Flickering textures across three GPUs

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JoeODanger

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Jun 18, 2014
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4,510
Hi guys, I've been trying to solve this issue for months, and I'm at wit's end. Long story short, I've replaced a lot of stuff in my rig (some of which I wanted to upgrade anyhow) and am still getting something that looks a lot like z-fighting in almost all games I play.

Chunks of wall or floor will flicker if viewed at certain angles and it's always the same objects. Some textures like decals (burn marks/blood, etc) will also flicker and chunks of them will vanish. Light sources seem to make certain walls shimmer. Some texture details seem to take extremely long to load (texture 'pops-in' when first loading things, such as a new map or a character that just spawned). These definitely are not the usual GPU dying artifacts and they do not happen ever outside of newer/more demanding games.

My setup:

CPU- AMD FX 6350 @4.3 oc w/ Cooler Master Vortex
GPU- Formerly MSI HD7790 factory OC @2g, then XFX DD Edition R9 270x @2g, now MSI Twin Frozr GTX 760 (2gig version)
RAM- Corsair XMS 1600mhz 2x4g DDR3 (has been RMA'd)
PSU- Some cheap 750w Coolmax (I'm so sorry, never again), now Antec TruePower Classic 750w
Mobo- Formerly MSI 970A-G46, now Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0
Drive- Samsung 150g SSD, 840 PRO
Power strip and DVI cables for both my monitors have been replaced.

As you can see, the only two things that are still there are the SSD and the CPU. The CPU has passed 15 hours of Prime95 at this modest OC, and removing the OC to stock did not change the flickers. The newest GPU has passed 3DMark11 with no artifacts and OCCT with no errors. The new RAM has passed Memtest86 for 8 hours. For my SSD Samsung Magician shows no errors and my disk health being at 'Good'. The motherboard as been replaced (I was having issues with the MSI board's USB slots anyways, and I wanted a better OC board).

I thought this might be a software issue since this does not effect anything but more graphically demanding games (Heroes of the Storm and older games like Baldur's Gate do not have any issues). I removed all drivers with DDU and tried with several different driver versions, I reinstalled Windows 8.1 with the refresh option, and I've used Nvidia inspector to manually tweak AA, AO, AF, and LOD. Nothing helped.

I tried running the games at a lower resolution with lower settings on my smaller (1440x900) second monitor, no dice.

I've used MSI Afterburner to manually lower to clocks, but the flickering still occurs. Temps are good on both GPU and CPU (GPU sits at 57c under full load).

The only thing I show as abnormal is this GPU is a 2g card, but both Nvidia Inspector and CPU Z are showing it at 3004 MHz clock. Is this normal?

http://i.imgur.com/u1W8O0L.png

Does anyone have any idea at all what could be causing this? It's very depressing to have sunk so much money into a machine to play games decently to be haunted with these very distracting flickers no matter what I replace. It doesn't seem to matter if I go with Radeon or Nvidia.

Would taking my system to a professional at this point be my best shot before wasting even more green on it?

Sorry it's all from the same game, but I tend to not have more than 1-2 games installed at a time (since otherwise I would never beat anything). Rest assured that in Skyrim I get the flashing mountains and distant objects and they're in SMITE as well on ground decals.

Examples: http://youtu.be/3W0_Us9s4pY


Thank you so much anyone who took the time to read this! :)
 
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First of all make sure your SLI cable is firmly secured.

Secondly, SLI is a delicate technology at best. Try disabling SLI and running 1 GPU, does the problem persist? Furthermore, SLI drivers are rarely compatible with all games, and frequently result in strange rendering errors. You may wish to look for custom SLI drivers for specific games that purport better compatibility, though this is done at your own risk.

It's almost certainly an SLI issue and you might want to consult SLI compatibility documents for the specific games you're trying to run (check a search engine for SLI, make and model of GPU and game's name). You can rule out an SLI issue and perhaps diagnose one or the other GPU as faulty by trying each GPU individually for each of your games that demonstrates this error.
 
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Yeah, that's one of the things driving me nuts; when Googling this issue for days, everyone else that has it seems to be in SLI or Xfire. I am running just a single GTX 760 in a single PCI-E 16x slot, and the R9 270x was also in single card configuration.
 
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Occasionally Nvidia Control Panel will fail to recognise an SLI setup is present. You have two options.

1) Remove and reinstall Nvidia Control Panel. Do this by going to Control Panel > Add/Remove Hardware > Locate Nvidia Control Panel, Right-Click and select 'Uninstall'. Reboot your system, download appropriate Nvidia drivers for your card from www.nvidia.com and reinstall, then be sure to reboot again. Avoid downloading Drivers with the tag 'Beta' in their name, these are often buggy with SLI.

If that doesn't fix the problem...

2) Remove and reseat both of your Graphics Cards and reseat the SLI bridge. Ensure the cards are firmly and fully sat in their respective PCIe x16 slots and that the SLI bridge is securely making full contact with both cards' SLI connectors. Further, ensure that all PSU Power Connectors to both cards are securely attached and making full contact.

Exercise standard anti-static-discharge precautions by wearing an anti-static wrist strap at all times or, at the least, touching the metal of your computer case before touching the cards. Even better would be to touch an earthed household radiator before touching the cards (most household radiators are naturally earthed thanks to the internal copper piping).

Hopefully that will work.
 
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might be worth trying your GPU in the 2nd PCIe slot and see if the problem persists

Is the problem visible as soon as you start playing, or does it start off ok then start happening after a period of gameplay?

If it starts after a period of gameplay, that would normally indicate a heat problem, but you've already said the GPU doesn't appear to be getting hot

The ultimate test to see if the GPU is ok, is test it in another PC (if possible)

given everything you've already tried, it might be a case that something in windows is making the GPU drivers unhappy... so worst case you might be looking at a windows re-install
 
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Thanks for the responses!

As far as the PCI-E slot goes, this is a new motherboard. I was having the same issue with the last one, but replacing it didn't fix anything. You're completely correct about the heat; I can start up a game and walk up to where I saw a flashy square and it will be there from the get-go.

I really thought the same as you, that it was a Direct X/Windows issue. Perhaps using the refresh reinstall option isn't the same as just wiping my drive and reinstalling manually? I did use the "reset" option, which was supposed to wipe everything and reinstall Windows.

Worse comes to worse, maybe that wipe is what's needed and in the meantime I'll see about installing the card in a spare tower I can probably scrounge up.
 
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OK you've made your point, you hate SLI! Now try actually reading the OP.
 
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