Small squares of random pixels static artifact on video card

[xwolfi]

Well I did state which one I was using: nvidia proprietary driver v295.40, or is there something else I should give ?

The problem certainly lies, as you said, in the driver, and indeed you're right about the windows thing, but on the other hand we are not really being absolute here, the important thing is to rule out very improbable reasons. As I spent 4 months using my card without any problem on windows and the card works most of the time correctly on linux, except from small squares like the OP showed from times to times, it would be counter-productive to still keep the hardware option open.

But in an absolute world it could be some subtle electric variations that only happen by chance when I run linux and not when I run Windows Or it could even be my screen badly reacting to the gnome desktop environment - everything is possible.

To stay serious a minute here, we can find out what we have in common, the OP and me, and what we haven't:

Common: Exact same Gainward GTX580 card
Exact same "version" of opensuse (11.2)

Different: OpenSuse Architecture (he has x64, I have i686)
Driver version (he has 285.05.33, I have 295.40)
Desktop environment (he has KDE4, I have Gnome 3) - but it isn't really relevant I guess anyway
Linux kernel version (he has 3.1.9-1.4-desktop, I have 3.1.10-1.9-default)

What can we rule out in your opinion ? If you still insist on a hardware problem, then I'll try to install fedora and the proprietary drivers to see if there is any difference, but that would take some times and I'd like to find other easier options before trying it. The driver option is the most probable, but we aren't that many with the problem (the OP is the only one I ever found) while the GTX580 sold well - which kinda point towards a hardware problem

Edit: Actually some others have the same problem : P9X79 + i7 3820 + GTX 580 + Linux(Gentoo, Ubuntu) = square multicolor artifacts - nV News Forums

[lwfinger]

OK. You are aware that 294.40 has lots of bugs and that you should be using 295.49.

When you change distros, you only change the user-space stuff. The kernel and
the external graphics drivers are identical as long as the kernel version is the
same.

[oldcpu]

I have the EXACT same squares randomly appearing with my monstrous GTX580 which works perfectly well on Windows !

My experience is the power management in GNU/Linux is not as good as the power management in MS-Windows, mainly due to the proprietary video driver in MS-Windows being much better and also due to power regressions in the GNU/Linux kernel which while improved (from some kernel versions back) are still not up to that of MS-Windows. I concede this experience of mine comes from much older hardware and what I saw was a case where the power supply was only 'just' barely adequate (for MS-Windows) meant that it ran well under MS-Windows with serious graphic use, it simply was not adequately functional for GNU/Linux, and I saw small squares of random pixels, static artifacts, etc in GNU/Linux that I did not see in MS-Windows.

When I moved the graphic card to a PC with a more powerful power supply, the artifacts in GNU/Linux (which were never present in MS-Windows) disappeared for GNU/Linux. I'm not saying this is your problem, but rather I am recommending caution in coming to a conclusion on this.

Unfortunately its not always so straight forward.

[xwolfi]

My experience is the power management in GNU/Linux is not as good as the power management in MS-Windows, mainly due to the proprietary video driver in MS-Windows being much better and also due to power regressions in the GNU/Linux kernel which while improved (from some kernel versions back) are still not up to that of MS-Windows. I concede this experience of mine comes from much older hardware and what I saw was a case where the power supply was only 'just' barely adequate (for MS-Windows) meant that it ran well under MS-Windows with serious graphic use, it simply was not adequately functional for GNU/Linux, and I saw small squares of random pixels, static artifacts, etc in GNU/Linux that I did not see in MS-Windows.

When I moved the graphic card to a PC with a more powerful power supply, the artifacts in GNU/Linux (which were never present in MS-Windows) disappeared for GNU/Linux. I'm not saying this is your problem, but rather I am recommending caution in coming to a conclusion on this.

Unfortunately its not always so straight forward.

Well yeah I kinda see what you mean but I have a 800W Corsair modular power supply so I guess I'll try more recent drivers then.

[nvartifact]

Thanks for your updates, sorry for the late reply but we've just received the replacement card from far away (or at least we hope it's a new one). I'll examine your posts and links and reflect each one a bit later.

Standard ESD handling precautions have been again followed when inserting the card.

The computer has just been started, was running mostly idle on a desktop - basically clicking on windows and doing text editing produced the artifact again on this new card in less than half an hour. Room HVAC was running. Overheating is thus not probable.

Chassis: Supermicro sc743tq-865b-sq black 4u rack
(from text: PSU 865W, AC cooling redundant, 80+ certified)
SUPERMICRO SC743TQ-865 Black 4U Rack Server Chassis, 8x SAS/SATA HS, 865W Super Quiet HE PSU : AVADirect Custom Computer Component

All 3 power cables inserted into the GPU.

We have ECC memory, so no memory errors are possible.

If nothing helps, we'll write OpenCL tests for memory and processing consistency.

[nvartifact]

Verdict: driver bug. The problem has been silently fixed in the new Nvidia beta driver version 302.07 released on the 2nd of May - a week after detecting and RMA'ing the card!


Do look out for that the regular download pages do not list this, so you need to click either the Unix archive or the "beta or older downloads" page to fetch it.


Linux AMD64 Display Driver Archi


Can I mark this topic solved?