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PC Drivers & Software

Issue: Occasional Chrome artifacts (green dots) on pages when switching tabs.

Hi,

Since mid last year I've been having an occasional pattern of green dots or artifacts when switching tabs under Chrome with HW acceleration enabled. This might happen once or twice in a week, more sparsely in a month or twice in the same day, it's not often and very hard to reproduce. It happens most times on a tab left alone for long, like Gmail, and it goes right away when causing it to refresh, like scrolling down.

I've only found a few threads about this bug at:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3414886/gigabyte-580-green-artifacts.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6f90ey/my_msi_rx480_rare_coil_whine_and_artifacts_in/

It seems to affect RX480/580 cards with completely different vbios versions and pcbs since long. On this particular MSI RX480 8GB G X this has shown on the last 3 official vbios updates it has been through. Both on W10 x64 1703, 1709 and 1803 under updated AMD drivers and Chrome.

It happens both when connected with DVI or DP to monitor, so it doesn't seem like an interface problem (it's also only inside the browser render frame), and (like in the threads above users have pointed) the card is completely stable when stress testing or playing games.

Does the AMD driver team have any knowledge of this issue? Thanks.

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13 Replies

Have you reported this to Google thru Chrome "REPORT AN ISSUE" under "HELP"?  (where the three vertical dots are located at).

This is the Official Google Chrome Forum you might post your question. Most likely they are going to say it is the GPU card or AMD driver problem. But they may direct you on how to fix it. Google Groups .

Sorry can't be of much more help. If this is a GPU card vBIOS problem, maybe you can download a newer vBIOS from GPU-Z website, if available, from here : VGA Bios Collection | TechPowerUp

Of course, you already know if you update your vBIOS you will probably void any warranties on the card plus running the risk of bricking it if something goes wrong.

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Thanks,
I find it unlikely to be a vbios problem. I've used 3 different released bios for this card including the original it came with (currently has the latest via MSI rep) and all show the issue. If you check the threads I've linked, it happens with cards on different models and different manufactures (and different PCBs), at least on RX480 and RX580, that only rarely seem to exhibit it by switching tabs on chrome, and are stable otherwise. It would be almost impossible for them all to use a similar vbios version (early RX480s vs late RX580s).

I've reported it in here in the hope some other RX users with the same occasional issue could share hints about it. To troubleshoot it, I've underclocked core/mem, disabled pci-e power link energy management, changed slot, set pci-e slot power to max instead of default 75W, all without removing the issue. It's painful to test, because it can pass near a month before it shows again. But since it only happens under the Chrome window, it's most likely either a driver or browser problem that only seems to affect these cards.

My personal experience with reporting GPU issues to browser support is that they simply discard it to AMD/NV drivers.

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Oh, another thread about this at:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7jm6u8/this_ongoing_issue_has_become_worse_with_the/

Without surprise, it also occurs on RX470 and other chromium based browsers like Opera.

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emtree
Adept I

My RX 550 does the same. I'm using Chrome and Yandex and the green dots are showing on both browsers.

Did you found any solution for that?

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Never found a solution, except disabling HW acceleration or changing browser. For what I understand, the Yandex browser is also Chromium based so it'll be affected in the same way. I've never seen anything similar under Firefox (or any other program).

Your report is the first I've seen without a Polaris 10/20.

Hello alleyviperThank you for your reply.
First I thought that my card might be faulty, then I found that many amd users are reporting this problem.

Have you tried Portal 2 on your card? When I first installed it it was showing green lines all over screen (I'm not sure if it was some bad driver, directx  or anything else).
Should I worry about these kind of problems? Also, how long do you have your card?

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I have the card since Feb. 2017, but never tested on Portal2. The only green stuff/lock ups I've had in the past with it was due to a bug on drivers that would force too much voltage on high ASIC GPUS when running dxva2 and a manual OC (under stock voltage), and would end in a card lock up some time later. It would be unnoticeable on a common ~1.15V ASICs, but problematic on 1.043V gpus running the same voltage. That was a whole different matter, and it was solved in Q4 2017. These cards can show some green stuff on the whole screen when they crash or are about to, but as you can see, the Chrome problem is restricted to its page render frame, so I believe it's either a problem with the driver/and or Chromes hw render engine, not so much for the card as it doesn't show the same symptom (or instability) on anything else.

Thanks! I really appreciate all these information

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adz
Journeyman III

My recently purchased RX580 8GB does the same in Chrome, and also in some parts of the Steam friendlist (the actual list of friends and sometimes in chat windows).

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I'm having the exact same issue with my RX580 8GB. I also experience some random black flashes only when using chromium based browsers. It seems that with 18.9.3 its less noticeable. With current drivers is completely annoying.

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da3dsoul
Journeyman III

To add some to this, I have a Ryzen 7 2700U Vega 10 laptop with the same issue. It happens in Electron, which is chromium, as well.

It happened to the title bar of Discord last time. I could switch to other applications and back with it still there, maximizing and changing the size fixed it.

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keyser
Adept I

Same problem, VEGA 56 and chrome, windows 10.

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da3dsoul
Journeyman III

I can verify after several months of using a manually installed Adrenaline driver that those do fix it.

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