5870 freezing vertical lines during games crossfire

[knjhoward98]

I figured out what is messing everyones 5870 gpu up. Along the lines of games freezing with sound loops, games freezing and having to reset it, games freezing to vertical lines with sound loop then coming back on then freezing again and having to reset it ( the computer ), games freezing to vertical grey lines, games freezing to vertical blue lines, etc.

I have also figured out the problem of the WEI score and it being 6.0.

First of all I dont know where to start a thread at. This is my first time using any forum sites so forgive me if I violate any precious rules! JK!! I do not know how to start my own thread but I want this information to get out to the world since it has plagued almost everyone with a 5000 series gpu.

OK, So I bought my 2 XFX 5870 XXX edition GPUs a few days ago. I have been having all sorts of problems like the ones listed above. I read every forum imaginable in the last 3 days. Some forums talked about memory problems, some about driver issues, some about hardware issues. I myself concluded to the driver issue so I kept my GPU waiting on new drivers. In the mean time I was still OCing and tuning everything in my new rig and I did this that stopped all crashing and freezing to vertical lines with sound loops and all mentioned above. And it also raised my WEI score from 6.0 to 7.9 with my GPUs!!!

So here is what I did. I was playing with my WEI score because like most of you I was very dissatisfied with 6.0 and having the best GPU on the market considering my 8800gts 640mb card produced a score of 7.3. So anyways, in my ATI Catalyst I was setting my cards to 900/1300 and while I was running the WEI score it would either freeze to Vertical lines and Id reset or just crash and Id have to reset. Well I decided to have my Catalyst out while doing the score one time to see the temp of the card and other things ( including the fact that the current values are 157/300 before I start ). Well while running the WEI score the current values went all the way to 900/1300 (so that takes care of that assumption that the cards are underclocked. ( the 157/300 ) I know are 2d values and the first few test in the WEI score are 3d test so the GPU automatically gets put through the ringer.
Well, the first time I watched the catalyst while running the WEI I noticed the current values go to 900/1300 and I switched cards to my 2nd GPU in the catalyst and noticed my clocks were set differently on both cards! And the Temp on the 1st card was hitting well over 65. So I stopped the test and PUT BOTH CARDS CLOCKS to 900/1300 . And I set the fans to 45 percent which is loud but bare with me.

I ran the test again and no crash during the 3d assesment tests and my GPU stayed around 52 degrees during the test. After the test was over then I had a score of 7.9!!
Then I went to play a game and left my fans around 45 degrees and made sure both of the GPUs clocks were the same and PRESTO!! Hasnt crashed since.

So I was thinking maybe everyone who has had this problem was either running Crossfire / Xfire and didnt have their fans turned up enough or their GPUs clocks were set differently or both.

I really hope this helps. If it didnt totally cure my problem which is identical with so many other peoples problems then I wouldnt have posted it. My freezing and crashes were severe enough to put in my other GPUs for the time being. Until this morning when I decided to give it another go.

Hope it helps. Please let me know.

 

[dmd71]

The stripes problem is strange one for sure, lots of different solutions, with some working for some and not others. From what I read your solution was upping the fan speed to keep the cards cooler. Im currently running 2 5870s in xfire and luckily I havent had the issues but I was quite concerned about it being an issue before I purchased. My system started out as p55 based single 5870 i7860 running one saphire card on win7 64 ult. A week ago i decided i wanted to xfire and realized to do it right It would require an x58 setup. I purchased ga x58 udr3 MB i7920 and another saphire 5870. Both setups were OC'd 3.6 running ram at 1600. This machine being triple channel and other being dual. Both systems were run on gigabyte MBs using the same mushkin ddr3. All windows updates , using catylist 9.12 and the hotfix. Either of my 5870s have been OC'd at all. nor fan speeds touched. My top card idles @ 44c and maxes with crysis 81c. the bottom card idles @ 35c and maxes at 73c. Cards very close together so top one doesnt get as much air. At first reading all these stripes posts i figured HW for sure, then later I suspected software. Now I am just not sure. The one thing I am trying to get across is there is a few of us that are having 0 issues and that includes having one of the cards in two complete different setups, which again makes me wonder if at least some of the problems are not HW related. I am hoping some of this might help the people with issues make a decision to RMA as i suspect some of these stripe issues are 100% HW related. These are my first ATI cards in a longtime and so far they are treating me very well. Good luck to anyone with issues and if I can offer any more information about my setup to help you solve your issues just ask.

 

[knjhoward98]

You almost got what I said. Turning the fan up for me just made it cooler. What helped was that I am running crossfire and my cards were at different settings cause I played with them. Then I figured out that I played with them and mismatched the settings.
When I first got my card it worked good I guess but I oc everything and undoubtly oced my card immediately. But I only oced one of them thinking the other would fall in line.
Since I was having the issue of the same kind as almost everyone else I looked into it to see if maybe they had similar setups. They did.

Here is my setup 2 XFX 5870 XXX OC Edition GPUs
Xeon w3520 aka i7 920s big bro
EVGA SLI x58
12gb OCZ Platinum 1866mhz CL9 DDR3
1200 watt True Power PSU Antec
HAF 932 Case
2 x 500gb Seagates 7200rpm 16mb in Raid 0 128kb stripe
Win 7 U 64bit

And I noticed that everyones setup I saw had 1 thing in common, that was Xfire. And if they are like me which it looks like it then they might have OCed one card and not the other.

Bout your card, 81 Degrees is pretty high, you might need to up your fan.

I got my cards from not doing the freezing to stripes with sound loop by making sure both cards have the same clock speed.

 

[Tyrevolution]

Hi,
I recently purchased 2x5870s and was a little disappointed with the low Windows Experience Index (was getting 6.0). I had not yet touched OC settings at all, so that was running at stock with fans automatically adjusted.

After reading this thread, I manually set the fans to 100% (just to test), and immediately saw an imporvement; my WEI scores are now hitting 7.8.

This also seems to have resolved another issue; while in a game (specifically, Just Cause 2 as I haven't tried any others yet) I was getting blinks of different colours and stuff. Hard to explain, not freezing or lines as outlined above, but weird blocks of pixellation. Anyway, seems to have cured it.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey