Jagged Shadows, Low LOD, Jagged AA, and Shimmering Borders

[SStre2]

After almost a year of trial and error from thousands of users we think we have a lead on the problem. As stated in the title there is a largely known problem that causes shadows to be jagged, low level of detail, jagged AA, and shimmering borders. Most would probably go to the AMD forum of Nvidia as it seems it is a graphical rendering error. Most thought this but through the year of testing Ryzen has come out. Now let me preface and say not everyone has this problem and the cause is still unknown. I am one that is affected by it and it simply started after I turned on my PC the next day. In some games it is more prominent and also some games have issues that are unrelated that some users confuse with what we are talking about. Now the reason Ryzen is important is a user on the LTT forum had the issue before and once they installed a new Ryzen CPU they said everything was better, shadows blended properly and weren't jagged, lighting was better, LOD at greater distances was apparent on the same settings, and the shimmering jagged AA problems were gone. As of now there are 4 confirmed cases of having the problem and upgrading to Ryzen made it vanish. Many users have been turned down from tech support or simply ignored. There has never been a strong answer from a dev and after hundreds of pages on forums no one has yet to find an answer of what causes it and a solution. As you might expect with thousands having the issue hundreds of thousands of combinations of CPUs, motherboards, memory, and every tiny detail about them is different. Every driver setting has been carefully tweaked, people have bought many CPUs over hoping to fix the problem to no avail. I will provide all the forum posts so you can throughly read through every testing means done and the specs. Enough talking and here are some videos showing the issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiwhQo5UDlk&feature=youtu.be PayDay 2 Intel Test 1 - YouTube

PayDay 2 has head bob with breathing so it works very well to see the shimmering lines and jagged appearance of the escalator. All settings were max and it was played at 1440p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zMSX94vMB4 MC Problem - YouTube

Due to minecraft's grass on top blocks and it being a block based game you can see a grid pattern that shows every border. In the end you can see shimmering on the edges of the block. I used to play on an old macbook pro dual core and the settings were no where near what they are in the video but I never had this issue. I also tested older versions of minecraft and they all share the same problem. Setting again were max 1440p.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3Qi6YYg2_s Jagged Bro - YouTube

This was the first time I noticed the problem. The settings are max 1080p but 4:3 this time so some jaggedness is going to happen but the level of jagged in the video is much greater than what it was the day before. The ump magazine was what caught my eye as it was very jagged compared to the day before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9NBtsSHu-E Graphics Issue - YouTube

Now in overwatch the settings were again ultra 1080p and this was the second game I played the day I noticed the issue. The issue I started seeing is apparent in an official Blizzard trailer that was posted a couple months after it started for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3xFKckFCGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3xFKckFCGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3xFKckFCGM [NOW AVAILABLE] Eichenwalde | New Map Preview | Overwatch - YouTube

You can see as the camera pans slowly white shimmering on all the edges of objects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytNZyuk2Iew texture flickering, pixelated shadows, texture-popins, low draw distance - YouTube

The settings of the games is unknown as the user didn't specify but the problem is present through out all games new and old. Users in the comments also say they are having the same issue.

Here are all the forum posts about it.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/831430/geforce-900-series/pixelated-shadows-texture-popins-gtx-960-970-980-ect-/1/ https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/831430/geforce-900-series/pixelated-shadows-texture-popins-gtx-960-970-980-ect-…

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/638876-jagged-shadowspop-inlow-lod-and-jagged-aa/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/638876-jagged-shadowspop-inlow-lod-and-jagged-aa/

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandTheftAutoV_PC/comments/32o4j4/anyone_else_seeing_shadow_quality_change_at_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandTheftAutoV_PC/comments/32o4j4/anyone_else_seeing_shadow_quality_change_at_a/

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/42m6he/anyone_else_getting_distracted_by_cascade_shadow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/42m6he/anyone_else_getting_distracted_by_cascade_shadow/

