ATI Radeon X1900 XT and Mac Pro sparkling/dancing artifacts
:: Saturday, December 9th, 2006 @ 6:21:16 pm
:: Tags: Computers
My friend Adam Nash told me today that I’m a “high-maintenance” computer user. I replied that I just want my computers to work. Here’s an example:
I have a Mac Pro outfitted with an ATI Radeon X1900 XT. When I run certain apps, I get moving pixel artifacts on the screen which can only be described as “sparklies”. Individual pixels light up and dance around, always in the same windows and in the same places. Frustrated, I called Apple support, escalated to a Product Specialist, and got a replacement card shipped out. (I also have the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT; when I plug in the same monitor with the same cable to that card, no such artifacts appear. This led me to believe that it was a video card issue, since that was the only thing that changed.) Unfortunately, I installed the replacement card today, and the artifacts are still there.
Even more bizarre, when I took a screenshot of Aperture (one of the problem apps) and then opened the screenshot image in Photoshop, the artifacts appeared — in the same place! That’s right: artifacts appear both in Aperture and in screenshots of Aperture.
It gets worse: when I crop the screenshot to only the offending area, the artifacts keep on dancing. Clearly there is a problem with showing a specific combination of pixels. The thumbnail image in this post is a cropped portion of my screenshot, and when viewed in Photoshop or Preview (when placed in specific parts of my screen), I see artifacts dancing around.
The artifacts also persist in every resolution I can set my 30″ monitor to display — even in stretched resolutions.
My friend Douglas recently had the same problem (same hardware combination). He took his Mac Pro to the Genius Bar and left it for a week. When he got the machine back, the problem persisted, so he started unplugging peripherals. Finally, when he unplugged his non-Apple keyboard, the artifacts went away. Unfortunately, I’m using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard, so that solution won’t work for me. UPDATEDouglas reports that the fix did not work.
I’d like to ask a favor. If you have a Mac Pro with the ATI card, can you download the thumbnail in the post, open it in Preview.app, and drag it around your screen? Let me know if you see any artifacts.
NOTE: The thumbnail in this post does NOT display artifacts when viewed with Firefox on the Mac because Firefox doesn’t support color management. However, I see artifacts in the image when I view this post using Safari.
UPDATE Douglas tells me that a temporary solution seems to be to hit “Detect Displays” in the Displays System Preference. Sparklies go away. But when they come back, you have to do it again. I tried it, and it seems to work!
UPDATE, POSSIBLE FIXOn October 16, 2007, Apple issued a firmware update for the ATI X1900 XT that seems to have fixed the problem for me. I WAS WRONG. I’m still seeing sparkles in Aperture, but only when I am paging through images in the Viewer. The “dancing” sparkles in gray areas are gone.
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have you tried the card with a different monitor or unplugging all your peripherals that are plugged into your monitor? i tried it on a mac pro 3.0 with a x1900 at a store and had no problems with the screenshot. it only had 2 GB of RAM, though.
Hey, Kenny. There are no peripherals attached to the monitor because I can’t sleep the Mac when I plug it into the USB hub built into the monitor (30″ Dell).
Haven’t tried a diff monitor, but tried a different card with same monitor. No artifacts. The monitor and cable both work.
Sooooo….
when will we hear the announcement you going back to PC…. :D
Do you notice that there are some fade images on the right part of the thumbnail? I can read “Saturation, Brightness, Contrast” at the top right hand corner. That seems to be the image that has been got refreshed. I actually have this problem with a 23″ ACD and eventually returned it. Do you notice that?
Eddie - the HUD in aperture is translucent. What you’re seeing is stuff behind the hud display. (The screenshot is fine)
Douglas tells me that a temporary solution seems to be to hit “Detect Displays” in the Displays System Preference. Sparklies go away. But when they come back, you have to do it again. I tried it, and it seems to work!
OK, just a few comments here:
1) Saying you are a high maintenance computer user dramatically understates the issue. It’s like saying Paris Hilton would be a high maintenance girlfriend. It doesn’t quite capture it.
