I have an AMD Radeon 6900 series

Steam had bioshock infinite on sale so I bought it. It recommended I update my driver so I went to AMD site, used their auto-detect, downloaded driver.

After downloading, my resolution is fucked with black bars along the sides and the colors are off. All text is blurred/smudged/pixelated like a jpeg. I've rolled back driver, uninstalled and reinstalled, uninstalled and not reinstalled, restarted a dozen ways, restored from a backup, and done everything every troubleshoot I've found suggests I do with the catalyst command center bullshit.

Nothing worked and I'm still fucked with this pixelated fucking text destroying my eyes as I try to read it. I've emailed their tech support but I was wondering if anyone here had any advice.

 

PC or laptop?

Have you rebooted to safe mode? Still screwed up?

 

PC. Still screwed up in safe mode.

 

What resolution are you supposed to have?

What resolution are you actually getting?

Try this:

1. Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display\Screen Resolution
2. Double check that everything on that screen is correct.
3. Go to Advanced Settings
4. Adapter
5. List All Modes
6. Choose the correct mode for your monitor.

 

The physical adapter seems fine, I reconnected it anyway but no change.

I've run 1920x1080 for the year I've had the system with no issues till now, and that's what it's set to now. However, it looks a little smaller and the image scaling doesn't match the monitor size and I've got small black borders all around the edges of the image.

I did that and set it to 1920x1080 @60Hz and no change.

Here's a screenshot of the pixellation that's my issue atm:



It looks a little better in the image, but it's straining my eyes to read or do anything on the computer now.

 

After murdering my eyes trying to read Prince who was promised, I've noticed that some lines of text are flattened and some are stretched, like a changing text size. I think parts of the screen are being pulled/stretched?

 

There are a few things to do. We're assuming it's a video driver problem, but it's also possible that the timing was coincidental and it's actually a monitor or hardware problem.

1. Do you have another video port on your PC? If it's only a year old, then there's a good chance that you have onboard video. Use your BIOS to switch to the o/b video and then plug your monitor into it.
   
   Boot into Windows and check if it's still blurry. Make sure you're still 1920x1080 @60Hz.
   
   While you're there, it's an excellent opportunity to properly uninstall your ATI driver. I know you've tried it before, but maybe this time is the charm. When you're done, reboot with your monitor plugged into your ATI card again. Windows Update should now have an old ATI driver update available. Use that. It's archaic, but rock solid.
   
   
2. Maybe you have some fancy pants monitor and it glitched. Have you tried unplugging it from the power [and keeping it unplugged for two minutes in case it holds a charge]?
   
   
3. If none of the above worked, then boot into Linux. If your graphics there are good, then that'll confirm that your hardware is okay.

 

1. I don't have onboard video.
I rolled back the driver but still had blurry text.

2. I tried it, still no dice.

3. Graphics look fine in Linux.

Loaded up Infinite though, and graphics look great, perfect in fact.

 

It was enabled, no luck.

 

Try these:

1. In the Catalyst Control Center do you have a slider for underscan/overscan in Display Properties? If so, try setting it to 0%.

2. If that fails and you have Windows 7, have you tried using AMD's Catalyst Uninstall Utility? If not, I'd give it a shot.

 

I have. Using the overscan sets the screen to match and gets rid of the black sidebars, but doesn't fix my text display issues. Setting it to default (0) does nothing for the text display and messes up the sidebars.

I have uninstalled the utility and it doesn't work either. Ended up reinstalling because steam/chrome/explorer kept crashing once it was uninstalled.


edit: More info. Youtube videos (both embedded and from youtube) don't fullsize. Hitting the fullsize screen makes them take up a little over a quarter of the screen, sitting in the top left corner. However, the controls for the videos appear where they should be had it gone into full screen properly. So I have to guess where to click on the black to control the video.

 

Run the Catalyst uninstall again and reboot, then go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Device Manager. Now search for your GPU (it might show up as an unidentified device) right click on it and select uninstall. Now another reboot and windows should find a new device and install it. Wait until it's finished and reboot again, and your display should be normal again. If your display is not normal now, then I fear that you will have to reinstall windows.

However if it's normal now, then manually create a new system restore point and download the CCleaner free. Start the CCleaner and go to the registy tab, let him search and once he's finished remove everything that has AMD or Catalyst in it's name. If the CCleaner found nothing, then you can now download and install the newest GPU-driver (don't use the automatic detect), if it did find something then reboot before you do that.

If the driver installation fucks up everything again, you can use the restore point you created to reset your windows and try another driver.

 

Ran the uninstall again, rebooted.
Went to device manager and uninstalled the GPU and everything is in 400x600 resolution or something low, text is normal.
Rebooted and windows said AMD Radeon 6900 installed, systems back to regular resolution.
Rebooted, display is back to pixelated.


Are you sure my only option now is to reinstall windows? I don't have a copy of windows and this one is possibly less than legal.

 

Well, since the unistall didn't work something is screwed up pretty badly, so I would say that a reinstall is most likely the best option. You can get official windows 7 .iso files from here - just scroll down and choose the one you have a key for (be sure to take one with SP1 and the correct bit version).

If you want to try some other things first, then open a cmd window and type "sfc /scannow" to check and repair corrupt system files. But I doubt that this will do anything. You can also try using Driver Sweeper. Last but not least, you can try booting from one of the .iso files after buring them to a dvd and try out the computer repair options.