Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/25 10:53Hi, I installed my new Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 and 1GB GDDR5 a few days back. I installed the Catalyst 8.11 drivers and notice red flickering pixels while in 2D and 3D mode. And it's not always. My system itself is water cooled, the GPU is on stock air cooling. I have three 120mm fans inside of the case and the water does not exceed a temperature of 28°C, so I guess as the water keeps cool the temp in the case can't be much higher.
The red flickering pixels are only where black pixels should be! I noticed the flickering while browsing webpages, with FireFox and Internet Explorer and on the loading screen of Far Cry 2 but did not notice it anywhere else yet! Any ideas what I can do to get rid of those pixels? I have a beQuiet 850W power supply so power should not be a problem either!
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Mavke
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/25 13:24Oh okay, so you go something like that as well. Well I have seen this as well on the Radeon HD 4850 but not so with red flickering pixels but more just flickering pixels as a line over the screen. So meaning like a line of 1cm and on that the pixel do ficker depending on the colors. But it is not always though it is strange and well I haven't been able to find out why this is happening. Which operating system do you use?
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lumo
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/26 07:10I am actually using Vista Ultimate 64-bit and no, its not on a line. Last time it was on the lower half of the display, before that it was only over one part of a website. Did you see this specific problem only on Sapphire hardware or also on other Radeon's?
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Mavke
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/26 08:16Thanks for the information, as I have experienced this in Windows XP but not on my Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit version. And no it is not a Sapphire card. In your case I would also contact the Sapphire support team, cause if it is half the screen that is even worse than what I saw so far. There might be something wrong with your card's hardware itself.
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mono
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/27 01:57Yeah, I'm getting the same flickering, sometimes red sometimes dark yellow/orange. My guess is that its related to the memory, because when I downclock the frequency to, say 3600MHz stock, the flickering goes away. Currently I have my Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB reference flashed with Powecolor PCS 1GB BIOS running at 825/3700MHz but only a couple of games and videos give the flickering. This could be also related to a driver issue... I'm not sure because I'm getting some weird blue screen while playing Fallout 3, even with the card clocks at stock and the fan speed at 40% and card temps well below 60°C on full load. Either ATI resolves this with a driver update or I'm thinking of selling this and buying a GeForce GTX 260...
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Mavke
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/27 15:23mono wrote: My guess is that its related to the memory, because when I downclock the frequency to, say 3600MHz stock, the flickering goes away. Currently I have my Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB reference flashed with Powecolor PCS 1GB BIOS running at 825/3700MHz but only a couple of games and videos give the flickering. I have adapted your post as the Radeon HD 4870 comes with GDDR5 memory which means the memory speeds is quadrupled, so meaning you see 900MHz is actually 3600MHz effective. Now the 1GB version can often be less well overclocked than the 512MB, and yeah although it is rather minor your overclocking about 3600MHz might cause that. But for mine it is doing at reference ATI speeds. I don't know what it is, but I do know why I rather like NVIDIA cards, and my GeForce GTX 260 is working great.
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lumo
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/27 16:06I did not overclock my card at all. Its all stock, the BIOS too. When I launch GPU-Z to see what temps could be high, the card boosts up the fan to 80% then back to default, continuing this. Last time I did this, the red dots disappeared!
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Mavke
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/27 16:27Euh, sorry but you wrote that you flashed it to the PowerColor PCS version and that means you overclocked it to 825/3700MHz, that is where I picked it up. And what if you run the fan speed faster now does that still let the red dots go away?
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lumo
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/28 12:18Someone else posted in this thread, he flashed his card. As I wrote, the GPU-Z speeds up the fan to 80% and drops again, does this quite a few times, then the red dots seem gone. Does it spin up the fans always, or only on my card? I have got no clue. I mailed the shop, with a link to this post, they shall decide if they exchange the card or what to do next. If you have a solution, it would be way easier for all. Thanks in advance.
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Mavke
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Re:Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB, and red flickering pixels? - 2008/11/28 18:25lumo wrote: Someone else posted in this thread, he flashed his card. As I wrote, the GPU-Z speeds up the fan to 80% and drops again, does this quite a few times, then the red dots seem gone. Does it spin up the fans always, or only on my card? I have got no clue. Oh good that you say that as I didn't notice that but you are right, so you only used at stock clocks and nothing else. Well that is like in mine, and for some strange reason it is seven out ten it gives those red flickering and I have no clue yet what it could be. I would thing more like a driver thing but, I did a fresh install and still the same so, might be the hardware somehow. It might take some time to figure it it and I am wondering if there are a lot others with the same issue or not...
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