Blue Flickering Video

I am getting some strange artifacts on my screen while gaming. It does it on two games but not on a third one. Any ideas. It's blue looking and it flickers. I tried two different drivers with the same results. Kinda like blue halos around everything.

 

How about when you disable SLI?

 

goes away when sli is disabled. I wonder if there is something wrong with one of the cards. I have never seen this problem before.

 

more testing and I found another strange thing going on. If you play the games in a window instead of full screen the flickering is gone. Doesn't make sense.

 

If im not mistaken if you play in windowed mode only one card works so no SLI again. So might be a sli/card/drivers issue.

 

no SLI is working to make sure SLI is on and working you have to turn detection on in the control panel.

Has anyone else had this problem. When I run crysis with SLI enabled full screen it flickers with blue halos. When I run it in a window it is fine.

 

Sounds like a bad GPU or drivers. If you are using the dell drivers I would guess it's the card. Have you done any OC'ing? High OC'ing will usually cause stuttering and not artifacts.

 

nope just got the computer and it did this immediately when I turned it on for the first time.

 

Call Dell. See if they'll just send one 280 for replacement. They'll probably make you go through a bunch of troubleshooting first.

 

I would strongly suggest testing your video card prior to calling Dell. This will hasten the service. Insert your resource cd and boot to it. Then choose "custom test" and select your video card for testing.

Good luck,
Gabe

P.S. - What games were you playing?

 

crysis, far cry, and Call of Juarez Bound in Blood. They all had the same issue.

 

I swapped video cards and it did the exact same thing. Running the tester in a few min thanks for the tip.

 

I was going to suggest running each card by itself , might have helped narrowing it down quicker.

 

I know for a fact that crysis runs fine on the 260s. If there's artifacting, there definitely is an issue. However, Dell will ask you for the result of the diagnostic.

Gabe

 

diagnostic didn't find anything wrong with the video or pci cards. It did however find problems with the audio device. It said something about interupt codex failed.

I am on the phone with dell right now.

As far as trying each card by it's self they both work if SLI is disabled. When I swapped em I ran card 2 in slot 1 and it was fine.

 

Why not make a back up of your current OS then format and run a fresh install from scratch, that would be my next thing to try just to try and make trouble shooting faster. You could also try the DOX drivers Mandrake has been using.

 

well it looks like they are sending a tech out with new parts. I was going to do a full install but since they are coming out I will let em mess with it. I have been messing with this for 2 days and I have had it. Figures I am the only one it seems on here that has had a serious problem.

 

I think if you ran XP on the system it will fix it.

 

I wish I could run XP on this rig

 

the problem i had with far cry: in 'all highest' settings, i see a lot of "white" when the game starts. narrowed it down to water effects but also applies to textures. the mountains, beach (water) are all 'white'. i can see trees but not the ground.

i get the flickering during game loads (GTA IV for example). but it stops when the load is actually complete.

 

That flickering in GTA4 is not at all uncommon, i get it as well on my desktop .

[email protected] 2x260GTXOCs SLI So totally different hardware and same issue , its an Nvidia thing.

 

Hi Mandrake,
It's not possible to install xp on the M17X at this time (due to the fact that the SATA driver is missing). Hopefully we'll see a driver soon for XP users.

Thanks
Gabe

 

It was an inside joke.

 

Is it true that playing windowed mode in any game doesn't use SLI?

 

I would think that windowed mode wouldn't really have anything to do with whether or not SLI was being used. If SLI is supported, it's going to utilize it regardless.

Gabe

 

Well after some google research it seems that SLI won't work playing games in windowed mode prior to the 180 series drivers. I don't know if they implemented it in the 180 series drivers (the articles were from dec 08), but I'm gonna test now.

 

yeah SLI works for me in windowed mode just turn on
SLI visual indicators in the nvidia control panel.

Still no problems running in windowed mode.

I ran the resource CD and tested everything and it came up with errors with the 1394 port and the nvidia HD audio. I am calling support back to make sure the tech brings a replacement motherboard also.

 

update tech is coming monday morning to my work and replacing all the video cards and sli bridge connector. I tried to get them to send a motherboard too to save time but they won't.

 

This problem just started on mine . i tried reseating the cable etc but no luck . Blue flickering in SLI and i tried everything i can think of .

 

First thing you should do is try getting a replacement cable from Dell...

if that doesn't work, I would suggest its one of your vid cards, and you'd have to replace those as well.

 

Yeah im looking forward to getting my one day old machine fixed Yahoo.

 

Hope your luck changes Quad. Still looking for you to beat my 12002.

 

Lol im not having much luck at all with this thing .

Now the dreaded calling in . Need to figure out who to call for this machine.

 

Well after 1:42 mins on the phone there going send the cable . Real nice guy helped me though so thats always a good thing .

 

Awesome!

hope thats the problem

 

Me too man . i actually asked him to ship me both the card and the cable but he was afraid that the order would get cancelled asking for both and to try this first then go from there.

Either way i have 19 days left give or take to get this sorted , get a replacement entirely or just return it.

 

seems their SLI cable are having bad yeild rates...

They need to get whoever is making them to quit screwing off before Dell gets bashed for it

 

Yeah and i hope its a permanent solution but i have a strange feeling it wont be and heres why ..

Take a look at where the SLI cable lays across?? The CPU heatpipe lol. Good place for that alright . Im going to put something between it this time.

 

Bad design decision indeed..
Make a small how-to guide on protecting it?

I'd definitely follow that

 

ducktape

 

serious?

just ducktape/tuck it away somewhere else?

 

You cant since its a flat ribbon cable and doesnt have much play room to move it else where . but i will be putting something between it that doesnt hopefully conduct much heat as a darn copper pipe lol.

Duct tape huh ? im not sure if that would be good or bad though it would get awfully gooey.

 

...thus the need for a small how-to guide.

So people like me (ignorant to laptop architecture) wouldn't place it in the wrong areas, with the wrong means.

Because the SLI cable really seems to be becoming a big problem.

 

Well the good thing so far Scytus is i think im the second person to actually report this problem ? . So hopefully that is a good thing .

When i spoke to the rep i asked him a million questions of course lol including that within his notes for the system if this was a known problem and i guess its not widespread at all (yet) .

This could be a thing that takes months or longer to creep up and since the system is in its infancy we dont know or wont know for awhile.

 

cardboard....

 

Just afraid of the "pandemic"

afraid that it might mutate into the similar copper problem with the M17

 

I hate ur one word posts -.-

 

copper problem ?

how will a heated SLI cable turn into a CPU heatsink and powersupply problem?

 

well they get the job done and they offer more insite and are more on topic then "i hate your one word post-.-"

 

Okay well obviously not at those extremes, the similarities I meant were the poor design choices that hinders performance.