Texture issues, artefacts and some crashes + Video.

[marcd89]

Hi all,

This is actually the second time I have posted recently but I'm hoping to cover my whole issue in one sitting. I have been playing WatchDogs lately since I picked it up at bargain price. The game runs very smoothly for me at Ultra settings but dropping the vysnc and AA down a bit as usual.

I have started to get these weird glitches suddenly and for the life of me I can not figure out what is causing them. The video I have attached shows only one type of it, in this case a plant but it can extend to the whole screen in places when it does occur but the plant allowed me to test it and I recorded it.

Video : [video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubrYxWqqv6o&feature=youtu.be"][/video]

The weird thing here is that When I move the settings from Ultra to Medium it goes away but comes right back if I move it back to Ultra. I then checked and it is the LOD setting causing it. I can put everything to max and leave it at medium and it runs fine.

So my question is, what is it? My system specs are below.

CPU:Core I5-4570
Cooler: BeQuiet Pure Rock
Mem: 8GB 1600
HDD: 256GB Crucial Mx100 SSD (boot drive),
GPU: MSI 280x 3GB
PSU: Coolermaster 650W 90 Plus Gold
MoBo: MSI Z97-G43

My temps are great, after an hour or so of gaming the temps barely hit the mid 70s for my GPU and barely hit the 50/60s for the CPU. My fps is great and the game runs smoothly but this isn't the only game that it has occurred unfortunately as you can see here on my Company of Heroes screenshot.

http://i59.tinypic.com/avh6vo.jpg

I have tried lowering the OC on my MSi card as they come OC'd as standard but not certain how much to do it by I followed another users recommendation of doing it in small bits, example 20mhz.

So is my card on the way out even though this system(I built) is not even 3 months old? Is there any test programs that I can run that might give me an idea of what's wrong?

I thank you all for your help no matter how small.

 

[americanbrian]

It is probably a poor implementation or artifact of the AA or some other post-processing issue, either with the driver, or the games implementation. A bug in other words. I don't expect lowering clocks will do anything to fix it.

It is easy enough to check. Just drop the clock to say 800Mhz or so and it will probably still happen. other weird issues can arise if you drop clocks too low so I would stay above 700Mhz in general. Anyway, pretty confident that there is not much you can do about that specific problem.

 

[marcd89]

Thanks for the reply Americanbrian, I too hope that is what it is. The fact it can happen in other games can also be a cause of driver/game issue?

I'm trying my best to find out if my GPU is going off etc as it's still under warranty. Overall I have been happy with my budget build and I do understand I will be decreasing my settings compared to someone of a better build but when watching youtube videos, many people of lower builds had higher settings so naturally I went for them.

If the good people of Tomshardware believe I have nothing to worry about then I don't have a problem letting the issue go, still have loads of time left on warranty anyway.

 

[americanbrian]

If it happens in other games I would suspect there is something buggy from the driver then as it would manifest whenever a certain condition was met. I suppose the easiest solution would be to find the offending setting that triggers the condition.

Again The main changes going from high to ultra will be AA and maybe Anisotropic filtering. I suspect it could be the AA though just on a hunch. What types are available in watch dogs (FXAA, MSAA etc.) Is it possible to access the individual settings in a custom or advanced menu? I would set it to ultra and change one setting at a time to see which is the offender.

 

[Vahe Bro A]

yah this is not due to your graphics card this is due to the game. you should check if the game has any updates. the updates will help resolve this issue.

 

[marcd89]

Thanks guys, As the video shows the offending graphic setting is - Level of Detail. This is the only setting which causes this to happen.

I have the game through Uplay and I believe it keeps the game upto date automatically, though I will verify.

 

[americanbrian]

Yeah, well the best solution then will be to adjust LoD to high all by itself. and leave teh rest running ultra. It is a bit obscure what this actually means in terms of "flourishes"

Here is a comparison between high and ultra from Nvidia followed by their tweaking guide:

https://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs/watch-dogs-level-of-detail-comparison-1-lod-ultra-vs-lod-high.html

http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide#level-of-detail

Another good guide is here: http://segmentnext.com/2014/05/26/watch-dogs-tweaks-guide-to-improve-graphics-and-performance/


The biggest visual differences I can make out are the draw distances. I see a small change in the window decoration as well for instance.