ATI Catalyst 13.1 Black Screen/ BSOD

[ezekiel2517]

Hello, and thanks for your help. I recently upgraded my computer to Windows 8 (a clean install), and was updating all of my drivers. Everything was going fine until I got to the drivers for my Crossfire 6870/6850 graphics cards. During the installation of the latest (13.1) catalyst drivers, my screen flashes as normal during a driver update, but then freezes on a black screen. On a hard restart I get a BSOD on atikmpag.sys. This issue also occurred on windows 7 with anything past the 12.11 drivers. I tried manually installing the drivers in safe mode, which works but still BSODs on a restart. The most progress I've made was getting to my desktop with the 13.1 drivers manually installed, but the BSOD occurred after a restart. I'm not overclocking anything. Thanks in advance.

Specs:
Windows 8
AMD Phenom II x6 1075T (stock)
Crossfire HD6870/6850
128gb Crucial M4 SSD
Asus M5A97

Current drivers:
Catalyst 12.10
All other drivers (chipset, SATA etc) all up to date

 

[kickthedamcat]

tomorrow avo I might try installing with windows power features disabled.

 

[Lumpido]

sorry messed up last msg mst have deleted text code

your problem does sound different to ours but maybe your issue is linked into a flaw similar to what we experience in the 13.1 ccc or lap top equivalent drivers, please tell amd. also from memory I had a similar problem with atikmpag.sys file or something similar and what I did to get around it and use my oldish laptop was to run msconfig and turn of start up items that disabled catalyst control centre ( stop all automatic processes for ccc from starting ) don't stop actual graphic driver though. that worked, but in doing so I had a power issue for windows powering down the display.

our problem is more the entire pc stops responding and I think I hear my hard drives park which would mean my pc turns off without telling the psu to cut power, maybe this is a power issue for both of us ?

The laptop is indeed working just fine with the backlight off. I can even hook up an external VGA screen and it works nicely.
The idea of turning off CCC & Co is interesting. I have personally tried to compare the regkeys for the 12.1 vs the latest drivers to find a difference ... I haven't had much luck. But did manage to make a frankenbuild of 12.1 with 13.6 ontop and got it to work in a really strange way. No doubt some registry entries survived .. or something along those lines.

The issue seems to be some driver conflict on the 68xx series cards with some niche configurations it would seem. I cannot really bring this to AMD since it is a laptop with a switchable graphics card. They will tell me to go to HP. HP will point me to an ancient driver or will tell me to use Leshcats drivers (which are pretty good.. just not good for 120Hz + 6850m).

Either way I feel your pain! I think this will be the last time I am getting something with an AMD. I am just hedging that they will find a way to fix your issue and that it is somehow related to mine.

 

[kickthedamcat]

sorry messed up last msg mst have deleted text code

your problem does sound different to ours but maybe your issue is linked into a flaw similar to what we experience in the 13.1 ccc or lap top equivalent drivers, please tell amd. also from memory I had a similar problem with atikmpag.sys file or something similar and what I did to get around it and use my oldish laptop was to run msconfig and turn of start up items that disabled catalyst control centre ( stop all automatic processes for ccc from starting ) don't stop actual graphic driver though. that worked, but in doing so I had a power issue for windows powering down the display.

our problem is more the entire pc stops responding and I think I hear my hard drives park which would mean my pc turns off without telling the psu to cut power, maybe this is a power issue for both of us ?

The laptop is indeed working just fine with the backlight off. I can even hook up an external VGA screen and it works nicely.
The idea of turning off CCC & Co is interesting. I have personally tried to compare the regkeys for the 12.1 vs the latest drivers to find a difference ... I haven't had much luck. But did manage to make a frankenbuild of 12.1 with 13.6 ontop and got it to work in a really strange way. No doubt some registry entries survived .. or something along those lines.

The issue seems to be some driver conflict on the 68xx series cards with some niche configurations it would seem. I cannot really bring this to AMD since it is a laptop with a switchable graphics card. They will tell me to go to HP. HP will point me to an ancient driver or will tell me to use Leshcats drivers (which are pretty good.. just not good for 120Hz + 6850m).

