Are these video artifacts or just seems in textures/geometry?

Buttcleft

Occasionally while playing a game, I'll see small flashes of white dots.

They are not so much "in" my screen as in flat corruption on the screen, as they are in the world geometry. As of late it has grown to a concern for me.

What has consoled me as of late, that it might just be texture/seeming issues of the game rather than issue with my video card is that they usually appear in the same vacinity and appear/disappear as I move, rather than being on the screen all the time.

I seek your help in determining if this is just issues with the texture/geometry or the engine itself of certain video games and thus harmless, or if this sounds like a much bigger (read:expensive) problem.

Dehumanized

What game(s)? Specific ones or every game?

Buttcleft

Dehumanized wrote: »

What game(s)? Specific ones or every game?

Well, I am inclined to say specific games, but that could be due to my obliviousness in games.

Right now, the game I am playing that has raised this thread, is Dragon Age:Origins.

General_Win

Maybe you have brain cancer.

General_Win

Check for heat, get a can of compressed air and blow the dust out of your GPU's heatsink and fans.

You could also try monitoring the heat while you're gaming and see if it fits in the heat range of your card.

You could try downloading this: Furmark. It stress tests your card and should show you the heat values. If you see distortion there, you got an expensive problem.

Buttcleft

General_Win wrote: »

Check for heat, get a can of compressed air and blow the dust out of your GPU's heatsink and fans.

You could also try monitoring the heat while you're gaming and see if it fits in the heat range of your card.

You could try downloading this: Furmark. It stress tests your card and should show you the heat values. If you see distortion there, you got an expensive problem.

Not heat related. I just did all that and more a couple weeks back, running cooler than ever

Tofystedeth

Do you mean like a line of white dots? Sometimes on texture seams, like the corner where two walls meet?

Buttcleft

Tofystedeth wrote: »

Do you mean like a line of white dots? Sometimes on texture seams, like the corner where two walls meet?

Well I cant really see the seams, I dont tend to notice it on sharp obvious corners and such.

Mostly on ground geometry.

but yeah, and not even a line, just a dot here and there that goes away if i move my perspective, but others pop up.

General_Win

Are you able to grab a screenshot? In either case, since you ruled out heat. You pretty much probably have a dying card. Ride it out, save some money.

Also, warranty?

TychoCelchuuu

Weeeeiiiird. Issues with your VRAM, maybe.

Buttcleft

was afraid to resize or clip, but that white dot is the kind i'm talking about..it was the only one i could catch

I had to stand in a very specific spot for that one to show up, if I moved so much as a hair in any direction that one disappeared and another one or two would appear.

theclam

If it stays constant until you move the camera, then it's probably just world geometry. Video card problems would not go away just by changing the camera.

Sarksus

It's likely imperfections in the geometry of the game world. Something I once had to do while testing a game was find imperfect seams in game geometry and note them down. What I found were much more obvious than what you have there but I think it's the same thing. The seams would appear and disappear depending on camera angle like what you're experiencing.

Fats

That does look normal. Actual VRAM artifacting is a lot more like static on a TV, usually it'll come and go and move around on its own.

Buttcleft

Fats wrote: »

That does look normal. Actual VRAM artifacting is a lot more like static on a TV, usually it'll come and go and move around on its own.

Yeah, I know, my last card went tits up like that.

Thanks for calming my paranoia, everyone