Flickerig with new 11.4 drivers and new HDD.

[3Jane]

After installing a new Velociraptor hard-drive and reloading the O.S (W7 HP 64 bit) When I run this game I see heavy flickering and some banding.As far as I can see I have reinstalled everything as it was before on the previous drive, so I am wondering if my system is having a bad reaction to the latest ATI drivers 11.4 which I have installed.
All other graphic applications seem to work without issues except for FFXIV.
Before I uninstall these drivers and try going back to the 11.3, is there something I may have neglected to do which may be causing this problem, or is it just a case of the 11.4 drivers being broken or some such.
Thanks for any advice on this.

Edit:
No luck with altering any of the settings having any affect. I found a hot-fix, although this game isn't listed I will see what happens.
The only change to my system has been the addition of the new HDD. It's similar to the issue over the new year period which went away with the next driver release
Thanks for the advice so far.

Edit:
**
This issue persisted despite three different driver versions. The full screen flickering goes away when I disable X-Fire. So that being the case I'm not at all sure what now. Neither of the cards were moved during the installation of the new HDD. I was able to fit it through the front panel. So I'm not sure how either of the cards would have been affected.
Ah well. Will keep trying.

Does anyone know if it might be a faulty Velociraptor drive. All my other software works as it should without issues. Otherwise i can't see any reason why the simple change of drives would cause these issues with the same software.

[Grit]

Hmm... make sure that vsync is enabled for FFXIV in your catalyst control panel. And when you switch video drivers, be sure that you run driversweeper inbetween.

Did you say that disabling crossfire solved your problem? But only in fullscreen mode?

Hard drive issue seems unlikely to me, although a lot of things point in that direction. More likely the problem comes as a result from re-installing your OS.. somewhere along the line during a driver or software installation, something went awry. And with the use of crossfire on FFXIV there are too many variables to consider.

[3Jane]

Thank you very much for you advice. Yes, in full screen mode with crossfire disabled the problem goes away. Unfortunately vsync doesn't seem to have any affect.
I have been trying all day to rectify things but so far with no luck. It looks like I will need to reinstall the O.S. Fortunately it doesn't take too long with W7.
Onwards.

[3Jane]

Well, the sage continues. All started off well, the game even worked without graphic issues in my first test of it. I reinstalled the W7 HP 64 bit O.S, chipset drivers, graphic drivers ( AMD 11.4) and Kaspersky Internet security suit, just the basics to get a working system except the sound drivers. And of course the game.

Tested the game this early just to see if there were any issus which would make going on pointless. The game opened, and worked fine. No flickereing or uneven looking image ( a little like a poorly tuned television), everything fine. I thought, great!

Then I installed Firefox, thunderbird, Realplayer and the Creative Xfi driver suit. Restarted the system. Wanted to look at something in a folder before I tested to game, but was seeing an error mesage 'remote connection could not be made' or very similar. Restarted the system and decided to test the game.

Oh dear, there it was back again. All the game graphic issues. Decided to see if it was just the Creative sound drivers which were causing the trouble. When I tried to reinstall the sound drivers the installation crashed, but I finaly managed to get some basic sound software installed.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. I was all going so well, I thought it was all going to be fine. Other errors are appearing again now. So, it may well be a software issue. But I am installing nothing different at all, so the software environment is the same. And in terms of hardware the only difference is the new VelociRaptor HDD.

I decided the only thing to do now was to revert to my old Caviar Black and send this one back for replacement. Hopefully there will be no problems with that.


WAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHG spit spit spit.

[3Jane]

Post script. Refitted my old Caviar Black. The game and everything works fine. Only refunds offered by Amazon, but when that comes through I will make a second attempt at the raptor drive.

** After a short while the issue returned with this drive also.

[3Jane]

A brief update on all of this. Replaced the Velociraptor drive with a fresh installation of all the software, sadly the issue persists. Tested the memory sticks and tried everthing I could find. Also replaced all the data cables on the hard drives, and the DVI cable. With no improvement.
One thing I found which may give a clue to anyone able to advise me on this. When I open Aion full screen, then atl/tab to desktop, then maximise the game again. The flickering and banding has gone. Both in that game and when I close Aion and reopen FFXIV, there also.
Having tried everything I can find I now worry in case it is a faulty monitor (LG W2361) or one of my two ATI 5850 cards. Neither of which would be cheap. I have tried 11.2, 11.3, 11.4 and 11.5 drivers.
It's all rather disheartening.