GTASA 6600GT Artifiacting?

[Skorpio]

Hi guys, I have been playing GTA SAN Andreas for a couple of months.

 

Recently I bought a new PNY 6600GT PCI-e to replace my FX5700LE regular PCI and I have serious artifacting issues when the game is running at night or when there is a lot of fog or rain.

 

When I had the FX 5700 there were no problems with artifacting.

 

But my PNY 6600GT PCI-e is artifiacting like crazy when the game runs at night time. Dust, clouds, and head lights looks horrible like low quality 16 bit polygons and stuff. Does anybody know a fix for this? I know its NOT a problem with my PSU because its getting enough juice for a 100 buck psu.

 

This is only happening in San Andreas...other games are fine except farcry that had that problem but I updated to the newest patch for Farcry, and it worked...so I was wondering if there is a patch from Rockstar...or anything I could do?

 

Heres my system

AMD 64 3000+

1GB Ram

PNY 6600Gt video card

MSI K8n Ultra motherboard

OCZ 520W Powerstream PSU

 

Thanks

 

 

[Prelithe]

The common thing to say is update your graphics drivers. That usually solves the problem. If not, then make sure your gfx card isn't overclocked. I remember overclocking my card and even by little 20mhz mem clock i got artifacting. A screenshot might help.

[Skorpio]

Oh yeah..I am also running windows xp pro sp2....and no I did not overclock, however I dont think PNY overclocks the videocard out of the box? ...everytime I get a new video card...I always go to nvidia.com and always download and have the newest drivers.

 

Here are the screenshots:...bear with me...because they are pretty big.

 

Look at the lights...is that supposed to be like that

 

Look at the sky

 

Worst example of artifacting

 

Another sky picture

 

Headlights

 

So does anyone know any solutions?

[GTA3Freak-2001]

Ouch bmps, might want to change the screenshots to jpeg.

 

What temps is your card running at, there should be a temperature reading section in the NVIDIA display options area.

[Skorpio]

Yeah...sorry about the bmp...Im assuming its too big...or is it an invalid format?

 

Im running at 38 degrees C idle...Im sure its not a temp issue...cause i play half life 2 for 3 hours..and no problem...I think it might be something with san andreas.

[GTA3Freak-2001]

Nah its just they are 3MB each and even on DSL it took a good minute to load even one of them that's all.

 

Anyway yeah its not a temp issue, you've got the latest drivers and all that right? You've got the resolution on 32bit? Other then that I don't know what to suggest as that's some wierd artifacts.

[Sulphur]

Dude, it looks like you're running San Andreas in 16-bit colour. I haven't seen colour banding like that since I last played Freelancer on a TNT Riva.

 

Check your desktop settings, ensure you're at 32 bits there, and check that the resolution San Andreas is running at says something like 1024x768x32 or 1280x1024x32, or similar. If it says 1024x768x16, you need to scroll the resolution and change it to 32. Hopefully, that would fix your problem.

 

Anyhow, artifacts are supposed to be random if it's due to overclocking, and you did say you weren't overclocking. Try a stress-tester like ATITool's artifact scan to check if your card really does have problems.

[Skorpio]

Once again...I apologize for the bmp format...thank you for taking the long time to look at the pictures

 

Yeah its runningat 32bit resolution.

 

I also forgot to mention that whenver it artifacts at it's worst...if you look at it you could slightly see a checkboard pattern running vertically up on the monitor. Like it's sorta the screens refreshing really fast....its hard to explain, I mean you have to be there to se it....LOL

 

I always could run the "always daytime cheat".

 

What about the anti Hot-Coffee patch...doesnt that block Hot-Coffee...AND also gives some performance improvements?

 

Thanks guys

[GTA3Freak-2001]

Yeah I first thought it was a 16bit issue but the screenshots tell a more deep type of problem.

 

The Patch doesn't say it fixes any specific performance issue just the fixing of the audio and other misc fixes. You could try it but I dunno if it would help. I could understand you getting this problem with a ATI card but for a NVIDIA card to do this when its the recommended card for SA is quite strange.