Either way I feel your pain! I think this will be the last time I am getting something with an AMD. I am just hedging that they will find a way to fix your issue and that it is somehow related to mine.

yea I'm gonna slowly faze out amd until only thing that is amd is the processor (and that's only because there cheap if I see a i5 or i7 on ebay for a good price ill grab it and put it away, then all ill need is a good price intel board) all ready have my eye on a gtx 560 ti and a 660 ti, think ill go the 560 though





;0

 

[kickthedamcat]

yea made up my mind and purchased a ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti 1GB DC II DDR5, not the best card in the world but I got it for a good price I think, and it pisses all over hd 7750 or hd 7750's crossfire.
may slap one of my hd 7750's on ebay to get a little money back and keep the other as a spare.

 

[antony209494]

yea made up my mind and purchased a ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti 1GB DC II DDR5, not the best card in the world but I got it for a good price I think, and it pisses all over hd 7750 or hd 7750's crossfire.
may slap one of my hd 7750's on ebay to get a little money back and keep the other as a spare.

Over a single 7750: yes. Over 7750 in crossfire not really! I see most of you are switching to nvidia. I had hoped that AMD would address the issue. I already switched to a 990FXA-UD3 so I am not affected by it anymore but it's sad they didn't fix this.

 

[Mahisse]

I thought it wasonly cards before the 7000 series that didn't work in crossfire?

 

[kickthedamcat]

I thought it wasonly cards before the 7000 series that didn't work in crossfire?

No I had exact same problems with dual hd 7750,s even AMD acknowledged my problem was because of there drivers and seems related to motherboards with a amd 970 chip. even though I have gave up on xfire with my board and purchased a NVidia singe card (wasn't giving amd more money) I will still keep an eye on this thread and amd drivers and still demand they fix this.

 

[kickthedamcat]

yea made up my mind and purchased a ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti 1GB DC II DDR5, not the best card in the world but I got it for a good price I think, and it pisses all over hd 7750 or hd 7750's crossfire.
may slap one of my hd 7750's on ebay to get a little money back and keep the other as a spare.

Over a single 7750: yes. Over 7750 in crossfire not really! I see most of you are switching to nvidia. I had hoped that AMD would address the issue. I already switched to a 990FXA-UD3 so I am not affected by it anymore but it's sad they didn't fix this.

on tests I have seen a single gtx 560 ti out performed hd 7750's crossfire by a noticeable difference, and also you have to think about most games just don't work well with xfire so even in that, owning a single card smashes any crossfire.

 

[kickthedamcat]

I mean I have been waiting over half a year and other people longer for a fix and all that has happened is amd is costing me money and I cant use my hardware for what it was intended to do. look guys I have owned Nvidia cards all my life and never have I been ignored like amd, but its not just the crossfire problem I had problems with HDMI audio crashing and dropping outs, I also had issues with screen not resuming after windows powered down monitor so enough is enough, and these problems were all from there end. this was the first time I owned full amd hardware processor nb sb chip and graphics all together trying to build a nice all amd rig, was even gonna purchase amd ram. but hell NO I am disgusted at amd and will not be a customer any more unless maybe if I decide to get a better processor for this mainboard, but I probably wont. although I cant complain about there processors as I have owned a lot and never had a problem with them, thank good because they would probably never fix it and just ignore me.

 

[antony209494]

I mean I have been waiting over half a year and other people longer for a fix and all that has happened is amd is costing me money and I cant use my hardware for what it was intended to do. look guys I have owned Nvidia cards all my life and never have I been ignored like amd, but its not just the crossfire problem I had problems with HDMI audio crashing and dropping outs, I also had issues with screen not resuming after windows powered down monitor so enough is enough, and these problems were all from there end. this was the first time I owned full amd hardware processor nb sb chip and graphics all together trying to build a nice all amd rig, was even gonna purchase amd ram. but hell NO I am disgusted at amd and will not be a customer any more unless maybe if I decide to get a better processor for this mainboard, but I probably wont. although I cant complain about there processors as I have owned a lot and never had a problem with them, thank good because they would probably never fix it and just ignore me.

I've had nvidia only once (a shitty GS8400 i think 😀) . I was always an AMD fan and until this I never had such a major problem with any of them. I was unpleasantly surprised that they ignore such a big problem. Because this is the first problem I had (aside from all the brokeness crossfire systems suffer from and/or broken crossfire games) I gave them another chance with a 990FX chipset. However if I see that they never fix this problem for you guys I might consider switching to Intel/Nvidia for my next rig. I mean, they are already way too late. This should have been addressed like 6 months ago. Well I am still hoping they will care....

 

[kickthedamcat]

I mean I have been waiting over half a year and other people longer for a fix and all that has happened is amd is costing me money and I cant use my hardware for what it was intended to do. look guys I have owned Nvidia cards all my life and never have I been ignored like amd, but its not just the crossfire problem I had problems with HDMI audio crashing and dropping outs, I also had issues with screen not resuming after windows powered down monitor so enough is enough, and these problems were all from there end. this was the first time I owned full amd hardware processor nb sb chip and graphics all together trying to build a nice all amd rig, was even gonna purchase amd ram. but hell NO I am disgusted at amd and will not be a customer any more unless maybe if I decide to get a better processor for this mainboard, but I probably wont. although I cant complain about there processors as I have owned a lot and never had a problem with them, thank good because they would probably never fix it and just ignore me.

I've had nvidia only once (a shitty GS8400 i think 😀) . I was always an AMD fan and until this I never had such a major problem with any of them. I was unpleasantly surprised that they ignore such a big problem. Because this is the first problem I had (aside from all the brokeness crossfire systems suffer from and/or broken crossfire games) I gave them another chance with a 990FX chipset. However if I see that they never fix this problem for you guys I might consider switching to Intel/Nvidia for my next rig. I mean, they are already way too late. This should have been addressed like 6 months ago. Well I am still hoping they will care....

AMD are probable thinking fuck the little guys we have xbox 1 and ps4 now so lets not waist time on them, we have more important things to do like polishing our new jaguar hardware, get it nice and shiny for bill gates and fucking who ever is the main dude for sony

 

[Crapati]

Stay away from ATI crap. I updated 3 times and BSOD 3 times in the past 2 years. And I am stuck at version 12.3 and so afraid to accept the driver update reminder that pop up from time to time. Restoring it in Safe Mode so tricky and unpredictable too. I can't always get the driver restore correctly the first attempt then upon restart in normal mode, it crashes again. Tried a few times more then it restored. So, I am at 12.3 (pretty old as you can tell by the number) ... I have never used anything other than ATI but that brand will not be in my list next. How can ATI not able to fix this fundamental issue?? ATI has serious QA problem. Your QA director needs to be replaced.

 

[antony209494]

Stay away from ATI crap. I updated 3 times and BSOD 3 times in the past 2 years. And I am stuck at version 12.3 and so afraid to accept the driver update reminder that pop up from time to time. Restoring it in Safe Mode so tricky and unpredictable too. I can't always get the driver restore correctly the first attempt then upon restart in normal mode, it crashes again. Tried a few times more then it restored. So, I am at 12.3 (pretty old as you can tell by the number) ... I have never used anything other than ATI but that brand will not be in my list next. How can ATI not able to fix this fundamental issue?? ATI has serious QA problem. Your QA director needs to be replaced.

First, it's AMD not ATI anymore and second it's not crap. A company can't be that large and have so many customers if it's crap and such generalizations are always wrong. You just have to hope that you are not from the unlucky people who face problems like this. I am not trying to defend them about this specific driver problem. I am actually angry at them as well but this fact alone is not enough to consider them bad.

