PC Drivers & Software

[rogerius]

Hello,

Yesterday I ran into artifacting issues again with the newest (20.3.1) driver. 

It rarely occurs and I don't have any clue how to reproduce this and what are the triggering conditions, but this is what occured:
1) Brightness Flickering
2) Random small artifacts
3) Textures failed to load correctly, blue colored screen.
I restarted the application after I detected the 2nd step, but meanwhile it didn't occured on the desktop or anywhere else, it occured in the application again.
Because of the 3rd issue and the fact it doesn't occured outside the game, I suspect this issue is related to VRAM. 

Problematic Application:
- Final Fantasy XIV + Reshade (effects were turned off after I detected the 1) issue)
Specs:
- CPU: i7-6700K
- GPU ASUS ROG STRIX RX 5700 XT OC (switched to Efficiency BIOS, factory OC were disabled)
- RAM: 16 GB DDR4

- SSD: Samsung EVO 860 (SATA III) 512 GB
- Displays:
-- 1) (Main) LG 29UM69G-B (2560x1080@75 Hz) connected with DisplayPort
-- 2) (Secondary) Dell U2419H (1920x1080@60 Hz) connected with DisplayPort

The Windows 10 is the newest version and it's a fresh installation, also the same with the GPU driver.

Here is a video about the issue, from start to finish, where I restarted my PC with the reset switch. 
It was made with AMD's in-built recording feature, but because I reseted the PC the audio got corrupted. 
Also the glitch with the blur isn't part of the graphical issues.

Do you have any tips or ideas, how can I avoid this issue in the future? 
Should I connect the second monitor directly to the motherboard (so using the Intel HD for handling that)?

Thanks for the help in advance!

[hardcoregames_]

When I see problems I wipe my SSD and start fresh. I installed windows fresh when I got my X570 back from an RMA.

[rogerius]

This is the second (or third) time I seen this.

Before this occurence I did a clean reinstall, where I left nothing behind on my SSD.

So I tried this method, but sadly it didn't work. 

Just I don't know if it's a driver or a hardware issue (so basically should I RMA this).

IIRC artifacting nowadays should be a really rare issue and should be a non-existent, which usually hardware one. Especially since I triggered the driver restart shortcut (Win + Ctrl + Shift + B) and while the driver restarted (I heard the bip sound effect) it was worthless. On the other hand I can't reproduce the problem reliably (after the PC restart, the problem didn't occured again), which should be the case, if it were a hardware issue...

[hardcoregames_]

I am using driver 20.2.2 WHQL which seems to be stable for Halo anyway

[mickeekung]

Is the problem cause by Freesync?

[rogerius]

Not impossible, since I enabled it for this game from the driver. 
Also I read on this forum that RX 5700 XT cards seemingly hates LG UltraWide monitors at 75 Hz, so this also can be an issue. 
Though honestly I wouldn't expect FreeSync issue from a FreeSync compatible monitor and AMD card, where with my previous NVIDIA card (1070) the G-Sync (Compatible mode, there is no hardware support for that in this LG monitor) just worked perfectly fine... 
I'll disable it for the future and if you have more ideas, I'll try out those too.

[hardcoregames_]

I use a convention LG 3840x2160 IPS LCD with HDR and any Radeon card from the R9 Fury and onward all like it with DisplayPort. My panel is a standard 60 Hz and it is fast enough that there is no problem even with the most active FPS action games out there.

I play Quake Live, Halo multiplayer and more and I manage to stay on the scoreboard

[rogerius]

Thanks for the tip, the keyword there is 60 Hz. 

I tried investigate things more thoroughly.
On the linked video near the end, only half of the textures were loaded, the other half wasn't. That indicates this issue has something to do with VRAM, because after a point it simply can't load more textures. 

So I started to check the Performance tab on the driver and noticed something interesting. 
The VRAM frequency 1750 MHz at all time. It never drops, even if I do nothing on my computer. I tried your mentioned refresh rate and magically the frequency started to change as normally should. 
I started to experiment with custom resolutions with changing the refresh rate between 60 Hz and 75 Hz. The conclusion was that, if the clock reaches 72 Hz, then it can't lower the VRAM frequency. 

This also indicates something, that at or above 72 Hz (on this monitor, it can change with others) the VRAM (at least the frequency of the VRAM) isn't properly handled by the driver.

Maybe this causing either that it can't handle a longer period of time working at max frequency or the max. frequency is just an indication, that VRAM can't be maintained properly and VRAM free up mechanics not working. In this case it's just matter of time, when the entire VRAM filled up and after that it can't load new textures.

If my theory is correct, then I'm confident that I can reproduce the issue if I set my main monitor at 75 Hz and let the game run for a longer period of time.
If the VRAM usage only increasing and never decreasing AND when it filled it'll start these issues again, then it'll prove that, the issue at least has something to do with monitor refresh frequency.

[rogerius]

Also I forgotten to mention, that the game was in Borderless Windowed, so my second guess is FreeSync enforce isn't a good idea in this mode, especially since this game only supports a frame limiter and doesn't support VSync, let alone FreeSync. 
I'm trying to think a good testing method for both ideas.
I think either FreeSync or 75 Hz is probably the issue, or maybe when both enabled on this game, it eventually leads to a crash.