Black artifacts/checkerboarding

homerdog

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I've noticed black artifacting/checkerboarding popping up for about 1 frame in games and on the desktop, mostly on the top of the screen. I've mostly noticed it only on my main monitor but I saw it happen once on the 2nd monitor. It probably happens there too and I just don't notice. It happens so quickly that at first I 100% thought I might be having some kind of medical issues, like mini seizures or something. But now I can say comfortably that the problem is real. I have 4070 Ventus 3X, two 1080p monitors, one 144Hz VRR displayport and the other 75Hz HDMI not doing VRR as far as I can tell.

It looks like the screenshot in this post but doesn't seem to take up so much of my screen and isn't restricted to Chrome or any type of program that I can tell. TBH it's hard to tell because it happens so fast.

It is just annoying enough for me to make this thread but doesn't cause any instability and doesn't happen all the time. It may be getting worse but I may simply be noticing more now that I know what to look for.
 
I'm glad it's not just me!

I've only noticed it with Chrome, and only when I have multiple tabs open. Chrome's usually taking up a third of the screen and the black checkerboarding only flashes up in the screen area Chrome occupies.
 
I'm glad it's not just me!

I've only noticed it with Chrome, and only when I have multiple tabs open. Chrome's usually taking up a third of the screen and the black checkerboarding only flashes up in the screen area Chrome occupies.
For me it happens everywhere including the main monitor with a game running in fullscreen mode. I do pretty much always have Chrome running on the 2nd monitor with a bunch of tabs and it seems to happen there too but I'm going off peripheral vision there.

Edit it definitely happens in Chrome on the 2nd monitor, I just saw it.
 
Did the response help you at all?
It's a microsoft issue, fix is underway and hopefully coming soon. I had this issue for well over a year now. Nothing is wrong with your computer. If you want these artifacts to stop appearing, go to chrome://flags/#use-angle and change ANGLE graphics backend to OpenGL or D3D9.

Actually I found a huge threadon Guru3D which goes into detail about the Microsoft failure and the fix which is pending for Windows 11: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/s...earing-in-chromium-based-applications.449341/

A huge thank you to @Astyanax for proposing the latest solution to this open issue. It works better than the previous method, and one can continue using default browser settings without changing flags.

It works for both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome in my testing - would appreciate more feedback

By adding the --disable-direct-composition launch parameter to the target location of the shortcut for each browser, you solve this issue.

I usually have my preferred browser pinned to the taskbar. If there is a desktop shortcut, I right click to unpin the shortcut in the taskbar, then right click the desktop shortcut, go to properties. Under Target: click and go to the end of the directory location, press space bar, and add the following:
Code:
--disable-direct-composition
 
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Actually I found a huge threadon Guru3D which goes into detail about the Microsoft failure and the fix which is pending for Windows 11: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/s...earing-in-chromium-based-applications.449341/
Could that cause the artifacts to show up outside of Chrome? I did see some of that but it seemed most were saying the artifacting is restricted to Chrome. I'm currently experiencing it in Dragon Quest 11 on Steam in fullscreen mode. Steam overlay maybe?

The artifacting does look the same as what I'm seeing as far as I can tell. But it's very hard to tell. If it gets bad I'll try to record it with geforce experience, though I'm not sure if it would even show up in a recording.
 
It looks like it's something to do with D3D11 and overlays? So, maybe? They do mention a bunch of apps are affected...
 
Did the response help you at all?


Actually I found a huge threadon Guru3D which goes into detail about the Microsoft failure and the fix which is pending for Windows 11: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/s...earing-in-chromium-based-applications.449341/
I'm convinced this is the culprit and the Chromium problem is somehow manifesting in my games, maybe because of an overlay. When I loaded up B3D just now I saw a black checkerboard in the browser that stopped exactly where the bookmarks bar begins. It stayed there for a few frames, and since it was on the 75Hz monitor that was enough for me to get a decent look at it. I don't think a hardware problem would cause that to happen.

Thanks for the help, I'm not as worried about it now. I thought I might have another faulty GPU on my hands :cry:
 
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I'm convinced this is the culprit and the Chromium problem is somehow manifesting in my games, maybe because of an overlay. When I loaded up B3D just now I saw a black checkerboard in the browser that stopped exactly where the bookmarks bar begins. I don't think a hardware problem would cause that to happen.

Thanks for the help, I'm not as worried about it now. I thought I might have another faulty GPU on my hands :cry:
Glad it helped! And yeah, I absolutely remember the R300 / R350 / R420 era of botched memory chips (or, usually in my case, too much overclocking) which resulted in the checkboard pattern. I was under the impression most modern cards use error correction of some type in their memory, and so failing memory ends up going slower rather than displaying the checkboard pattern.
 
Glad it helped! And yeah, I absolutely remember the R300 / R350 / R420 era of botched memory chips (or, usually in my case, too much overclocking) which resulted in the checkboard pattern. I was under the impression most modern cards use error correction of some type in their memory, and so failing memory ends up going slower rather than displaying the checkboard pattern.
After having to RMA my brand new 6700XT twice and eventually giving up on it I was about to lose it.

For now I'm going to disable the Steam overlay and see if that helps. Should have thought of that earlier.
 
In your defense, I'm not sure I would've guessed the Steam overlay being a problem either :p This is why search engines were invented, hehe...
 
In your defense, I'm not sure I would've guessed the Steam overlay being a problem either :p This is why search engines were invented, hehe...
I found that stuff about Chromium and Windows but TBH I thought it was bs lol.

Anyway disabling Steam overlay has fixed it. One of the stranger problems I've had to troubleshoot.
 
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