OK PC Techheads, need your help - odd 3D glitching problem

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

OK, first up - here's the symptoms (apologies for the rubbish resolution, blame Apple. Or ShadowPlay for not actually recording the ED monitor window).
https://youtu.be/1Bt36jxEHaU

OK, as you can see - MASSIVE visual glitches. Looks horrible. Unplayable. Withdrawal is setting in! Obi-wan's I need your help!

It started a week ago, and I couldn't play ED at all one evening. I tried other VR apps to see if it was just ED. The Oculus Home 'room' was glitching too. The sound is affected too, possibly by the changing viewpoint which is mucking the geometry about.

Lucky's Tale actually glitched but not too badly (probably due to the simpler scenes and uniform colour shading. It was playable, and for a lark I played a bit to see how far I could get. No nausea, tracking was fine, just the glitching throwing geometry around. Any after about 1/2 hour, I noticed it had stopped. Image was fine. Woo!

ED was fine too. Played happily for four days with no further symptoms until 2 nights ago. Then I sat down, PC turned on, loaded ED and it was glitching as before. Dayum! Left it running for a couple of hours to see if it would spontaneously resolve itself. Nope.

Skip forward to now:
Its not the Rift it is functioning fine apart from the artifacts. Pretty sure its not at fault - although all VR apps glitch, so too do -
- Warframe (won't load, crashes before getting into he login screen)
- Star Citizen (actually quite playable, only minor glitches, but they are present. Worse in complex scenes.
- ED in 2D mode
- MechWarrior Online (runs but trees especially glitch very badly, and crashes quickly after random periods)
With or without the OSVR services shut down, same issues.

OK, drivers for the GTX1080 (a Gigabyte G1 Gamer edition, very mild factory overclock). I was running the latest nVidia 375.70 drivers (28 Oct 16) witout issue since that date.
Uninstalled using Guru3D driver uninstaller (safe mode, clean out and reboot). Reinstall from fresh download. Same glitches.
Uninstall 375.70 and reinstall earlier 375.63 (23 Oct 16), which had also worked just fine. Same glitches.
OK, probably not drivers.

Pulled two sticks of RAM. I have 4 x 4GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 in an Asus P877-V mobo. Same glitches.
Replaced those sticks and pulled the other two sticks out. Same glitches.
Tried the other two combinations using the four sticks. All showed the glitches. OK, not likely RAM issue.

Lastly, cleaned the drivers and uninstalled the GTX1080.
Popped in my older 780GTX card. Both 375.63 and 375.70 drivers showed the glitches. So, its not likely an issue with either the 780 or the 1080 (partly relieved).

So now I'm running out of hardware.
I see some visual glitching in dropdown menus and the little circular dots on login to Win 10 desktop (when no nVidia driver is present). Chrome is crashing too, possibly due to the little glitches its getting in menus and buttons. Very minor artifacts though, not reproducible.

PC is;
i3770K, default 3.5GHz, ramps up to 3.9 in ED. Stock cooling, fan speeds all ok.
Asus P8Z77-V motherboard
4 x 4 GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance DDR3
Gigabyte G1 Gamer GTX1080 and MSI 780GTX (not at the same time), factory settings. Temps fine, fans fine.
Using the on-board sound.
Corsair SSD (240GB) in Sata on mobo. Seems fine.
Corsair 850W PSU. No obvious power-related crashes. Fan is working.
Win10, all latest updates. No crashes.

Java, .net framework and DirectX all unchaged so far and not suspect anyway.
Motherboard drivers are the same ones I've used all the way through. Drives are fine.

I'm thinking sound drivers next, although they've been working fine too. However there is some audible glitches along with the geometry artifacts.
Looking for the drivers on Asus.com now.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Asp Explorer]

Can't see your video as am at work just now. You say your temps are fine but I'd double check. I'd try running memtest for a bit and see if it chucks any obvious errors, and I'd clean your CPU and heatsink with fresh thermal compound and pull any gunk out of the fans.

Forgot - try booting a Live CD Linux distribution and see if it throws any Wobblies. Give your boards a good look for any ballooning caps - this isn't as much a problem these days but still worth looking.

