Screen Tears when mining -- Both 7870 and 7950 on AMD 13.1

[jayjayjay123]

When bitcoin mining using cgminer and p2pool I've noticed screen tears along the taskbar as shown in this picture:

https://i.imgur.com/KIAz312.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/KIAz312.jpg?1



This issue occured with both the powercolor 7870 tahiti LE and 7950 sapphire vapor-X

It's not a temperature issue because the sapphire is running at 61ºC while the powercolor was running at  77ºC

Is this related to catalyst 13.1 drivers or does everyone get these tears due to GPU load being ~100%

[newman_justin40]

When running my 6990 with a lower mem clock (I think around 150) I was unable to use two monitors. I'm guessing its something similar.

[soundasleep]

I get these tears when using Firefox (also on both a 7850 and 7950), disabling Hardware Acceleration works perfectly though and I haven't noticed any tearing anywhere else. I don't mine while gaming/etc though.

[Fiyasko]

-snip-

Some people have issues with 13.1 itself, I personally experianced the EXACT same symptoms that you are experiancing
Changed drivers, and it was all gone.

I do not know WHAT those errors are, But they are not harmful to your GPU if it is driver related.
Regardless i would do my best if i were you to try and remove them since they may be artifacts, wich are signs that your gpu is damaged when running at its current (artifacting) speed
I personally found that 12.8 and 13.5 are my favorite drivers
I own a 7950 in my main rig

[NoStr0m0]

I've been getting them when OC-ing too high. When that happens I usually throttle back 5MHz or until they disappear. Although probably not damaging to your GPU they are unpleasant when working on the PC. Also, considering that too high settings can cause hardware errors in your miner which equal to wasted work and shares, I would throttle back just a bit to ensure everything runs smooth.
One other suggestion that I came across the forums and seems to work wonders is disabling the 'bling' in windows. To do this, go to Control Panel and type in "windows performance" in the search field. It should show an entry under system for "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows". Click that and select "Adjust for best performance". It got me about 40MHs extra on my 7870s.

[VPSguy83]

Are you overclocking the card(s) ? if you are then try lowering the OC rate

[spiderJ]

I get the same with my 7950's, I don't think it's much to worry about

[winsucker]

Most likely problem with your GPU.

That's how GPU artifacts looks like:
http://i55.tinypic.com/2it5t1l.jpg

[redlight]

Probably an issue with your GPU.