weird single pixel thick colored lines on screen with a 3070.

[GerKNG]

i have a rtx 3070 TUF OC from a friend in my house.
he said when he plays R6 Siege he sometimes gets a single line with weird colors on the screen. (it can appear on three exact rows on the screen and nowhere else)
it never appears when the PC was NOT under load since boot.
but AFTER any kind of GPU load these lines appear and disappear on the screen, on icons on the desktop, randomly in the browser and elsewhere. (and in games like world of warcraft he gets 200 meter long spikes out of random things (like with a very high unstable OC)
and another thing: the lines can randomly disappear and re appear when he alt tabs out of something.

i tested the card with two Mainboards, two Monitors and two DisplayPort Cables (everything is known good and fully functional)
everything is stable, there are no crashes (not even with a strong 2.1 Ghz OC and +800 on the memory)

Pictures are attached.

 

[R-T-B]

That sounds like dying vram. I know, not good news, but besides a bad video cable not much else causes issues like that.

 

[nguyen]

Sounds like some drivers issue?

 

[Toothless]

That sounds like dying vram. I know, not good news, but besides a bad video cable not much else causes issues like that.

Well he's got a memory overclock, that might be what's doing it.

 

[Vya Domus]

Still looks to me like a wonky cable or perhaps something is wrong with the monitor, or maybe it's the video connector on the card. If it was VRAM related it would have been way worse and very obvious.

This is how VRAM artifacting looks like :

 

[GerKNG]

Well he's got a memory overclock, that might be what's doing it.

it appears with every clock speed.

-502, stock, +1000.
i just mentioned that the card is stable and does not go worse even with a very high overclock.

Still looks to me like a wonky cable or perhaps something is wrong with the monitor, or maybe it's the video connector on the card. If it was VRAM related it would have been way worse and very obvious.

This is how VRAM artifacting looks like :

View attachment 193955

that's what annoys me.
i used two monitors (my own) and two DP Cables (my own)
all of the are working perfectly fine.
and it's the exact same line of pixels. on all Ports.

 

[Bill_Bright]

That's one example of VRAM artifacts. I've seen it cause streaks, lines, blotches of colors too.

i tested the card with two Mainboards, two Monitors and two DisplayPort Cables

What about 2 different power supplies? If so, then time for a new card.

 

[GerKNG]

That's one example of VRAM artifacts. I've seen it cause streaks, lines, blotches of colors too.


What about 2 different power supplies? If so, then time for a new card.

well it appears in his PC (RM750X) and my dark power pro 12 1200W Titanium.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I'm not saying your problem is not caused by bad VRAM. I am just saying bad VRAM can cause other unwanted artifacts than those you illustrated too.

 

[GerKNG]

I'm not saying your problem is not caused by bad VRAM. I am just saying bad VRAM can cause other unwanted artifacts than those you illustrated too.

i know. that's the problem.. it's a mystery.

it runs a timespy extreme loop for 4 hours with +1000 on the VRAM with no artifacts or any issues.

then going into WoW and having walls out of broken textures with +100.

 

[jboydgolfer]

timespy extreme loop for 4 hours

why would you run a loop for that long?

 

[GerKNG]

why would you run a loop for that long?

why not?

 

[jboydgolfer]

why not?

i guess for the same reason you dont run it for 3 weeks. it makes no sense.
i get the impression, you are trying to damage your GPU or do anything it takes to cause issues

not based on just this thread, but your past content.

you seem to run these silly long stressing tests, try to create some issue, then you ask about it here.
its your hardware, you can bury it in a cat litter box for all i care, but it seems like nonsense to me. no disrespect intended.

 

[phanbuey]

that looks like an issue with the cable tbh as @Vya Domus pointed out, vram has a very specific look to it followed by a hard crash. Any issue with GPU/RAM will cause a full crash shortly after said artifacts - if you're seeing artifacts and the system is acting like everything is fine then it's something with the 'delivery of picture to face' process - monitor/cable

 

[jboydgolfer]

that looks like an issue with the cable tbh

^ this seems likely, for sure.

but i stand behind my earlier comment. maybe its just me, ill move along.
good luck with the pixel

 

[qubit]

You definitely have a bad video card, likely the RAM.

There's no way a video cable would cause this. It either works or it doesn't. In very, very rare cases, you see a fast moving snow-like effect* all over the picture as it sits borderline between working and failure, ie signal is marginally received by the monitor due to signal degradation within the cable.

*It's reminiscent of the snow effect you'd see on an old analog TV with no incoming signal.

 

[chrcoluk]

if it is always same spot, I will say cable, if its random could be vram.

 

[oobymach]

It could also be caused by a short on the video card somewhere, since it's on all ports though idk where or what might be shorted. Have you tried blowing the card out with an air compressor and visually inspecting it ie a teardown?

Since it happens in multiple systems it's likely not something in the case shorting it more likely a physical issue in the card somewhere (maybe the heatsink is touching somewhere it shouldn't?). My sister in law has a laptop that has a line through the screen near where the power plugs in, it's most definitely faulty hardware but aside from the line it works ok.

 

[GerKNG]

It could also be caused by a short on the video card somewhere, since it's on all ports though idk where or what might be shorted. Have you tried blowing the card out with an air compressor and visually inspecting it ie a teardown?

i acutally removed the cooler and inspected it (maybe they forgot a thermal pad on the memory or something).. wasn't the case.

the cards looks completely normal, was/is brand new and it seems to only appear on the DP Ports.. and not the single HDMI.
i don't have the card anymore (he took it back home and still uses it because giving it back and get a refund does not help him when there is no card that could replace it.) he currently plays via HDMI and will tell me more tomorrow.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Still looks to me like a wonky cable or perhaps something is wrong with the monitor, or maybe it's the video connector on the card. If it was VRAM related it would have been way worse and very obvious.

This is how VRAM artifacting looks like :

View attachment 193955

That looks like an unstable GPU core, IMX. (A.K.A. "SCLK" in AMD jargon) And it often crashes hard or of course, a driver timeout, shortly after that, especially that many squares. The obviousness usually is with unstable core and that usually results in error messages related to video. VRAM instability, is more likely to be flashing lines that are hard to spot, but still notice that something's off! More of a very old film effect with VRAM, versus a bad-digital-TV-signal-like mess that I get when I push the GPU core too hard. Albeit with a GeForce 2 MX, I seemed to get dots for both followed by a crash.

And a digital cable problem looks much like that, IIRC.

 

[Jawz]

and it seems to only appear on the DP Ports.. and not the single HDMI.

Was just about to suggest using HDMI. My EVGA 3080 FTW3 had strange artifacting with known good DP cables and a known good monitor. Switched to HDMI and no issues since. Had a buddy with a 3090 FTW3 that behaved the same. No idea what the root cause is but HDMI fixed it in our cases.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Kinda find it funny when ops amd card had a problem he said that he was dumping them and going nvidea permanetly
Now he has a faulty NVIDIA does he have to go to intel?

 

[qubit]

if it is always same spot, I will say cable, if its random could be vram.

No way can it be the cable. The signal is digital, so it either works and gives you a perfect picture, or nothing. At most, if it's marginal, the picture might flash randomly, or you see a lot of snow.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

No way can it be the cable. The signal is digital, so it either works and gives you a perfect picture, or nothing. At most, if it's marginal, the picture might flash randomly, or you see a lot of snow.

i had a bad cable give me green dots on the screen randomly
it moved if i wiggle it

 

[qubit]

i had a bad cable give me green dots on the screen randomly
it moved if i wiggle it

Yes, that's the snow I'm talking about. No way can it give you a line down the screen.