GA-880GM-UD2H (rev 1.4) + GV-R577SL-1GD (HD5770)

[edwardecl]

I have been having issues with PC for a long while now... I keep getting graphics corruption on the Windows 7 (Aero) desktop completely at random.

Oddly enough doing any sort of stress test or gaming has no problem what so ever. I play games such as far cry 3 for 6 or more hours at once without a single crash or any corruption at all. Then I go back to the desktop and use a program such as MP3TAG or firefox for a few minutes and boom squares start appearing all over the screen.

Eventually is gets progressively worse until the driver recovery kicks in repeatedly until I power the computer off or switch the desktop to 2d mode. It has done with the pretty much every single ATI driver since 12.04 and probably earlier. Sometimes it does it constantly even after a reboot, sometimes it fine for days on end. At one point the issue went away for months and I thought it had fixed itself.

I've tried all the obvious things... changed the PSU with 3 different ones I had spare all over 500W... no difference, I've tried cleaning the mobo + ports, re applied thermal paste on the CPU. I have gone into the BIOS and changed the power saving settings, makes no difference. I've run memtest86 on the computer for 12+ hours on loop without issue. I've also used a ATI stream program to test the graphics ram on loop for about 17 hours, no issue, also used OCCT graphics ram tester for about an hour again no issues.

I've run furmark for 24 hours straight, no problem. I've tried increase/decreasing the GPU voltages... When I get the squares appearing I run MSI Kombuster on an OpenGL test and no corruption is there, same with DX9, however at random on DX10 or 11 there is corruption at random (about 70% of the time when you run the test). However if there is no corruption after the test loads then it is fine no matter how long you run it...

I have also booted up Ubuntu 12.10 with the fglrx (propriety ATI drivers) loaded and experienced no issues what so ever anywhere (again this is perhaps something OpenGL gets around like it does in Windows).

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this, if so how did you fix it...

[autotech]

Make sure drivers are up to date also you can use driver sweeper and clean all ati drivers then do a clean install. Turn off any accelators for graphics see what happens.

[edwardecl]

I've had this over a number on months, and tried various drivers and used a driver cleaner program to clean all realtek/ati drivers and have the most up to date motherboard drivers from the gigabyte site, and the stock firmware (F8) which there is no newer version. It made no difference.

And what are accelerators? If you mean the DirectX settings then I have no options to do anything, don't think there has been any options since dx10 in Vista.

I guess nobody else has had my specific problem with gigabyte/amd hardware... It would not bother me so much if the problem was identifiable, I am pretty good with computers but this one baffles me. It's totally random and I can't seem to reproduce the exact circumstances that cause it to fail. Like I said playing any sort of 3D games or benchmarks there is no problems at all it only ever happens on the Windows 7 Desktop and even then not all the time.

The graphics corruption itself does not look like the usual broken graphics card you get with the lines and crap put over the interface, a lot of the corruption you can drag a window over and it goes away. You get flashing squares on random parts of the screen flashing in time with the cursor. Sometimes an image on a webpage or anywhere else is drawn somewhere else random on the screen sometimes even when that image is no longer loaded. I will have to get a screenshot of it the next time it happens.

All temperatures seem fine, and voltages seem stable. The only thing that I have no idea about is the northbridge and ht-link. I assume there is a temp sensor in it... or will I have to try and take the heatsink off and and check if the heatsink compound has turned to cheese... but I would expect that to have some sort of temp sensor in it as it pretty much the only other chip with a heatsink attached.

And you would not expect any compatibility problems from a gigabyte motherboard with a gigabyte graphics card both using AMD chips from the same year.

[absic]

hi there,

Did you experience this problem when you first installed the hardware?

with this kind of issue, my experience has been to look in the most unlikely of places for the cause. Quite often it has been a conflict caused by a piece of software, such as I-Tunes or similar that I have added or updated.

The fact that it doesn't appear when running a Linux distro would point me towards the Windows environment as the cause and if faced with the same situation I would probably try a clean install of the OS on a spare drive to see if I could replicate the problem. The only thing is, that this takes time and a spare hard drive if you have one and you need to be methodical in your install of programs and testing to try and discover the cause. Of course, there is no guarantee that you will be able to replicate the problem by doing this, but hey, we're talking computers here and they always seem to have a mind of there own.

[edwardecl]

One of the reasons I installed Linux was to see if it happened there. Don't really look forward to reinstalling Windows... I knows it's not the hard drive as I've I copied my old hard drive to another on using DD on a Linux live CD. Windows claims to not have any issues... unless it's some virus that is not picked up by any virus scanner that is.

But I suppose a Windows update might have gone bad somehow...

