Graphics going all hooey in BioShock Infinite

Hewn

So I've started up BioShock Infinite and all was going well until all kinds of... issues.

Here's the Columbia skyline.


Here's a building being sucked into another dimension.


Here's a less dramatic example, but you can still see the textures going to hell and cutting through the landscape.


I haven't encountered this in other games recently so I'm not certain what to think. The last time this happened on a machine of mine I needed a new graphics card. I'm using a GTX 460 from 2011, all the drivers are up to date, and I'm using the Nvidia Experience application to set the graphics. Doesn't seem to matter what settings I throw it on, those glitches happen, though.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

The Ender

My best guess would be some problem with the card's shaders. if that's the case, you'll need a new card.

Have you tried adjusting BioShock's own graphics settings?

Hewn

Yeah, I've tweaked everything and while I think it's fixed, it goes nuts eventually. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after awhile.

Played a few other games like Skyrim and Borderlands 2 without incident. But I just ran the EVGA OC scanner and that caused my system to lose image and lock up. That can't be good.

Luckily I believe this is under warranty, should my tests continue to come up empty.

TehSloth

You could try downclocking it a wee bit -- this can be done in the regular Nvidia control panel or EVGA has tools for it, something like Precision X. I had a similar issue a long time ago and taking it down just a little bit really helped prevent that artifacting and was negligible enough of a performance hit that I didn't feel like bothering with an RMA.

Musiqua

I had that same problem, and apparently it's due to a memory leak in the latest patch. It happens after an hour or so for nVidia cards. You can opt in to the old version using steam's beta opt-in system. That worked for me.

Hewn

Musiqua wrote: »

I had that same problem, and apparently it's due to a memory leak in the latest patch. It happens after an hour or so for nVidia cards. You can opt in to the old version using steam's beta opt-in system. That worked for me.

Thanks so much for mentioning this. I was about to RMA that damn thing, but I played Borderlands 2 tonight for ohhh... 5 hours straight? I got carried away. The point is, after 5 hours of that game on the highest settings nothing happened so I figured hey, maybe this graphics card is doing alright.

I'll try out the previous patch and see how that goes!

TehSloth wrote: »

You could try downclocking it a wee bit -- this can be done in the regular Nvidia control panel or EVGA has tools for it, something like Precision X. I had a similar issue a long time ago and taking it down just a little bit really helped prevent that artifacting and was negligible enough of a performance hit that I didn't feel like bothering with an RMA.

That's a great suggestion, too. The card is factory overclocked, so that's certainly a plausible thing to try. Thumbs up, fellas!

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

screen artifacts like that are usually the sign of a failing card. If clocking down solves the problem, it might be that you're just extending the life of the card a bit and it's performance will continue to degrade.

but if you're not having any issues in other games that would seem to suggest the memory leak thing is the cause

Hewn

I've just fired up BS Infinite for about an hour, on the old patch, and so far so good. No wonky performance! I'm hoping this is permanent, because I'm genuinely enjoying the hell out of this game. What a ride. Skyline sections are dazzling. Best game of the last few years? So far so good...

We'll see how things go, performance wise, after a few more hours. If it artifacts up again, I guess we'll know it's a card on the way out and I can start the RMA. Thanks guys, I really appreciate the help, Googling the topic only showed results for the different texture stutter/streaming problem, so I was desperate since I've been looking forward to this game for a long, long time and I finally had time during a lull in summer.

Hewn

For readers playing at home, they released Patch 5 for this game and it has, subsequently, flared up the issues for me again. I'm unable to play the game without those graphical errors. And since they said Patch 5 fixed all the issues in the recent patch, I could not retain the old "beta" patch and was forced to update. Sigh.

EDIT: In doing more searching, I've reverted to old Nvidia driver patch 314.22. 90 minutes in without any UNWANTED tears in the game. So at the very least this has provided some refuge. To anybody else experiencing this issue, hopefully this helps.