 

[shadragon]

Only if you are comfortable doing this, try the following.

--->>>WITH POWER UNPLUGGED FROM CASE<<<---

- Swap memory modules so that you take each out and replace it in a different slot than the one it was in.
- Unplug and replug all power connections to motherboard.
- Unplug and replug all power and data connections to HD, CD-ROM and any other devices.
- Reseat video card in slot.
- Unplug and replug power connectors to video card.
- Look at the tops of capacitors on your motherboard and look for anything that looks out of place. Usually a brown or light green discoloration on the shiny top. Shiny like the small ones is good, brown like the larger ones is bad. Like this:

Then put everything back together and fire up the PC

 

[Asp Explorer]

Ok finally got to see the video. It looks almost like a failed GPU overclock, but I'm thinking insufficient power to the GPU. I'd try another PSU.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Ok finally got to see the video. It looks almost like a failed GPU overclock, but I'm thinking insufficient power to the GPU. I'd try another PSU.

Yeah it does look like that.
Underclocking does nothing, reinstalled the sound drivers, still the same.

I'll look for blown caps like shadragon suggests, and re-seat everything. (I have had a blown cap on a motherboard a looong time ago, (Pentium 3 450 days running at 600-650 under a peltier ) but it was fixed with a 40c part from Tandy's.

PSU could be an issue - in the past a blown PSU has always just resulted in a dead PC. The 780GTX pulls a fair bit more juice than the 1080GTX but its glitches were identical. A mate has a similar PSU but that means pulling his poor PC apart too lol.

What else can i uninstall/reinstall?
How do you uninstall DirectX?

I'm thinking something may be corrupted in software, since there's no real crashes, but obviously something in hardware can't be ruled out.
I was genuinely surprised when I tried the 780GTX and got the same glitches... I was fairly sure it was the 1080 card.

At work now, will try the pull/clean/replace in 12hrs or so. When the kids are in bed and can't hear me swearing!

Next steps:
Memtest86
Look for blown caps/ other obvious motherboard damage
Reseat connectors and cards, clean cpu contact/stock heatsink and replace
Reinstall Win10 (ugh)

 

[Asp Explorer]

I'd try the live CD or a new Windows install on a spare hard drive before I go messing around with your main install.

If you have motherboard video - I'd connect your monitor to that and see if you get the same effect. Because it happens on both cards I am still tempted to look at the PSU for problems. If it works perfectly under a different OS - then backup everything and start afresh.

Do you have any GPU tweakage utilities? I'd try disabling them. Also turn off Shadowplay and see if that fixes anything.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Good points. Yes, this mobo does have onboard video. Will give it a go.

The Gigabyte gpu tweaking utility is loading at startup, but is set to normal. OC or default settings don't appear to affect the glitches.

ShadowPlay wasn't in use (I used it to try to record video of the ED monitor window (failed). It did take video of Lucky's Tale glitching (was too big to upload though so used my phone video of ED).
Glitches remained with just the nVidia driver installed (but not GeForce Experience which gives you ShadowPlay).

Will check the power voltages in BIOS etc and see if there's anything amiss that the motherboard is able to measure.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

OK all clean inside and out now.
The Asus P8Z77-V Pro has all metal caps, but no damage anywhere on the board. I didn't lift the cpu power heatsinks etc.

Cleaned and reseated virtually everything.

The glitches remain.

Voltages are stable and appear solid across the board, idling and under load.

I remember now how much I hate those Intel heat sink clips for the 3770K... the old ones with the two levers were muuuuch better. Ugh. *slaps responsible engineers*
Perhaps some water cooling is in order.

 

[Sanderson]

There's an issue with some GTX GPUs, the Micron memory specifically. Maybe a GPU bios update is in order? I know some 1070s are affected, not sure with the 1080s. Worth a look to see if there's an update though.

 

[shadragon]

Should have asked earlier, but have you run SFC /SCANNOW in an administrator CMD window? It could be a DLL issue and that should sort it.

