4870x2 'stopped responding but has recovered'

[Stryda23]

Hi all,

When playing Dawn of War and other games my monitor goes black, my card revs up (as though it is resetting) and then if I'm lucky, the game continues. During this period a little notification pops up in the taskbar saying "your display adapter has stopped responding but has recovered."

There seems to be no pattern to these crashes, it can occur after 10 minutes or over the space of an hour. Other than the screen turning black there seems to be no other problems - no blue screen of death and the PC keeps running. Only once has it reset entirely following the problem. It's basically as though the card just 'stops' for a few seconds.

In another game, X3, the game will freeze for about 10 seconds and the HUD will vanish and reappear. Other than that, most games thend to lag quite more than I'd have though for such a powerful card.

Anyway, I've been searching online for a fix for ages but nothing really comes up. I'm also currently talking to sapphire to see if there's a fix but they're not being much use, and ATI help pointed me towards a solution to a problem I didn't even ask about. The guy then just suggested I RMA, something I don't want to do if the card is actually fine.

System specs are:

Vista x64
MSI K9A2 Platinum
Phenom 9850
4 GB Ram
Sapphire 4870x2

All drivers are up to date for the card and motherboard, and windows update has everything installed. Other than that, haven't a clue what the problem is. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance guys,

M

 

[coozie7]

STRYDA, which X3? Reunion or Terran Conflict? I also get `pauses` in X3TC
and put it down to my feeble RAM Because there`s a lot of HD activity during the `pause`.

And please tell us your PSU specs. If it`s old/weak it might be the problem, not the card.

 

[Stryda23]

Hey guys,

PSU is 650w Antec Earthwatts, bought it with all the components of the PC. Surely that should be enough?

@ coozie, its Terran Conflict, awesome game totally hooked lol, although I never got into Reunion which is strange. When you get the pauses does your HUD vanish as well? It will freeze for around 5 seconds, the HUD will vanish for about one second and then everything will carry on as normal.

Whats the best way of checking/altering my fan speed settings btw? Perhaps the card is overheating? Very strange though since I've had no problems with Crysis Warhead and that's a far more demanding game. So far it's just COD4, Dawn of War and X3:TC

Cheers,

M

 

[V3NOM]

fan speed.

 

[M-Ajesty]

Doesn't have to do with the fan speed at all.
This is a very known issue with the HD cards of ATi and the newer cards of nVidia.
I'm getting ~4 of them a day, andl ike 0-7 blue screens. Using the HD4850.

The issue is known as a driver/vista problem, although Vista is saying ATi and nVidia are making bad drivers. While ATi and nVidia say Vista doesn't support their cards good enough.
That's why this problem has been going for about 1,5 year now, there ain't any solution so far.
I'm on a (dutch) forum, with a huge thread about this problem, it has over 20 pages already. And it's full of people who have the same problem, none of them have found out how to fix it so far.

 

[M-Ajesty]

Low fan speed or hot graphic cards don't 'cause driver issues. That's all I'm gonna say.

 

[M-Ajesty]

Alright, I have to agree with you on that, I've been to fast with on my decision, I'm sorry.

The driver issue with this so called "error" mostly is the error called "atikmdag.sys". He could take a look at his error logs for more info.

 

[Stryda23]

Hey guys yeah I've looked up on other sites but a lot of the time they get an error like "Display Driver nvlddmkm stopped responding" or something. With my problem I don't actually get the nvlddmkm bit, although I think that's an Nvidia issue.

How can I check my error log to see what's actually going on? I'm not as computer literate as I sometimes like to think =) what I find odd is how it happens most commonly with Dawn of War after about 10 or so minutes - and I can play Crysis for 2 hours and never have a problem. Surely my card would be more likely to overheat with crysis than DoW?

Anyways, read somewhere else that it might have something to do with 2D business, as the card switches from 2D to 3D depending on what is being rendered. Vista can't handle this along with the drivers, so interprets this as a problem and resets the card. Total pain in the arse if that's the case,

M

 

[Stryda23]

On that site it said something about there being a BIOS update for sapphire cards for that issue (although that was for the HD4870)

Another workaround solution was to change the 2D clock speeds, although I'm willing to give that a miss. My card's fast enough as it is thanks, and I'd rather keep the warranty intact

 

[V3NOM]

changing 2D clocks voids the warranty? wtf

 

[Stryda23]

Surely changing any clocks does? I didn't think it was ok to fiddle with those sort of things from a warranty standpoint?

 

[Argonoss]

Its not your hardware , I repaeat its not your hardware

In the game graphics options simply turn off shadows, job done
PS i had this issue with aalmost the same hardware as you.

 

[smander53]

In fact the real things is Catalyst AI without it the game run smoother and no weird graphical bug with catalyst on i got a lot of different graphical bug and sometimes freeze after 15min or some times after 4h without Catalyst AI i got the full potential of the game.

If it can help

 

[mrbobc]

you could try a clean reinstall of your driver's and also clean out your registry with ccleaner (its free) and has worked for me in the past.

its a tdr event and it could be down to your card being oc'ed. it happens more often if you oc your card so its putting a strain on your card more. it could even be a faulty card but unlikely and yes the 'nvlddmkm' error is for nvidia cards only.

 

[mrbobc]

oh yeah! type 'event veiwer' in your start/search box to find your error log

 

[pb7280]

same thing happens to me on my HD4850
usually when my gpu clock is too high, the screen goes blank then comes back about 5-10 seconds later. If I can see the desktop a bubble says that "radeon 4800 series driver stopped responding and was successfully recoverd" or something like that. (also during this process my card also revs up.
could also be that you dont have enough power the first phenoms were real power suckers and a quad core with an X2 card may bee too much for 650w

 

[bobbyklump]

Hi I have a new xps 800 dell desktop
Its only 2 days old
I have only been on the net so far and the screen goes/ fades to black and comes back

There is a note saying drive failed to respond but has recovered (nvid/ kernel)

Have a good a bad desktop?
Should I return it?
please advise/ help?