ATi 4870 Crashes, is this driver related?

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aids40k

aids40k

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Sep 4, 2008
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Hi all,

I'm posting on behalf of my not-so-pc-savvy girlfriend whos just bought herself an ATi HD 4870 by Sapphire so I'll try and explain as best I can.

The system crashes when games are played, of any standard (Crysis, Spore, Dawn of War, Supreme Commander etcetc)..which is worrying and more often than not once Vista Ultimate 64bit kicks in and simply closes the non-responsive game all the pixels are corrupted on the screen so the pc has to be reset most times!!! 🙁

I've already contacted members on the ATi's forums but they dont seem knowledgable of such things albeit they've tried to help without success (same problems for them) and switching between driver versions 8.6/8.7/8.8 has had no change in stability whatsoever.

Nothing is overclocked on the system (intel q6600, asus maximus formula mobo, 800mhz ddr2 ram)
so can you help me clamp down on what the problem is so it can be resolved?

Feel free to ask any questions and thanks in advance!
 
im going to have to ask the obvious question of "are the power cables plugged in". It is necessary to have both 6-pin PCI-E power cables plugged in. The next question is, what PSU is in the comp. If the PSU can't put out 2x 75W then the card may shut off when put under load. Usually a good 550W will do the trick, but more may be necessary.
 
I've had a similar thing happen with a couple games, the worst being Civ4:Beyond the Sword. All of a sudden, the game crashes out, though I rarely have to restart the computer afterward. I checked the PSU, plenty of power. The temp runs about 82c, hot, but not unbearably so. I wondered about the rest of the computer, so I tried an old 8800 GTS 640. It runs without a problem. That seems to leave a problem with the 4870 and the game. By the way, the 4870 works fine for everything except two games. By the way, I've observed the same problems with an ATI 3870 and a XTX 1900, so its not only the 4870 that's being affected. The affected computers run a variety of OS's, including Vista 64 Ultimate, XP Pro, and XP64.

There has been a rumor floating, and I label this as rumor only, that Nvidia has pressured some companies to issue game patches which either disable part of the ATI cards or otherwise cause a conflict, thus re-enforcing the TWIMTBP labeling. I can only state my personal observation that with all three of my ATI card machines, the crashes occur, but not when equipped with the Nvidia card. It could be blamed on ATI's driver package as well, so I don't totally leave out the possibility that the real problem lies with ATI and no one else. I've tried the various ATI drivers without effect, so for the moment, I can't give any real answer to the problem, only share in the frustration.
 


A friend of mine has a 4850 and everything runs silk smooth on his rig. I have a X1800XL and everything runs... Well, yeah, runs, lol.

I haven't patched all the things i play (cept WoW), but at least CoD4, GRID and WoW don't appear to be making the cards crash.

If that rumor is indeed a heavy one... Hope it's not true.

Esop!
 
righty, just to clear up some questions the system was built at a shop, then rebuilt by myself coz they messed up on the then 8600GT which wrecked the former power supply. its now running on an 800watt modualar power supply and other games for example Racedriver Grid works flawlessly

the card runs quite warm, never above 75C and the new Thermalright TRad2 is going on at as soon as that comes available because I'm one for low temps - my 9600GSO oc'd is at 50 load with dual screens @ 1024*1280 because of my own handywork.

what patch is available Journeyman? *quote* "I haven't patched all the things i play (cept WoW), but at least CoD4, GRID and WoW don't appear to be making the cards crash."

and would that patch stop these annoying crashes?

thanks for your help everyone =]
 


I was talking about game patches themselves. Now, there are also driver patches around for the Catalyst driver suit.

Check on ATi's site and you should find them quickly.

Esop!
 
if it is modular hmmm.. PSU. well if it works and shows up than yeah.. some problems with drivers or patches. stick with 8.6 hotfix. i usethose.. works perfectly for me
 
your problem is that your card probably switches from 2d to 3d mode depending on desktop and application

you can force it to stay at 750mhz as in cpu intensive games it seems to go crazy and change and change and change until you crash, do this through CCC if you want, but make sure you save a backup profile
 
yeah we've tried locking it at high speeds but to no luck so far, and the 8.6 driver is crazier than the newer versions. Would it be better to get a refund and save up to get a 4870x2 from a different brand?
 
thats what im doing mate, returning my gfx and cpu to scan, going to get a intel e8500 and geforce 260, if you stick with your 4870.. u can always re-buy one when you read in a new driver release that its been fixed
 
i had a similar problem with my 4850 crashing all the time, which i fixed by updating my wireless adaptor driver, seems that older netgear drivers have conflict issues with ati cards but driver conflict problems normally cause blue screen crashes (or restarts if enabled in windows). Id check that ur running all the latest drivers for ur motherboard and other components
 
I'm assuming the PSU is a quality unit, so the only problem I can think of is a driver conflict since the card works ok on some games and on others it just doesn't. You stated earlier that the shop where you got the PC had an 8600GT stuffed in there and you changed it, well even if you uninstall nvidia drivers, there are times when files are left that have to be removed with Driver Cleaner Pro before installing a new set of display drivers (this is also true for ati cards).