Also, (and I know this sounds dumb) if you have MS Office installed, do a repair through control panel. I have seen a 12K MS Office DLL screw up an Exchange server.

When done, power off, unplug for thirty secs, plug back in and boot up.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I'd still go for testing using onboard graphics and a different OS install to a spare drive. I'd also go for a uninstall of the graphics drivers on your main build, select remove drivers, and let the OS install it's own preferred driver just to see if it does anything.

I'd still be looking to test on another PSU too.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Should have asked earlier, but have you run SFC /SCANNOW in an administrator CMD window? It could be a DLL issue and that should sort it.

Also, (and I know this sounds dumb) if you have MS Office installed, do a repair through control panel. I have seen a 12K MS Office DLL screw up an Exchange server.

When done, power off, unplug for thirty secs, plug back in and boot up.

SFC was a good suggestion - I ran it but it found no issues.

I think I'm going to have to resort to re-installing Win10. Not sure if that's possible as I came from Win7 via the free upgrade.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

I'd still go for testing using onboard graphics and a different OS install to a spare drive. I'd also go for a uninstall of the graphics drivers on your main build, select remove drivers, and let the OS install it's own preferred driver just to see if it does anything.

I'd still be looking to test on another PSU too.

Yep, I uninstalled the graphics card drivers, and on reboot, Win10 finds some standard VGA driver and uses that. Its not an nVidia driver.

Haven't tried the on-board graphics yet, bit wary of mucking with it to be honest just incase I get left with a dead box lol. Will look in the BIOS and count the key strokes to set it back
I'd expect the onboard graphics to glitch the same, as the 780GTX also glitched. Its very unlikely to be the 1080 or the 780 cards at fault. But, we'll see.

PSU is a possibility but given I can stress cpu and gpu at the same time in SC and not crash at all... on both the 1080 and the significantly more power-hyngry 780GTX... looks software related unless there is a motherboard, cpu or memory problem.

 

[Jon flint]

Out of curiosity have you got any overlays enabled (like the shadowplay fps overlay or steam overlay?). That glitching looks almost identical to what I experienced while trying to get msi afterburner to display gpu stats in game.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

I think I'm going to have to resort to re-installing Win10. Not sure if that's possible as I came from Win7 via the free upgrade.

A less painful option is to use the 'Reset this PC' function (Settings->Update & security->Recovery). Did that the other day on a PC that had been through the free upgrade from 7 to 10 and it worked fine (it checks the digital entitlement for 10) and fixed the issue it had. Obviously you'll go though a few updates (incl. Anniversary update I think) and restarts but no biggie.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Out of curiosity have you got any overlays enabled (like the shadowplay fps overlay or steam overlay?). That glitching looks almost identical to what I experienced while trying to get msi afterburner to display gpu stats in game.

Nothing I'm aware of. Everything is running stock. GeForce Experience is running in the background, and you get the little "Press Alt-Z to share your gameplay" note, but no overlays in game. Running the nVidia drivers without Geforce Experience even installed still gave the same glitches as well, so presence (or not) of GFE/shadowplay on/off seemed to have no effect on the glitches. It is installed now, will check if there is some setting that is trying place an overlay etc.

Ram Memtest 86 overnight, test took 6 hrs or so. 0 errors, so I presume memory and cpu mem controllers are all fine. CPU sat at 68 degrees, pretty normal on the stock Intel air cooler.

Looks like I will just need to bite the bullet and create Win10 installation media, and do a full clean reinstall.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

A less painful option is to use the 'Reset this PC' function (Settings->Update & security->Recovery). Did that the other day on a PC that had been through the free upgrade from 7 to 10 and it worked fine (it checks the digital entitlement for 10) and fixed the issue it had. Obviously you'll go though a few updates (incl. Anniversary update I think) and restarts but no biggie.

Mine has the Anniversary update now and is fully up-to-date (build 1607 etc).
I came from a normal Win7 Pro install to Win10, so yeah it should go through the digital licence check just fine.

I'm kinda just a tad wary that the current 'on-disk' files that Win will use for the reset are damaged in some way. SFC came up with no errors, but I'm guessing it only checks os-critical files.
If it is software, and not driver-related, then DirectX is likely.

