to test for that. If it stops occurring when doing so, then there may be credence to a VRAM module that isn't properly cooled, and is having thermal issues. If that still doesn't resolve the RDP artifacting issue, then its likely software related.

Some of my testing was running the GPU at stock settings in Superposition, and then I've also been testing with varying levels of undervolting/underclocking in Superposition in games. None of it so far has produced the artifacting. I'd be less worried if it was just in the RDP as that could be either the software glitching or maybe my the PC I'm remoting to having GPU issues. The two artifacts that were on my actual desktop are what really worried me. I have had other PC/OS issues before now, but never anything visual like that. 

[Agall]

19 minutes ago, RosieDreams said:

Some of my testing was running the GPU at stock settings in Superposition, and then I've also been testing with varying levels of undervolting/underclocking in Superposition in games. None of it so far has produced the artifacting. I'd be less worried if it was just in the RDP as that could be either the software glitching or maybe my the PC I'm remoting to having GPU issues. The two artifacts that were on my actual desktop are what really worried me. I have had other PC/OS issues before now, but never anything visual like that. 

Standard Windows RDP shouldn't be using the standard GPU driver and be using a special one that's added for RDP sessions. The local GPU might affect that, but I've never experienced this issue in an RDP session before. It's one of the limitations with standard Windows RDP compared to other types of RDP software which may let you use the local display outputs mirrored or control them. Windows RDP doesn't allow for that with the way it handles display outputs.

[RosieDreams]

5 minutes ago, Agall said:

Standard Windows RDP shouldn't be using the standard GPU driver and be using a special one that's added for RDP sessions. The local GPU might affect that, but I've never experienced this issue in an RDP session before. It's one of the limitations with standard Windows RDP compared to other types of RDP software which may let you use the local display outputs mirrored or control them. Windows RDP doesn't allow for that with the way it handles display outputs.

Ahhh, I had read that recently, but hadn't confirmed it. So it's really unlikely or impossible for the RDP issue I had to be the GPU? That would mean the only thing that is still suspect were the two artifacts on the desktop. And those haven't come back either. Plus, those were happening when interacting with start menu UI and I've been having an issue where my a couple of my Start Tray icons are blurry..so that could be from the app I use to Center/make transparent my Start bar? Or even a corrupt OS considering some of the other issues I've had before this GPU. Interesting. I may try reinstalling Windows and see what happens then.