Help with strange graphical occurences

[Incoming]

This is what happens;

The first levels in Half-Life 2 were totally fine - I got all the way through Ravenholm without experiencing any errors or bugs what so ever ! But then, suddenly, without me doing anything particular, texture artifacts began to show up. What is so strange is that after almost every load-point, texture artifacts comes up and it looks horrible. But most of the times, it doesn't requre more than that I quicksave and load that save back up again (without closing the game) and once the save is loaded, all artifacts are gone.

And EVERY TIME I start Half-Life 2 and begin playing, EVERYTHING is just fine - it's not until after the next load-point that the texture begins to be messed up. I have been using the Catalyst 4.10 drivers since I installed H-L 2, artifacts came up without me making any changes in any settings at all. And just now, I tried installing the Catalyst 4.11 - but the artifacts are still there after the first LOAD I get to. Sometimes, there's just one single object in the world that gets these artifacts, whilst the rest of the textures are clean.

My g-card has not been overclocked - it runs steadily at recommended temperature and I have tried lowering the in-game settings to one step below what the game recommended - but artifacts still shows up. I've attached a few screens with the artifacts in action.

What can I do about this ?
(BTW, Card works fine with all other new games out there so I doubt that it is something wrong with my hardware.)

 

[d'keesto]

I have the same problem. Started in Red Letter Day, but got way worse at the end of Ravenholm. I have a Radeon 9600pro.

Anyone know the cause?

 

[Phirax]

Yeah its a problem with the ATi drivers, you need to install the 4.12 Betas with the Catalyst Control Center, and using the CCC you need to switch a function called AI (not artificial intell..) off..

 

[StarBob]

well I was about to show my screenshot of the same thing but I guess now I don't have to... let me see if that fixes mine too.

 

[Darth Valium]

ive had this prob too, 4.12b or disabling ai didnt helped much.

try the drivers from dna, the one based on the 4.11cat has fixed this problem.

remember to not uninstall your radeon-drivers before dna-installation, otherwise it wont find your vga.

 

[Phirax]

Darth Valium, is you card a 9X series radeon or an X6/8 series, disabling AI only works on the 9x series..

 

[d'keesto]

Thanks for the help. That solved the graphical anomalies. However, the stuttering issue started for me, and the load times doubled. Wierd.

 

[Phirax]

Thanks for the help. That solved the graphical anomalies. However, the stuttering issue started for me, and the load times doubled. Wierd.

Did it fix it my way by switching off A.I, and I assume HL2 was patched by steam? because if so, since the patch, the game has slowed down a heap, and i now get that stuttering issue that i never got before the patch.

 

[StarBob]

What I have noticed... is that everyone is getting a different reaction to this patch. Some people have lost the stuttering problem they were plagued with. Some people have less stuttering but it still exists. Some gain stuttering, some get stuttering where there was none before, some can't even play the game at all. In many cases the patch did so little no one even noticed that it had been applied. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person with longer load times, though I'm not too bothered by it, it does seem odd that so many different things could come from such a small patch.

Regardless, the AI switch worked for me, and yes my load times have increased. The stuttering left after I changed the values in the console... but ever since I started the game it has been doing a freeze and speed loop after some random amount of time. After I turned off A.I. in the CCC, it seems that the time it takes to freeze has increased considerably... allowing me to not only play the game but enjoy it much more. Though it's taken a lot of work on my part, I'm still much more satisfied that I can play the game more than I could before.