AMD 7870 Hawk acting up out of the box.

[ushawar]

Hi,
Just before Christmas my old nvidia 460 card started acting up. At first it was unable to work under load without crashing but the problem progressed to where it was causing Chrome to crash.

I got myself a new card for Christmas, a 7870 Twin Frozr Hawk edition from MSI. The issues with Chrome and most basic failures have ceased, but my 7870 will crash in League of Legends (not a particularly intensive game) after just a few minutes.

These crashes include blue screens (most rare), black screens with sound looping, and sometimes just an appcrash of LoL.

I'm updated to 12.10 drivers and I am running on stock settings according to my MSI afterburner (1100 core clock, 1200 memory clock). The card is not overheating, it gets up to about 41C under load, which is fantastic, but the crashes obviously are not.

I was just going to try to RMA it to newegg, but as a last ditch effort, I figured I'd ask you guys if you knew anything that I might not have considered.

Thanks!

 

[taurinemike]

This could also be a RAM error, blue screens are really popular when it comes to playing intense games. I would pull out all sticks but one and try different slots, process of elimination. Load a custom game of league and wait for a bit, see if your game crashes. If it does take that stick out and try a different one. Simply repeat this step with the different sticks and using different slots. In my experience blue screens come from memory dumps, not a dedicated gfx card. Also seeing that the old gfx was having similar problems also delivers me to believe it could be ram also.

 

[ushawar]

I will try this as soon as I get home. I forgot to mention that I'm getting screen flickers in league every ~30 seconds. Because of this, I think it is unlikely that the RAM is the issue, but I may be wrong. I have 4x2GB in my machine. Can my machine run on just one of those sticks?

 

[taurinemike]

I will try this as soon as I get home. I forgot to mention that I'm getting screen flickers in league every ~30 seconds. Because of this, I think it is unlikely that the RAM is the issue, but I may be wrong. I have 4x2GB in my machine. Can my machine run on just one of those sticks?

Windows 7 will run off of 2GB worth of RAM. However don't run too many programs. If your screen is flickering that is defiantly a gfx card issue. I would try (while in league) edit your video settings to Anti-Aliasing x2(or higher) or so. This will buffer your frames a little better and you should see the flicker.

 

[ushawar]

Windows 7 will run off of 2GB worth of RAM. However don't run too many programs. If your screen is flickering that is defiantly a gfx card issue. I would try (while in league) edit your video settings to Anti-Aliasing x2(or higher) or so. This will buffer your frames a little better and you should see the flicker.

I have anti aliasing at max. How does this help me with the crashes though?

 

[taurinemike]

Sorry I am correcting myself on the sentence, "This will buffer your frames a little better and you SHOULD NOT see the flicker."

Anti aliasing does not help with the crashes it simply helps the flickering. If your still having problems with the card and lines its either a hardware problem or a software problem. A few things you could try is Reseeding your gfx card and/or rolling back your drivers for your card. 1st thing I would do is reseed your card.

 

[ushawar]

Sorry I am correcting myself on the sentence, "This will buffer your frames a little better and you SHOULD NOT see the flicker."

Anti aliasing does not help with the crashes it simply helps the flickering. If your still having problems with the card and lines its either a hardware problem or a software problem. A few things you could try is Reseeding your gfx card and/or rolling back your drivers for your card. 1st thing I would do is reseed your card.

I fixed it! There was a post on LoL technical forums about this. The 12.11 beta drivers fixed it (and brought my frames in league from ~80 to 150-200 to boot!)

Thanks for your time though!

 

[ushawar]

Best answer selected by ushawar.