What I would suggest that you do is to download Driver Cleaner Pro, uninstall the Ati display drivers, reboot, then run the app to clean for both nvidia and ati files, and finally reinstall the latest ati drivers (catalyst 8.8 I think). If this doesn't work, then I suggest you try a fresh installation of windows, this should fix any software related issues.
 
I did buy the Ati4850 and the computer would crash every time I did try to install the Catalyst drivers. I have a Nforce motherboard it is an Nvidia motherboard. I deleted the drivers completely, in safe mode, and reinstall just the Ati drivers without the catalyst drivers and it runs perfectly. I had two Gforce 8600 in SLI mode and now it is running 3 times as fast with just one 4850. It took me a couple of day to be realize the solution and run the pc without crashing. Hope this helps.
 
Hey

i'm new 2 overclocking so when i used overdrive 4 my 4870 i clicked on auto-tune which turned up the core from 750 - 835 mhz and the memory to about 1150 mhz, obviously when i tried this out on crysis it loaded upto 99% then a blank screen came and it crashed

so i put the settings back on the STOCK but now when i play crysis its s-l-o-w!!!

it lags for about 3 seconds every 20 seconds and is unplayable

even when the game is loading the music crashes and repeats a few times then it carries on loading....this didnt happen b4 my attempted OC

Other games like Far Cry 2 work perfect, just crysis is SLOW

any ideas???

This is my system:

Q6600 @ 3.00GHZ
4GB Ram 1066MHZ - Stock
P5K C ASUS
NZXT LEXA
500GB HD
700 Watt PSU
VISTA 32 Home Premium

ATi 4870 512MB - Latest Driver version 8.11

thanks!!
 
aha~!

I spent a long time researching how to fix this problem, as i had it myself the exact same one.

Sapphire implemented the power play wrongly or something, and the GPU switches from 500 to 750 very fast during gaming, and it crashes.

Easy fix, but slightly risky. Mine worked fine no problems at all.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=98860&enterthread=y&STARTPAGE=31

Thats the thread, first post on that page

http://rapidshare.com/files/150224290/Fix.rar.html

Only USE ON SAPPHIRE HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 PCI-E


Hope it helps!
 
Hey

the thing is, everything was working properly i've completed the whole game with no probs, but since my attempted OC on crysis its stuttering every 10 seconds, anyways my hard drive just went bad so i'm waiting 4 the replacement one

if i still have the same probs i will try that rapidshare file

cheers



 
Its seems - that any fault with a 4870 - HAS to be PSU related.

I know this is an old thread, but Im wrinting this for future users.

I wonder if you Posted a thread saying "PSU problems, any Ideas?" If there could be another possible issue? Or they may reply, "OK, what make is it?" : {}
 
Hi,

This is my first post. I have been reading up on this driver problem and cant seem to find an answer that works for me...

I cant imagine it to be a PSU issue as im running a Powercolor 4870 1GB with an Antec True Power Quattro 1000W. This is one of the top power supplies and with 1000W it couldnt possibly be running out of juice (yes, both power cables are connected to the graphics card).

I have tried it with Vista 64bit and that was blue screening games like Company of Heroes, COD4 and COD World at War. I attempted everything, even taking it to a computer repair store to fix. They found a half assed solution to install ATI 7.4 drivers and this fixed the blue screen issue but it would still have driver errors that would lock up the game for about 30 seconds, sometimes causing a crash.

I put it down to the 64bit platform, so i recently installed Vista 32bit... same problem. new ATI drivers, still driver crashing!

I would love if somebody could help me with this as i bought the computer in september 2008 and have had this problem ever since

The Rig:
AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5GHz
Asus M3A79-T Deluxe Motherboard
1G Powercolour 4870 PCS+ (with powercolors special aftermarket cooling they provide on this model)
Western Digital 1TB Black with 32Mb cache
Antec True Power Quattro 1000W PSU
Antec 1200 Gaming Case

All powering 24" widescreen (1920x1200) and 19" (1280x1024)

that should be all the info u need, sorry for the long post :-S

thanks
 
Check the card and CPU temperatures: GPUZ for the card and Speedfan or HWmonitor for the CPU.
Check your memory by running with only one stick installed at at time.
Check the Hard drive for errors both through windows and a SMART reader such as the one in Speedfan.
Reply in your own thread...GRRRRRR!:)
 
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