2) This is not a high maintenance issue - this is a bug, pure in simple, most likely in the driver for the card. That’s why you don’t see it with the other video card.
3) If you are really tired of your Mac Pro, I’ll exchange it for you for a dual 2.5Ghz G5. No charge. :)
does the dell use a duallink DVI cable? have you tried the cable in the other port on the 1900? i think they’re both dual-link.
i agree with adam nash, though; if both 1900s show the same problem, it sounds like a driver issue. have you checked macintouch.com?
Kenny - the 30″ requires dual-link for full resolution. haven’t tried the other port, but I will.
The alterna-fuel RV photo in this article also gives me artifacts.
Hmmm. I will check this tomorrow. I have the exact same machine and exact same video card. I have a 24″ Dell LCD, however.
Nope. No sparkles on my Mac Pro with X1900 video card.
hello,
in first, scuze for my english, i’m french.
check your screen frequence, it’s probably to up. I’ve had the same problem, and i’ve had put the frequence at 60Hz instead of 75Hz. And the artefact as gone.
Allan
Unfortunately, the refresh rate option is disabled in the Displays prefs pane.
I experienced the same using some long DVI-cables for my two 23s. Perhaps the signals from the ATI card are too weak for the Cinema display. A Sony LCD was just fine on the same cables…
Just got my new comp in the last 2 weeks. Having the exact same problem. I’m mostly noticing it while importing my collection of CDs in iTunes. In the Cover Flow view, when the album cover is missing, I see the artifacts like crazy. I’ve even tried the Detect Displays and that didn’t work. Only thing that has worked so far was to completely change the resolution and then back to the original 1680×1050. I’m on a Viewsonic 22″, so I really doubt it has anything to do with the monitor itself. I’m also forced to keep it at 60MHz. I’m going to have to assume that it just needs a new driver to work with any type of alpha maps. As it seems that its when transparency is involved that it then screws up.
“Hey, Kenny. There are no peripherals attached to the monitor because I can’t sleep the Mac when I plug it into the USB hub built into the monitor (30″ Dell).”
I had this same issue, then I plugged the Dell USB cable into a hub that is then connected to your computer…. this allowed me to sleep the monitor and use the Dell USB ports as intended.
I’m having a similar problem, but it is only in full screen mode in PS CS2 and 3 and with no palettes open as well. It ends up distorting the image in strange blocks if moved with the hand tool. If I have a tools palette or any other on top of the image, the problem doesn’t occur. I’ve spoken with Adobe, Apple, and now ATI, as I have a similar system to that that’s mentioned. ATI had me send them a system breakdown report and they are going to try and replicate the problem with upper level engineers and if it can be replicated, an updated driver will be sent off to Apple.
Dan
My brand new mac pro does this as well. Only on strange combinations of greys though. this image is particularly bad: http://arjay.typepad.com/photo....._worth.jpg I am not at the point of talking to apple about it, as I feel any replacement card would likely have the same problem. And thankfully most of the apps I use on a daily basis, Illustrator and Photoshop (and a few games), do not exhibit the shimmer/sparkle effect that is so distracting and annoying. I have a Viewsonic 22″ which displayed no problems (except for a stuck pixel) on my previous Powermac G4 so Its definitely not the monitor. I just tried the Detect Displays trick and it had no effect. Also, though I can’t check right now, I think it also exhibits this in Vista Which I dual boot with Bootcamp. I have installed the latest Catalyst drivers so next time I boot Vista I will try some tests and post back.
Hi Eric,
I had the same problem twice. That is, with 2 different Mac Pro 8-Core + ATI x1900.
I experienced the sparkings you mention while using a Samsung 30-inch dual-dvi display on port #1. When I plug it in to port #2 it works fine. Also, with a dual display configuration using a Samsung 24-inch on port #1 and the Samsung 30-inch on #2, they both work fine.
I talked to Apple and they sent me a replacement computer, as they didn’t have the card in stock (I guess due to a too high demand for them?).
I have just received the new Mac Pro. Guess what, I plugged it in with the same configuration and… there are the dancing pixels on grey!!!
