Are These GPU Artefacts?

TheHogGamer

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Dec 7, 2013
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Hi, I recently got an MSI GTX 970 for Christmas and I decided to overclock it a little bit just a few days ago. I pushed the clock about 100 MHz higher and the memory around 190 MHz. But since I did that I have seen some weird graphical glitches appear but it only seems to be in Far Cry 4.

Here's a video showing you what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqAVsYwJkiI&feature=youtu.be

Here's the problem, I'm not sure whether these are in game graphic glitches, as I've not seen them in any other games, or if they are to do with the GPU. I don't think it was from overclocking because it is a very powerful card designed to be overclocked and this one wasn't that high.

Temperatures in games range from 64-71 degrees C.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :).
 
Looks like poorly designed textures to me. It could also be something that will be addressed in a future driver update. So no I do not think you are getting artifacts due to a faulty card. Usually they would be much more noticeable. You would be seeing weird colors, broken textures on a larger scale, colored lines, and maybe different colored dots/boxes on the screen. You also said that it is only happening in FC4, so that leads me to believe that it's game/driver related.

I don't think you have to worry. 😉
 
Turn off any overclocking and retest, I could not see clearly in the video what you are pointing as the glitches. Honestly, you could have chosen a better place/angle and screenshots can catch these things.
 


It was the small black flashy pixels at the bottom of the screen on the wall. All overclocking is off as well.
 

That looked like a game glitch. Probably a z-buffer culling glitch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-buffering

Basically, to save computation, the game engine puts objects into depth "bins" (e.g. 10-15 meters from you, 15-25 meters from you, 25-50 meters from you, etc - these numbers are just made up examples and would be terrible for an actual game). That way instead of having to compare the depth of every object to every other object (which would take a really long time), it can just compare bins to determine what objects are behind other objects, and throw away everything in the further bin (since it's presumably covered up by objects in the nearer bin).

But sometimes an object is put into the wrong bin, or parts of it are not in the same bin as other parts. And you can end up with glitches like in your video - where the further object gets drawn on top of the nearer object.

Edit: Apparently it's picked up a new informal name since I last worked with 3D graphics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting