Polygon spikes, spears, and tears during gameplay

It could be artifacts like Spartan said. Mine took the form of lots of sparkling red dots in Doom 3, and white dots in Hitman Contracts. Having the latest video drivers and even rolling them back to previous versions did not help for me.

After hearing someone else having the same problem as me, they suggested underclocking the video card by 20Mhz. I underclocked my card by 10Mhz to 15Mhz and this worked for me, it removed 99% to 100% of the dots. I had an ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256mb when this happened.

Don't ask me the science behind why underclocking my card reduced the artifacts, because I have no idea.

It could be artifacts like Spartan said. Mine took the form of lots of sparkling red dots in Doom 3, and white dots in Hitman Contracts. Having the latest video drivers and even rolling them back to previous versions did not help for me.

After hearing someone else having the same problem as me, they suggested underclocking the video card by 20Mhz. I underclocked my card by 10Mhz to 15Mhz and this worked for me, it removed 99% to 100% of the dots. I had an ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256mb when this happened.

Don't ask me the science behind why underclocking my card reduced the artifacts, because I have no idea.

liquidzero123

Your card was most likely overheating. Lowering the frequencies lowers the temperature. The TC might want to look into that too. Underclocking does cost you performance though so, if it is overheating, look into why the card isn't sufficiently cooled instead (it is not uncommon to be as simple as dust building up on fan and heatsink).