Flickering black pixels moving around screen

FoxEnigma

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Jun 16, 2011
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I was playing World of Warcraft on high graphics settings last night and out of nowhere on my screen there were flickering and moving little black pixels at different points and seemed to be moving around. It looked like dead pixels but now my computer is working fine, is this my graphics card failing while playing a game or just some sort of display driver glitch? I hope it's not the former because I just bought this card a few months ago and all I have been doing is using MSI afterburner around 50% when playing high graphics games.

Graphics Card: Diamond Radeon HD 6870

If you need other specs let me know
 
Solution

Yep. Classic pixelation. Usually the result of a heat or power problem. In your case, it could be an issue with the signal/data between the mobo and the GPU.

FoxEnigma

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Jun 16, 2011
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It's a custom Build that I made

Case is a CM 690 II

Only extra fan i have is on the side panel facing at the video card as intake all the other fans are stock on the case

Power supply is Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 700W ATX Power Supply

AMD Athlon Phenom 2 x4 processor

8 gigs of ram DDR3 Ripjaw'

Cooling for the CPU is a Cooler Master Hyper N520 Universal CPU Cooler

Asus Crosshair IV Formula Mobo

No I'm not overclocking and so far I'm only using 3 cores haven't unlocked the 3rd one

I wasn't using MSI Afterburner but when I turned it on the card was only at about 56 degrees celsius
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
Check msconfig to make sure you don't have a core locked out for some reason. When you have a x4 CPU, there is no need to unlock the 4th core on a compatible motherboard.

This should have no bearing on the pixelation you were seeing, but could be indicative of another problem elsewhere.

How old is the PSU?
 

FoxEnigma

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Jun 16, 2011
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Msconfig under advanced options shows 3 cores, also when I boot it says 3 cores activated.. and all of the parts for my computer are only a few months old (from when I first built the comp around june, except for the motherboard which was an open box one from microcenter)
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator

Yep. Classic pixelation. Usually the result of a heat or power problem. In your case, it could be an issue with the signal/data between the mobo and the GPU.
 
Solution

FoxEnigma

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Jun 16, 2011
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I'll reply back in a while after I try reseatin the GPU, I'd rather not reseat the heatsink b/c it's a pain to do by myself otherwise I'll hand it over to Microcenter techs over there since this is my first attempt at building a computer lol