Fixing Graphics Card Glitches
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2022-05-05
·
996 words · ~4 min read
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Even if you've spent tons of money on a top-end graphics card,
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graphical artifacts can still be an unfortunate fact of life.
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And by artifacts, we mean any kind of unwanted visual side effect
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that appears on the screen when you're trying to play a game.
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Today, we're going to talk about the common artifacts you could expect,
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what exactly causes them, and how you can try to stop them from happening.
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First up is a relatively typical one that some folks refer to as shimmering or flickering.
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That might sound a little vague, but we're talking about how some textures
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appear to be moving off and off in the distance,
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similar to how the sunlight reflects off of a pond in real life.
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It's annoying for sure, but the good news is that it doesn't typically mean
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that there's some kind of defect with your card or the game.
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Instead, shimmering is usually a form of aliasing,
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the same effect that can result in jaggies along sharp edges.
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Try fixing it by either turning down any in-game settings related to image sharpening,
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or try different anti-aliasing modes.
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Temporal anti-aliasing, or TAA, is designed partially to eliminate exactly this problem,
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so give that a shot first.
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But keep in mind that older implementations of TAA can ironically make the problem worse in some games.
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In that case, more powerful anti-aliasing methods,
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such as supersampling anti-aliasing and multisample anti-aliasing, can help.
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But those do require more computational power,
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so try out different AA modes until you find the right fit for your situation.
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Not every game has the same implementation.
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Next...
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We'll talk about one that's frustrating for DLSS users,
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especially because it's such a ballyhooed piece of tech.
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Yeah, we really used that word.
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Although DLSS brings out finer details without taxing your card too much,
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it unfortunately has a reputation for causing ghosting.
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You see, the whole way DLSS works is to compare visuals in a specific game to an ideal image,
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and then use machine learning to try and get your GPU to output a similar-looking image in-game.
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And while it works quite well in many ways,
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it also has a limitation in that it works better at higher resolutions,
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since the AI model that underpins DLSS is trained with higher-res images.
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Gaming at lower resolutions can throw off the AI,
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resulting in the ghosting and smearing that folks have come to complain about.
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Especially if you're already experiencing the shimmering artifacts we mentioned before.
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Fortunately, newer versions of DLSS have reportedly improved the situation markedly.
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But games have to add support for it,
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so there's not much you can do except wait for the more recent versions of DLSS
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to start appearing in the titles you play.
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DLSS swapper might get you somewhere, but it's not guaranteed.
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Unfortunately though, there are other artifacts that typically indicate something is wrong in one way or another.
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And I'm not talking about things like screen tearing, where the GPU is rendering things correctly,
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but the output just needs to be fixed by enabling V-Sync or variable refresh rate.
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Artifacts that are a sign of a real problem often take the form of objects like weird-colored dots,
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lines, or strange geometric shapes creeping across the screen,
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as well as textures that are straight-up missing.
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Sometimes these can be caused by just one title that isn't playing properly with your hardware.
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But if you're seeing this happen across multiple games, or even when you're not gaming at all,
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a good first course of action is to make sure your graphics card drivers are up-to-date,
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and also to return your graphics card settings to their defaults if you've overclocked the GPU itself or its VRAM,
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which is often the culprit behind problems like these.
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But let's say you've done this, and the problems are continuing.
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But let's say you've done this, and the problems are continuing.
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But let's say you've done this, and the problems are continuing.
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However, this is a good time to check the card itself.
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Make sure it's seated properly in the slot and have a look at your connectors and cables to see if something's amiss.
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Also, since overheating is a main cause of weird artifacts,
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blow out any dust from both the slot and the card itself and ensure you don't have any dead fans.
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If everything is looks all right and you're still having problems, try the card in a different PC.
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Especially as bad main system RAM can cause some of these same issues.
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You should also try updating the card's firmware, but if that doesn't help,
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you might unfortunately have a dying GPU on your hands.
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And I don't envy anyone who has to buy a new GPU
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in this economy.
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Thanks for watching.
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