Ridiculously strange problem

[DoYouEvenModBro]

From time to time while playing Skyrim, I will get a freeze (pretty common, no big deal, I know), HOWEVER if I try to restart Skyrim, I will get graphical artifacts like crazy. Black lines shooting everywhere. The problem does not go away until I restart my computer and sometimes I get a c++ runtime error. This isn't my GPU's fault because after Skyrim artifacted, I tried running a Furmark stress test and everything was fine so I know it is only Skyrim that causes this problem. Any ideas?

[torminater]

Do a chkdsk on your Drives, defrag them if not a SSD, verify integrity of game cache, get rid of overclocks and retry skyrim.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Do a chkdsk on your Drives, defrag them if not a SSD, verify integrity of game cache, get rid of overclocks and retry skyrim.

 

How do I do a chkdsk. And yea, it's a SSD so no defrag lol.

 

EDIT: I ran a disk check. Everything seems to be fine. It cleaned up some indexes but it didn't detect any bad sectors. You can do a disk check on an SSD, right?

[Aiyen]

Graphical artifacts etc are almost exclusively due to memory errors on the GFX card.

Instead of a complete restart you can just try to logout and in again in windows.

It is faster then a restart, and the result should be the same.

 

You cannot exclude bad card memory just by running a stress test on it sadly.

But it would be strange if it only happens in Skyrim. But ultimately not unlikely sadly.

If you are using an OC´ed card then try to reduce the OC back down to stock speeds.

[torminater]

You can do a chkdsk on SSDs as well. If stock speeds for your gfx doesn't help, I gues long-time o'clock has somehow hurt your memory...

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Graphical artifacts etc are almost exclusively due to memory errors on the GFX card.

Instead of a complete restart you can just try to logout and in again in windows.

It is faster then a restart, and the result should be the same.

 

You cannot exclude bad card memory just by running a stress test on it sadly.

But it would be strange if it only happens in Skyrim. But ultimately not unlikely sadly.

If you are using an OC´ed card then try to reduce the OC back down to stock speeds.

I'm pretty positive it's only Skyrim that causes it. Has never happened on any other game. I was thinking of RMAing my 7970 anyway since one of the fans is making a grinding noise. Is there any sort of GPU memory stress test I can run before I blame it on my card?

[DoYouEvenModBro]

You can do a chkdsk on SSDs as well. If stock speeds for your gfx doesn't help I gues long-time o'clock has somehow hurt your memory...

Why would it only happen in Skyrim? Also, my graphics card is only like 3 months old. Is it because Skyrim is the most memory intensive? Is there any sort of other stress test that can test GPU memory before I blame it on my card?

[stoppingby4now]

 

You can do a chkdsk on SSDs as well. If stock speeds for your gfx doesn't help I gues long-time o'clock has somehow hurt your memory...

Why would it only happen in Skyrim? Also, my graphics card is only like 3 months old. Is it because Skyrim is the most memory intensive? Is there any sort of other stress test that can test GPU memory before I blame it on my card?

 

It's possible that the graphical resources being used with your copy of Skyrim are pushing enough VRAM usage to hit bad VRAM. You can try Video Memory Stress Test to see if any errors get reported. Stress testers are not guaranteed to use all of the VRAM during the tests (much like CPU stress test, they are designed to push the limits of the chip, which causes overheating, which gives you an indication of whether it can handle the "stress").

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

 

You can do a chkdsk on SSDs as well. If stock speeds for your gfx doesn't help I gues long-time o'clock has somehow hurt your memory...

Why would it only happen in Skyrim? Also, my graphics card is only like 3 months old. Is it because Skyrim is the most memory intensive? Is there any sort of other stress test that can test GPU memory before I blame it on my card?

 

It's possible that the graphical resources being used with your copy of Skyrim are pushing enough VRAM usage to hit bad VRAM. You can try Video Memory Stress Test to see if any errors get reported. Stress testers are not guaranteed to use all of the VRAM during the tests (much like CPU stress test, they are designed to push the limits of the chip, which causes overheating, which gives you an indication of whether it can handle the "stress").

 

How do you get to it to stress all 3 gb of your card (well, 3 gb in my case.) It says it only hits 1 gb and you have to change something to get it to hit all 3? Do I need to run this off a cd/drive and not from windows in order to do this?