So, I guess there is an issue with the Ati card.
Forgot to mention. When the card heats up (after an hour of usage or so). The problem gets even worse.
By the way, have you solved the issue?
Regards,
-Pablo.
I too have this experince with my Mac Pro and X1900. I have dual Dell 20″ LCDs and have this single green pixel that shows up in random spots on BOTH monitors. The green dot only shows up on dark colors. You can hide it with the cursor or dragging a Window over the top of it. While researching this issues, I stumbled accross this page. I downloaded the thumbnail as well as the image in the last post. Both of them give me the little red pixel. It appears that the red pixel is in a fixed location…. but leaves a trail when draggin these images around. Hitting “detect displays” doesn’t get rid of it. However if I change my resolution from 1600×1050 to 1600×1000 it gets rid of it. Going back to 1600×1050 brings the problem back. This is obviously a driver issue. Any word on updated drivers from Apple or ATI???
An updated firmware was released today. Seems to have fixed the problem for me. UPDATE: I WAS WRONG. I’m still seeing sparkles in Aperture, but only when I am paging through images in the Viewer. The “dancing” sparkles in gray areas are gone.
I have a Mac Pro 3GHz with the X1900 XT and ACD30 + LG 24″ displays. I get a dancing pixel or two on the LG regularly. When I run Aperture, I get rows of dancing pixels that run for several inches across both displays. I’ve had the computer for at least nine months, and the problem only crept up a month or two ago. It’s getting worse.
Eric, I don’t think this is an issue with the card (I changed mine and problem remained). I found that pressing the metal bevels of the monitor together, or distorting them slightly by putting opposite pressure on the right/left sides (on top or bottom of the screen) changes the pattern/quantity of pixels dancing. It is clearly an issue of a bad electrical contact in my case. I have had this type of problem with a 30″ Apple display for several months now, and still have to send it in for Apple Care repair (I’ve been too busy). The distortion can be so bad that I sometimes lose all connection and get a blank green/purple screen with moving areas and lines. I suspect you may find the same issue. Most people are probably too scared to put pressure on the enclosure, but it works and brings the screen back to normal (for up to a few days or couple of weeks sometimes, until the heat expansion/contraction cycles from turing the monitor on and off bring back the problem). I suspect the electrical contacts between the LCD itself and the enclosure are held by pressure, and this may be a weak link in the design. Someone else may be able to comment better on this.
Yves: 1) I have a Dell, not an Apple. 2) When I switch to the NVidia card (the cheaper one that came with the machine), the sparkles go away.
This suggests that it’s not a contact issue in the monitor, in my case…
I have the same exact problem. I have a Mac Pro with 3 Dell monitors. I have 1 30″ monitor in the center with 2 24″ monitors sitting vertically on each side. The 24″ monitors are connected via analog ports and only the 30″ experiences flickering and dancing and sparkling artifacts. 1 24″ monitor is connected to the ATI card as is the 30″ monitor. The 2nd 24″ monitor is connected the Nvidia 7300 card that came with the Mac Pro. I noticed this right after I got the card and exchanged it with Apple for another one. It made absolutely no difference. Its unfortunate that the only decent card that is somewhat recently priced is flawed and that ATI nor Apple is doing anything to rectify, or even acknowledge this. I recently updated the firmware on the ATI x1900xt and it made absolutely no difference.
was googleling LCD sparkles and found your blog… have the same problem but i’m a PC user…. however I too have an ATI card.I have a 19″ wide screen monitor. The sparkles will appear in a random place in an image, however if i move the image around, it moves with the image. for me, however, if i lower my resolution to 1280×1084 or lower, the sparkles seems to go away. Grant it I have not tested this over any period of time. Just sharing my frustration I guess. I have an ATI X1300 pro but am gettign an HD2900xt in this week. I have always been a proud ATI owner, hope it gets fixed. Anyway, if i have anylucj with the HD2900 i’ll drop another note for what it’s worth. (Also my sparkles almost always appear in the darker parts of the screen.)