[edwardecl]

I've just done a full reinstall of Windows 7 (Formatted boot and system partition)

Still the same once the ATI drivers are installed... I give up ^^.

[Ripshod]

I do remember driver recovery issues with some of the drivers, especially the first half of this year.

After a marathon session (2 days installing, uninstalling, and running Driver Sweeper).

I fold with my GPU too. With that I've also noticed between the drivers, some of them will only fold @ ~ 40%.

Driver cleaners do miss stuff too, such as a few system files, and registry settings, so going from a bad driver to a good one often makes no difference.

Latest drivers I've found stable on my system are the 12.10s downloaded from HIS, and yes I've tried the betas and the leaked 13.1/13.2 drivers - no go

[edwardecl]

I have now replaced the PSU with a much more powerful one just to be sure... I did previously test it with old used PSUs and I am still getting graphics artifacts randomly... but still games and 3d apps never crash or give me any problems... Also sometime when my computer sleeps or I turn it off I can't seem to switch it back on again unless I cut the power to the PSU, even restarts sometimes do this and changing bios settings sometimes does it as well (save and exit), what could cause that?

I also find that the colours squares and other arteiacts are a lot less likely when you turn the transparency option off for the aero theme. But i really don't understand what's failing as both graphics and system ram are fine and the cpu is obviously fine as I can run benchmarks on it continuously.

If it is hardware failure, then I'm not that impressed with gigabyte hardware (both my motherboard and graphics card are made by gigabyte).

Someone must know what's going on with the hardware to make it fail like this, don't really feel like replacing my whole computer.

[wheely31]

Hi, i found someone with same issue at least!!!

I have Asus MB but same Graphic Card and same random (colored) squares...

I got all you described and tested many things too (drivers, RAM, downclock, switch off Aero...). I'm sure it appeared with ATI drivers update in end 2011/2012. Even if it comes randomly i know how make it happen for almost sure: open 2 or 3 videos, games or animated web pages at same time and you get squares fireworks!!!! It's like this card couldn't do multitasking now

It's why i'm nearly sure there is problem with Flash player drivers too (2 flash web video and kaboom!!!!). I tried update them... disable hardware acceleration...

Sorry for my english, hope we will find

[edwardecl]

Hi there,

My problem is not with videos or flash, that stuff seems to work fine (well if the problem has not appeared yet then I will just get squares overlayed like it is on the desktop).

If I leave Windows 7 on default theme settings, and default performance settings run at a resolution of 1080p and run MP3tag and open a directory with more than 20 files in it, without fail it will cause graphics corruption every single time, which is odd as it's not exactly graphics intensive just displaying a Window.

Now if I disable Aero transparencies and turn some of the performance options off (animated buttons, fade-in menus) not sure which causes the problem here, it stops the problem 100%. Just turning transparency off does not fix the problem although it makes it less likely to happen but combined with the performance options it's 100% fine.

What kind of weirdness is that? I still have hardware acceleration and VSync so at least it's a workable compromise can't stand screen tearing.

As I understand it Windows 8 has these features removed from the OS so I would assume my system would not have problems with Windows 8 (not that I would try that) perhaps this is a windows bug Microsoft are sweeping under the carpet?

Been running my system like this for about a month now not one driver recovery or artifact, I have also run a few different games in that time that are fully 3D and have never had a problem with games at all (New Devil May Cry, Path of Exile, Port Royale 3 just a few) devil may cry crashed a few times due to a bug with the way it handles control pads but never a graphical glitch. I've also play many 1080p videos using DVXA with no problems.

What is this graphics card/mobo's issue with Windows 7 transparencies. I'm still convinced it's some sort of power saving feature on the graphics card but every time I try to alter it using the XML file to make the ram always at the max setting I get a BSOD or just a freeze instantly which also causes a file system check on the next reboot which is great. So I just give up on that one. And I don't really want to run my graphics card at it max clock rate 24/7 just to keep the ram clock stable so that's not an option either.

Also to note as a test I've been running folding@home 24/7 for the last few weeks on the GPU only and although it does not fix anything it has reported no problems but then again it does not seem to be using much of the GPU (20%) @ 600mhz or so says AMD CCC, but still no reported errors.

Think I will try a different branded ATI card in the future, my old 4850 card which is also Gigabyte also totally broke as well PC does not recognise it at all and boots with the onboard video instead, so not really a great track record here. I think I just have the worse luck when it comes to hardware, my old ASUS mobo had the worst ever Gigabit ethernet onboard adapter ever, constantly freezes windows and Linux and had to put in a PCI-E card to fix it, so they are not really on my buy list either.

And these are supposed to be the two better of the hardware makers... MSI next methinks see if their stuff is any good.