Only real hardware I haven't checked is the PSU, but all voltages and rail numbers look fine. Because SC loads, plays fine with minimal glitching, even on the power-hungry 780GTX, that indicates even the PSU is fine. SC is certainly working the 3D card fairly hard, and the CPU. Dunno, in my past PC builds, power problems always brought the PC to a BSOD, freeze or other fatal error... not glitching about with the camera viewpoint, which seems to be the issue here. Odd! But a nice challenge

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

How about trying the GPU in the PCI-E 2.0 slot?

Tried the integrated graphics yet? I'd want to do that before messing about with Windows. Just remember to check the BIOS settings first (i.e. make sure it's enabled LOL)

 

[Blian]

Nothing I'm aware of. Everything is running stock. GeForce Experience is running in the background, and you get the little "Press Alt-Z to share your gameplay" note, but no overlays in game. Running the nVidia drivers without Geforce Experience even installed still gave the same glitches as well, so presence (or not) of GFE/shadowplay on/off seemed to have no effect on the glitches. It is installed now, will check if there is some setting that is trying place an overlay etc.

Ram Memtest 86 overnight, test took 6 hrs or so. 0 errors, so I presume memory and cpu mem controllers are all fine. CPU sat at 68 degrees, pretty normal on the stock Intel air cooler.

Looks like I will just need to bite the bullet and create Win10 installation media, and do a full clean reinstall.

Do it man! I had all kinds of troubles with the win 8.1->10 update. A clean install helped bigtime! For example I was damned with the EVGA GTX overclocking issue, when the factory OC cards would crash the game randomly. Now it is gone. Don't worry about the activation, W10 does it based on the HW ID of you main components. If it doesn't you can use your old win7 key, and if eve that doesn't work MS support will activate it for you. (But I'm sure it won't come to that.)

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

How about trying the GPU in the PCI-E 2.0 slot?

Tried the integrated graphics yet? I'd want to do that before messing about with Windows. Just remember to check the BIOS settings first (i.e. make sure it's enabled LOL)

Heehee, missed your post - I'd already bitten the bullet and loaded a USB stick with the Win10 media creation tool.

Do it man! I had all kinds of troubles with the win 8.1->10 update. A clean install helped bigtime! For example I was damned with the EVGA GTX overclocking issue, when the factory OC cards would crash the game randomly. Now it is gone. Don't worry about the activation, W10 does it based on the HW ID of you main components. If it doesn't you can use your old win7 key, and if eve that doesn't work MS support will activate it for you. (But I'm sure it won't come to that.)

Managed to reinstall Win10 last night but with some hassle - I ran setup off the USB stick the Win10 media cremation tool dutifully made.
I wanted to change my SSD partitions a bit to give Win10 a little more space (I had 80GB for Win10 and it was down to ~3GB spare space on C: with some careful app re-installations). So I formatted the C: and D: drives, deleted the partition and re-formed them to give C: 100GB and the rest to a fast games drive. No problem.

But then the setup tool wouldn't reinstall Win10 (on the same drive I just formatted) saying it won't install to an MBR format, only to a GPT format... I've built my own PCs for 25 years and that was a new one!
On to the phone, found the solution; Use the setup tool command prompt, use a function called diskpart, select the drive clean it and fix it to GPT format... then Win10 set off happily unpacking files. Why isn't that function built into the Setup routine? Its on the USB stick for fricks sake lol... What the? MS.

Anyway this morning Win10 is installed, before video drivers or anything else. Finished the install, rebooted, and the little whizzing circles waiting/loading symbol has got the same little hedgehog spiky artifacts going on.
So a completely clean Win10 instrall will probably have the same bug... so perhaps I was wrong, it IS hardware and restricted to the CPU, mobo or PSU.
Dang.

TLDR; reinstalled Win10 and glitches (probably still there). Need to finish installing the nVidia drivers and download a game (Lucky's Tale etc) to confirm glitching.
Saturday may bring me presents! (new mobo, ram, cpu lol)