 

[kickthedamcat]

Yea as pissed of as I am concerning all our crossfire problems I have to admit all the amd processors I have owned have never let me down, they have all been great and all good overclockers, except my phenom 9350e lol that would not over clock at all, but stock was a good processor back then. I still have my amd Sempron 2600+ when I get bored I pull out the old board and overclock the shit out of it, when I first got my 6000+ I thought it was the best chip in the world lol, I have had more but that's a long story, Maybe amd should stick to there cpu,s and single graphic solutions and forget crossfire, same with NVidia forget sli most games don't work well with ether. The only benefit really in a dual grapics situation would be a larger number in a bench mark test. Any way there is no reason why the one graphic card cant have dual processors on it or oven 2,3,4 cores

 

[M3TAl]

Any way there is no reason why the one graphic card cant have dual processors on it or oven 2,3,4 cores

If they could do it, they would be doing it... And in fact they are "sort of" doing it. There's a 7990 dual-GPU card but it's an absolute nightmare to cool 2 or more GPU's on a single card (takes up 3 pci slots, who knows how heavy or loud it is) increases the amount of PCB required as well. The card is over 12". Dual-GPU is very niche.

It's also hard to push a dual-GPU card when people look at the TDP which is double or more of its single GPU equivalent...

 

[StraToN]

Switched to a 990 chipset motherboard Asrock 990FX Extreme3 as well instead of my Asus M5A97 R2.0. No more problems. Seriously, AMD... wtf ?

 

[malee]

I have the same issues.
GA-970A-DS3
Phenom x6 1090t
2x 6850's

Currently running 12.8 as all of the 13.x cause crashes on boot up 🙁

I really dont want to spend £80 on a 990 chipset board :/

 

[kickthedamcat]

I just purchased a asus mainboard with a 99x chip for the missus, so looks like I will be keeping my dual hd 7750's after all, not that she needs xfire or the fact that she is not a gamer at all or even needs any gpu power over an onboard graphics or low profile, but what the hay, ill get on there and see how these cards go and overclock the shit out off em

 

[rynetemp]

https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/statuses/347803712930070529
on that link, AMD promises to solve CROSSFIRE ISSUES in their twitter post. If they do not give us a patch for the 970 chipset issue, something is seriously wrong with their driver team and customer care as it is already is by not resolving that issue for over six months. I am stuck on 12.10 right now. Just for reference my specs are: AMD FX 8120, ASUS M5A97, 2x AMD 6770 in crossfire, 1tb WD BLUE, 1.5tb seagate barracuda, Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.
Just to say, I really believe the ASUS M5A97 is a decent motherboard made by a fantastic company (ASUS). It's just that AMD does not provide support for its GPUs to work on its own chipsets.

 

[M3TAl]

That driver is only promised to fix pacing issues, it was never intended to fix this issue unfortunately. Who knows if it will fix it. Really disappointed with AMD's either refusal or inability to fix this.

 

[mpgrimes]

That driver is only promised to fix pacing issues, it was never intended to fix this issue unfortunately. Who knows if it will fix it. Really disappointed with AMD's either refusal or inability to fix this.

i sent amd a tweet saying it would sure be nice if the 970 chipset/crossfire issue was fixed, its been a real long time, the reply i got was "7 days!"

 

[M3TAl]

Well that's surprising. Hopefully the PR person who maintains the Twitter actually has a clue what you were talking about.

 

[mpgrimes]

Well that's surprising. Hopefully the PR person who maintains the Twitter actually has a clue what you were talking about.

ya im hoping too, the 12.10 work, but the performance of the newer drivers in crossfire are noticeable, was running them on my old q9450 p45 intel system and were running better than this current system. (8120 oc 4ghz)

 

[Elliott20]

Hey guys,

I have only recently been having this problem since updating to crossfire last week, with a 970 chipset, i didnt expect any problems but obviously i am having the exact same issues as you lot using crossfire and 970 together, however looking into i have found this.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/CrossfireInstallIssue.aspx
And if you read it, it says that they have fixed the problem and it is due out with the next driver release, which if you believe what has been said on twitter and else where that should be today, so hopefully many of us may have this problem solved. If it isn't in this release i will be making sure to send some complaints in to AMD as it clearly says:

'AMD is aware of this issue. A fix has been developed that will be included in the next AMD Catalyst Driver release.'

On that page.

Hope this helps reassure some of you guys that a fix may be imminent, cross your fingers.

 

[Mahisse]

At least it only took them 7 month to (hopefully) come up with a fix.. Lol.
7 months are quite a significant time interval in the world of PC, not alone graphic cards. I wonder if that is the time it took them to actually come up with a fix or most of the time went with recognizing the customer complaints.