I have started to experience this same problem - after installing Leopard and upgrading the RadeonX1900 firmware from last week. I have 2 30″ cinema displays both set at millions of colors and the highest resolution. Clearly something in Leopard (in my opinion) has pushed the graphics processing needed to display the windows over the edge. I can generally get the screen back to normal (by dragging the window to the other screen and back) but it is becoming quite annoying…
Im havening the same issue. Its related to colors for sure. Seems to be intermittent. Come up after I play WOW.
Running on a MacPro with the x1900 and a Dell 3007wfp
I’m getting strange coloured sparkling artifiacts too, but I’m on a G5 Powermac with an AGP ATI 9600XT video card. A reboot seemed to fix the problem for a short while, but then it progressively comes back. I wonder if it’s the GPU overheating? Perhaps Leopard is working the GPU harder than Tiger did?
I see these with a Radeon X1600GT on my PC. First I thought I had stuck pixels and blamed my monitor, but I just upgraded the PC to a Nvidia 8600 and now the monitor is fine. Meanwhile I moved the ATI card to my Vista media center and now I have dancing pixels on my LCD TV.
So I definitely think it’s an ATI card issue.
was googleling LCD sparkles and found your blog… I have had the same issue since I installed Leopard a few months back. I get these randon linear artifacts appearing in Photoshop… Quark… Firefox… I hide and show and it disappears and reappears again… I have a 30″ ACD and have reported this to Apple using my Apple Care Warranty and with no satisfaction over the phone… I also brought it to a local Apple Care acredited repair shop with no solution from them either. They just said I’m covered for three years so if it gets any worse Apple will sort you out…. but I’m not sooo sure after reading this thread… so many people with the same problem but no solutions. I even thought the recent Graphics Udpdate 1.0 given with 10.5.2 would sort the problem… but after some small investigation I found that the X1900 drivers weren’t even included in the update. The ATI website only supports driver updates for G5 and 10.4… anyone know if a 10.5 update is due…?? Or if anyone has had any luck with ATI even acknowledging the issue… I love my Mac… love my 30″ ACD… and it’s such a pity that we all have to work on with this issue after paying so much money and being so loyal as always to the Apple Brand.
Yours sincerely Anthony
Irish MacUser and MacAddict
I had the exact same problem with my new Mac pro 2008 model with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card. In my case, the problem displayed itself on the main monitor, then the video adapter was connected to port 2 (to rule out grounding effects theories, the problem remained even if no equipment was connected to the video card).
Well, after a bunch of calls to Apple support, they finally sent me a replacement card and the problem went away.
I have the Early 2008 2.8GHz Quad Core and the X1900XT Mac Radeon Upgrade kit off ebay and it produces the same thing, the guy I bought it from said it came out of a Tiger System and no problems, so it definately is a bug that either Apple or ATI need to address, also is this card the X1900XT better than the HD 2600? which would game better, the one with the most ram wins or not necessarily…?
Thanks, Lane pls email any suggestions comments to lanejasper69@msn.com
hi, I would just like to say I have a pc with an ati X1650 installed. And guess what, I too have a graphics issue with sparklies, however, when the pc boots up (XP pro) the sparklies are dancing at 120 beats per minute! And after boot up I get artifacts like static dots presented on the screen (on the desktop and in programs like Internet Explorer). These dots don’t dance about tho, they only do that at boot up! I have looked around but found not a single fix for this issue. It definitely is either a bug with ati drivers or in my case a problem with Direct X 9 although it is unclear. I tested the Dx9 drivers and there didn’t seem to be a problem. like many of the people here, I updated drivers but still no luck. It is difficult to know which vendor is responsible for this, however, as you are using a Mac and me a Pc it seems unlikely to be the fault of Operating systems and definitely a DRIVER issue.
Have you obtained a fix for this yet? and how?
I’ve got it, too. Mac Book Pro with an Apple Cinema Display. I get it in the black areas of certain web pages! Close the web page, it’s gone! BTW - This page does not. But XMRadio.com does. Really Odd.