[DeZiekeNon]

Hi,

I have a 2 monitors setup. My left screen is sort of blurry at the moment. It looks like all the pixels have shifted a little. I wanted to post a screenshot. But the screenshot does not display the blurryness, but is crystal clear as it should be. I inculded a photo.
Also sometimes when I boot windows my left screen is very heavily distorted. All I can see are horizontal lines (second photo). The lines have sort of the same color as my background, but there are no clear shapes. After restarting my PC the problem is always solved. I recently bought my graphics card second hand. I'm afraid there's something wrong with it. However, I can run Furmark and games like Battlefield 4 without any problems.

The problem is not related to the output of the videocard. Because when I switch from Extended destkop to one screen, the problem is displayed on my other monitor.

PC specs:
Motherboard: Asus M4a79T Deluxe (AM3, 790FX)
Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition (3,4Ghz) (quad-core)
Memory: GeIl 2x2Gb 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel kit (4Gb total)
Graphics Card: XFX Radeon HD 7970 DD Black Edition 3gb
Harddisk: Western Digital Velociraptor 150Gb (10.000RPM SATAII) + Western Digital Raptor 150Gb (10.000RPM SATA) + Samsung 1TB 7200RPM
DVD Drive: Aopen DVD+RWDVD-RW
Power: Zalman ZM850-HP (850watt)
Casefans: 4x 14cm (sharkoon), 2x 12cm (coolermaster) en 1x 10cm (zalman) silent casefans
CPU fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 PLus
Case: Coolermaster CM690




Here another screenshot of a small flickering square with smaller square artifacts while watching a Youtube video. This is on my right monitor (the other one)



What might be the problem here? Im suspecting this is a hardware issue, but hoping it is a software issue.

Edited by DeZiekeNon, 16 December 2013 - 04:03 PM.

[Advertisements]

Hello DeZiekeNon

The problem is not related to the output of the videocard. Because when I switch from Extended destkop to one screen, the problem is displayed on my other monitor.

If I am understanding you correctly in that when you have two screens in use it is the left screen that shows the distortion but when you revert to the one screen which happens to be the right screen the same distortion is present there also, if yes then you cannot rule out the GPU as that is what is providing the video to both screens.

Have you tried the video card in one of the other PCI-E X16 slots.

[phillpower2]

Hello DeZiekeNon

The problem is not related to the output of the videocard. Because when I switch from Extended destkop to one screen, the problem is displayed on my other monitor.

If I am understanding you correctly in that when you have two screens in use it is the left screen that shows the distortion but when you revert to the one screen which happens to be the right screen the same distortion is present there also, if yes then you cannot rule out the GPU as that is what is providing the video to both screens.

Have you tried the video card in one of the other PCI-E X16 slots.

[DeZiekeNon]

You understood correctly. However what I meant is not to rule out the GPU, but the specific HDMI port. I have not tried another PCI slot. Will try that soon.

[phillpower2]

Thanks that was what I thought but wanted to be certain

I am hoping that it may only be a dirty contact but as the card was not new is there a chance that it was sold on by the previous owner because it had this problem.

[DeZiekeNon]

I could not test the card in another PCIe port, because the card is so big that SATA ports and the cables on my MB are in the way. However, I ran a vram test for 4 hours and got 0 errors. This suggests that the graphics card is not the problem. Could it be my MB?

Edited by DeZiekeNon, 13 January 2014 - 03:24 PM.

[Rex_Kramer707]

I don't think this is a problem with your monitor or cables. I don't think it would be a software issue. I assume you have updated drivers and there is no advertised compatibility issues between your graphics card and MB. Seems likely to be an issue with your card, regardless of what your testing shows. Honestly I have had hardware issues in the past and I don't think any test I ever ran actually helped me diagnose it.

[DeZiekeNon]

So you're saying the only way to diagnose it is to replace it by another card?

[Rex_Kramer707]

That is what I would do. Or put the card on another motherboard. Or somehow get the card onto another slot. You really need to make some hardware changes in order to move forward with solving this.

[phillpower2]

Stress test the present video card with the Valley Benchmark tool, details available here

[DeZiekeNon]

I ran a benchmark test on UltraHD, 1920*1080. I watched the whole thing and observed no artifacts/glitching.

Results:

Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0

FPS:
39.0
Score:
1632
Min FPS:
15.8
Max FPS:
74.8
System

Platform:
Windows 8 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:
AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Processor (3411MHz) x4
GPU model:
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 13.250.18.0 (3072MB) x1
Settings

Render:
Direct3D11
Mode:
1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Preset
Extreme HD

[phillpower2]

Did you run the test while the card was connected to the two displays, if not can you please do so and see if the issue reoccurs.

[DeZiekeNon]

Yes the other display was connected (always is). However I only ran the test on one screen. I could run the Valley test on two screens if im not mistaken.

[phillpower2]

Yes run it on the two screens please.

[DeZiekeNon]

I can't get it to run on two screens. Probably because they don't have the same resolution (1680*1050 and 1920*1080). It does run 2 instances with the left and right part of the scene, but one the same screen. So one is visible and the other one in the background.

Edited by DeZiekeNon, 19 January 2014 - 03:38 PM.

[DeZiekeNon]

I've replaced my XFX HD7970 with a XFX HD6850 to see if the problems will stay away now.