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

 

You can do a chkdsk on SSDs as well. If stock speeds for your gfx doesn't help I gues long-time o'clock has somehow hurt your memory...

Why would it only happen in Skyrim? Also, my graphics card is only like 3 months old. Is it because Skyrim is the most memory intensive? Is there any sort of other stress test that can test GPU memory before I blame it on my card?

 

It's possible that the graphical resources being used with your copy of Skyrim are pushing enough VRAM usage to hit bad VRAM. You can try Video Memory Stress Test to see if any errors get reported. Stress testers are not guaranteed to use all of the VRAM during the tests (much like CPU stress test, they are designed to push the limits of the chip, which causes overheating, which gives you an indication of whether it can handle the "stress").

 

How do I use this software? I burned the .iso image to a cd and tried to boot from it but it doesn't work and if I just run the .exe file, it only lets me use up to 1gb of my vram.

[stoppingby4now]

There is a readme that comes with it, so I recommend giving it a read. You want the Windows version (.exe) and you can specify (override) memory limit from the command line. Example: vmt.exe 2048 (uses 2048MB of video memory).

[stoppingby4now]

I came across this page where the folks at folding@home wrote a couple of GPU memory testers akin to memtest. MemtestG80 is for nvidia/CUDA only, and MemtestCL can be run on AMD and nvidia. Haven't tried it out personally, and you need a login to download the binaries from that site, but it is relatively newer than the Video Memory Ram Tester.

 

Last time I ran VMRT I had a 2GB card, but I'm experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2GB on my current card after doing some recent testing.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I came across this page where the folks at folding@home wrote a couple of GPU memory testers akin to memtest. MemtestG80 is for nvidia/CUDA only, and MemtestCL can be run on AMD and nvidia. Haven't tried it out personally, and you need a login to download the binaries from that site, but it is relatively newer than the Video Memory Ram Tester.

 

Last time I ran VMRT I had a 2GB card, but I'm experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2GB on my current card after doing some recent testing.

Can you clarify what you mean by "experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2gb on my current card after doing some recent testing?" Do you mean that the program has trouble testing a card that is over 2 gb vram?

[stoppingby4now]

I came across this page where the folks at folding@home wrote a couple of GPU memory testers akin to memtest. MemtestG80 is for nvidia/CUDA only, and MemtestCL can be run on AMD and nvidia. Haven't tried it out personally, and you need a login to download the binaries from that site, but it is relatively newer than the Video Memory Ram Tester.

 

Last time I ran VMRT I had a 2GB card, but I'm experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2GB on my current card after doing some recent testing.

Can you clarify what you mean by "experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2gb on my current card after doing some recent testing?" Do you mean that the program has trouble testing a card that is over 2 gb vram?

It never did do the tests when I went over 2GB. I allowed the program to switch to 640x480 display, but it returned to my native display immediately and the information window stated that the test failed.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

I came across this page where the folks at folding@home wrote a couple of GPU memory testers akin to memtest. MemtestG80 is for nvidia/CUDA only, and MemtestCL can be run on AMD and nvidia. Haven't tried it out personally, and you need a login to download the binaries from that site, but it is relatively newer than the Video Memory Ram Tester.

 

Last time I ran VMRT I had a 2GB card, but I'm experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2GB on my current card after doing some recent testing.

Can you clarify what you mean by "experiencing problems being able to test anything over 2gb on my current card after doing some recent testing?" Do you mean that the program has trouble testing a card that is over 2 gb vram?

It never did do the tests when I went over 2GB. I allowed the program to switch to 640x480 display, but it returned to my native display immediately and the information window stated that the test failed.

It must be incapable of going over 2gb then. It does seem like a very outdated program. I am going to try the MemtestCL. I'm guessing it's an OpenGL test and not DirectX? Based on my problem above, does it seem like my video card memory is corrupt? Or could it just be Skyrim doing something weird? I was going to RMA my GPU anyway since one of the fan bearings makes a grinding noise. My card was also incredibly terrible at overclocking so I wouldn't be surprised if the memory was failing. 

[Aiyen]

If it fails at even simple OC that other report works then there most likely is an issue somewhere.

 

Also it should not matter if it is OpenGL or DirectX that does a test... at least I have never heard of any issues in that regard.

But just in general if there is a grinding noise.... then the life time will drop quickly as the fan deteriorates and is not able to maintain proper temperatures. That and the horrible noise it makes.