[Arklite]

Hey guys. Any insight you can give into this would be wonderful.

Bought two 4850's, installed them, and noticed some issues. Everything seems to blur ever so slightly while moving (more so than another computer with a much lesser card), edges are distorted and shake when I move in games, and if I shift left or right while next to certain light/dark sources, I see a vertical intermitent line across my screen flash just to the side of where the source was.

I am using an ASUS P5Q motherboard, 8500 dual core, and 4 GB of OCZ ram. All my drivers are up to date, I am using V sync (which helped immensly but did not resolve the problem,) and have tried both cards seperately and in crossfire. In all cases the blur and distortion remains. Changing to narrow tent/ wide tent has also had no effect (or a negative one).

Is there any other possible solution, other than the cards simply not working on my system? I'm at the point where I might "rent" an Nvidia card from best buy to check if it works properly. It is a crying shame if I have to use the nvidia card, since crossfire was the whole reasons I went with my ASUS board instead of an Nvidia sli capable one. Thanks for the help, and pardon the spelling errors- haven't had time to install office yet!

[bz2klag]

Have you turned on vertical sync? Without it, images are prone to tearing.

Klag

[Gwiggles]

Originally Posted by bz2klag

Have you turned on vertical sync? Without it, images are prone to tearing.

Klag

He says that he has V-Sync turned on and this still happens

[ObiWong]

have you tried uninstalling your drivers completely and using CC Cleaner to make sure everything is gone and installing them again?
are you overclocking? make sure you set the pcie frequency to 100MHz in your BIOS

[Arklite]

I'll give doing a driver clean a shot, since I have installed a number of versions.

I am not overclocking at all at the moment. Should I still change my PCIE frequencies? The only other things I can think of might be my RAM ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227280 ) which I simply put in the appropriate slot and have done nothing else with since it seemed to be working alright.

[ObiWong]

Originally Posted by Arklite

I'll give doing a driver clean a shot, since I have installed a number of versions.

I am not overclocking at all at the moment. Should I still change my PCIE frequencies? The only other things I can think of might be my RAM ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227280 ) which I simply put in the appropriate slot and have done nothing else with since it seemed to be working alright.

no, if you haven't touched your BIOS it's probably sitting at 100MHz
woudln't hurt to check but clean install your drivers first to see if that helps before worrying about anything like that

if clean install drivers doesn't work looks like it might be a problem with your mobo
but you won't really know that for sure until you can test with another vid card

[Arklite]

Well, after testing both cards after a fresh driver wipe and a 9800GTX to boot...

I still have the same problem.

So the question is then, if it isn't the videocard, what is it? How should I go about testing what the culprit is? Thanks for the help guys.

[xtkxhom3r]

why are you using a 9800 to boot?

all you have to do is uninstall ccc restart in safemode and use driver sweeper for vista or driver cleaner for xp

then boot back normally and install ccc

[sandyduff]

hes using a 9800gtx to see if it was the 4850's at fault... and since the problem hasn't gone away... something else in the system is faulty...

[Arklite]

Originally Posted by sandyduff

hes using a 9800gtx to see if it was the 4850's at fault... and since the problem hasn't gone away... something else in the system is faulty...

Exactly. Using the term "in addition to" might have been less confusing. Just ran a memtest and found no exception- the plot thickens. It is a new system with very little installed on it as of yet- would formatting my hard drives and reinstalling windows be a worthwhile action?

[sandyduff]

can't do any harm... might as well do simple things like that to see if it helps... if not, you might have to start swapping out components to pin point the problem...

[Arklite]

After a fresh install, the issue still persists with only having installed the minimum to get things done (display adaptors and direct x, basically.) Since it does not seem to be video card related, I'll bring this on over to general hardware. Thanks for the help!

[Shell]

Tearing AND Color Bleed... have you tried different monitors?

It's extraordinarily rare to have the graphics card have bother those symptoms... but I have had LCD and CRTs have that problem when it had trouble making sense of a video signal.

What monitor?

Also, try a different cable, if DVI, try VGA.

[Arklite]

Tearing and color bleed was about the best way I could describe it. Basically, when I move left or right in an FPS game or some such, a blur occurs in the direction I moved it. So let us say I am looking at a red tapestry. When I move left, a red (or sometimes just black) blur or afterimage in the left direction out from the object can be seen. And everything is sorta blurry in general while moving.

I am really stumped as to what is wrong. I only have about a week left to return my goodies to newegg for an exchange, so pressure is getting a little high. Ill see if anyone in general hardware has a solution, if not Ill have to decide whether to send some select items back from return/exchange and hope for the best, or send em back and suck up the loss from restocking.

Edit: Holy crap. I had switched monitors around a bit and thought while I was fixing some other issues, and thought the one I was using was fine. I switched to a dinky dell 15 inch and used a different plug, and the issue appears to have vanished. I'll have my buddy take a peek and it tomorrow to verify, but I believe you might have just saved me the aggravation of taking apart my computer for the 3492th time to figure out what the problem is.

[jayfella]

hang on. doesnt the p5q use the p45 chipset, and as a result, only use x8 mode in crossfire?

[Arklite]

Whether or not it makes a world of difference I cannot say, but at a minimum x16 appears as an option while in crossfire.

[jayfella]

the x48 is the chipset that has x16 mode while in crossfire. The p45 goes in to x8 mode while in crossfire.

Im glad you have sorted your problem, and that it is the monitor, but your cards will not be running at their full potential if i am correct..

[EmAn]

Originally Posted by jayfella

hang on. doesnt the p5q use the p45 chipset, and as a result, only use x8 mode in crossfire?

Originally Posted by Arklite

Whether or not it makes a world of difference I cannot say, but at a minimum x16 appears as an option while in crossfire.

A member here did a great review on the difference between x8-x8 and x8-x16 and x16-x16 and found out it does not really make a bit of difference with the 4850's. I myself have two 4850's and an Asus P5Q-Pro, so my setup is similar to yours. I was going to say try and switch monitors as that may be your issue, but you have tested it and it fixed the problem. What you were seeing we refer to as Ghosting.

[Arklite]

Yep, made some final checks and it was indeed the monitor the entire time. My frusteration at having wasted so many hours is dwarfed by the relief of having everything work right, so overall I'm a happy camper.

Thanks a ton for all your help. With this done, I have successfully built my first computer. Woohoo!