Hopefully someone here can help me out... Haven't had luck yet with posting on Tom's Hardware .
Recently whilst playing Minecraft I have began to notice a distortion in colour, especially in dark situations (like in caves or during the night). In these dark areas all of the game textures are more difficult to distinguish as they have a significant loss of detail. I quickly realised that my problem was colour banding - and that it was happening everywhere - and so far I've tried (almost) every way I can think of to fix it.
At first I thought my monitor's calibration might've needed resetting, so I tried that and saw no change. Then I tried hooking up my computer to my TV, and still saw the colour banding there too. I then tried downclocking the card from 1.05 GHz (core) and 1.25 GHz (VRAM) to 850 MHz (core) and 1.05 GHz (VRAM) though the AMD Catalyst control panel, to see if that would make some change; and nope. I can put the card through some stress testing (like Furmark or some demanding games), and it will pass without any white pixel artifacts appearing. This card doesn't get overly hot either, I haven't had it get hotter than 77*C yet.
Now my current attempt at trying to fix this problem is by doing a driver downgrade (or upgrade). Right now I'm running Catalyst 13.1, but I had no issues running Catalyst 12.11 beta. I just haven't had much luck uninstalling AMD's drivers unfortunately . The only AMD-related entry in the removable programs list was the AMD Catalyst Install Manager, which is just an entry for the driver installer, and not the Catalyst drivers itself actually. So I uninstalled that, and decided to try out some software called Driver Sweeper. I booted into safe mode and attempted to uninstall the drivers that way, but instead got a BSOD, luckily I manually created a restore point prior to doing this. If there is any better, reliable and safer way to remove the drivers then I would really like to know...
I would post a screenshot if the problem was possible to properly show. I took a Minecraft screenshot at one point while playing on this build, and then copied it to another computer. On the other computer, it came up fine without any colour banding issues.
Since hardware/software info helps so much with tech issues:
Case: Cooler Master HAF XM
PSU: Corsair TX750M
MB: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
CPU: Core i5 3570K (4 GHz OC, 1.15 V and stable)
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB, 1.6 GHz
GPU: XFX HD 7870 Black Edition (factory OC)
SSD: Corsair Force 3 120GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
Monitor: Samsumg SyncMaster S24B300 24", 1920x1080
In terms of age, I built this system back in November 2012; so it's hardly old.
can you screenshot the game and post it here so we can see it?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud member of the MCF AWA war of '13! if someone suggests Alienware or Cyberpower, wait for a custom-built list from someone who knows their stuff. Meh Rig
Recently whilst playing Minecraft I have began to notice a distortion in colour, especially in dark situations (like in caves or during the night). In these dark areas all of the game textures are more difficult to distinguish as they have a significant loss of detail. I quickly realised that my problem was colour banding - and that it was happening everywhere - and so far I've tried (almost) every way I can think of to fix it.
At first I thought my monitor's calibration might've needed resetting, so I tried that and saw no change. Then I tried hooking up my computer to my TV, and still saw the colour banding there too. I then tried downclocking the card from 1.05 GHz (core) and 1.25 GHz (VRAM) to 850 MHz (core) and 1.05 GHz (VRAM) though the AMD Catalyst control panel, to see if that would make some change; and nope. I can put the card through some stress testing (like Furmark or some demanding games), and it will pass without any white pixel artifacts appearing. This card doesn't get overly hot either, I haven't had it get hotter than 77*C yet.
Now my current attempt at trying to fix this problem is by doing a driver downgrade (or upgrade). Right now I'm running Catalyst 13.1, but I had no issues running Catalyst 12.11 beta. I just haven't had much luck uninstalling AMD's drivers unfortunately . The only AMD-related entry in the removable programs list was the AMD Catalyst Install Manager, which is just an entry for the driver installer, and not the Catalyst drivers itself actually. So I uninstalled that, and decided to try out some software called Driver Sweeper. I booted into safe mode and attempted to uninstall the drivers that way, but instead got a BSOD, luckily I manually created a restore point prior to doing this. If there is any better, reliable and safer way to remove the drivers then I would really like to know...
I would post a screenshot if the problem was possible to properly show. I took a Minecraft screenshot at one point while playing on this build, and then copied it to another computer. On the other computer, it came up fine without any colour banding issues.
Since hardware/software info helps so much with tech issues:
Case: Cooler Master HAF XM
PSU: Corsair TX750M
MB: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
CPU: Core i5 3570K (4 GHz OC, 1.15 V and stable)
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB, 1.6 GHz
GPU: XFX HD 7870 Black Edition (factory OC)
SSD: Corsair Force 3 120GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
Monitor: Samsumg SyncMaster S24B300 24", 1920x1080
In terms of age, I built this system back in November 2012; so it's hardly old.
if someone suggests Alienware or Cyberpower, wait for a custom-built list from someone who knows their stuff. Meh Rig
I had the colour banding even when changing the display to a HDTV.
As I said in the OP, any screenshots I take have the colour banding, but if I copy them to another computer they appear to be fine.