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/922631/pixelated-shadows-jaggies-shimmering-textures-lines-around-objects-stair-climbing-bad-aa-tessel/ https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/922631/pixelated-shadows-jaggies-shimmering-textures-lines-around-objects-stair…

User who found Ryzen helps https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/784090-4790k-to-r7-1700x-comparison-updated/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/784090-4790k-to-r7-1700x-comparison-updated/

According to one user they found this to be the solution

"Imagine running a game such as GTA V. The first time you run it the settings are usually set on lowest meaning no AF or AA, low shadow resolution and distance. So the NvAPI takes these settings and unloads them into the L2 Cache of GPU so that the Stream-multiprocessors can read them and when ever you exit the game NvAPI should force the GPU to flush the settings by writing Global Settings into the cache area. For some reason it's stuck. It can happen when you change a setting by dramatically tuning it up and the variant is not fast enough to rewrite. Now the settings cannot be verified by any variant in order to be flushed. The only way to fix this is to find the way to flush the cache and unload a clean NvAPI into the cache. Now this also answers why this happens again when you insert new parts into the PC and that is because the drivers always keep the same buggy variant in their backup files and loads it into memory if its missing. It also works the other way, if you reinstall the drivers, it automatically reads the variants setting from the cache and make a copy of the variant. In order to fix it we have to unlock the resources and unload a variant . However we have no idea how to do that atm."

[SStre2]

Bought a Ryzen 1200 and will come back with test results. I plan to keep everything the same except for motherboard and CPU swap. This will allow us to know if the problem is CPU bound or motherboard.

[idata]

SamJam: Thank you very much for letting us know those updates. If you have the option to swap the processor and board, you can always try that, once you get the chance please let us know the results.

Any questions, please let me know. Regards,Alberto R

[SStre2]

Sorry for the late response but Ryzen indeed fixed the problems happening. I showed it to my friends as well to make sure I wasn't crazy and there is a difference in image quality. So I do believe there is something wrong with intel CPUs causing such issues presented by myself and others.

[idata]

SamJam: No problem at all, thank you for providing those details. As mentioned before, the fact that everything works fine with the AMD processor could be related to compatibility or drivers. We really appreciate you took the time to share those results in our communities, at this point the problem seems to be related to compatibility between the video card and the processor.

Now, based on the information above and the fact that the processor has 3 years of warranty, you can always get in contact directly with Intel to replace the unit:

Chat support:

http://intelsupportchat.force.com/icslivechat/ics_tech_processor_ww_english_Chat http://intelsupportchat.force.com/icslivechat/ics_tech_processor_ww_english_Chat,

For phone support, depending on your location, you will see the contact information on the links below:

EMEA contact information: http://intel.ly/28QeAF3 http://intel.ly/28QeAF3

APAC contact information: http://intel.ly/1ITfjUF http://intel.ly/1ITfjUF

LAR contact information: http://intel.ly/29c0rW4 http://intel.ly/29c0rW4

North America: Phone Number 1-916-377-7000, Monday - Friday 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM (Pacific Time).

Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Alberto R

[bayde]

Hello, I have this problem about a year, I have İ7 6700K I wish I would seen SamJam solution before I bought a PS4 Pro:) I have seen before at a forum threads that Ryzen could fix this jagged AA and the other problems but I could'nt be sure and after I asked in a forum about does Ryzen really fix the problem, someone reply '' I have ryzen - problem's not cpu''. I was almost buying a Ryzen but after that I have change my mind because I wasn't be sure that this is the %100 percent solution and I really didn't wanna waste more money for nothing.

SamJam Can you tell me which motherboard did you bought with Ryzen?

My question is you said we can contact with intel to replace the unit. I don't see how can I convince them to replace my CPU with a new one, I mean they won't see a problem to replace it. And even İf I get a new 6700k I think the problem will persist I mean you are saying problem related to compatibility or drivers, Can İntel release a update or something for fixing this problem? Because it's looks like a lot of people have this problem.