Black screen - Im goign to kill myself

[ofek89]

Hey everyone. so here are the details.
I bought a new rig two weeks ago, everything is new.

intel G6 motherbaord
radeon 6850 HD 1gb saphire
4g ram trancende 1 stick
550 watt psu
windows 7 64bit ultimate edition
samsuns 21.5 inch syncmaster B2230 full hd 1920x1080

So, as I got my rig on the first day, I intalled the withcer 2 and BF 2 and everything was good untill I got a black screen while playing, around 20-30mins into gameplay. Those screens are totally random though, some games can last more than the others but the black scren always coming.
What happenes exactly is that my screen like of "turn off" or go to "sleep mode" and the signals in the screen switch between "analog" and "digital" and pc is still working, but i cant get the screen to respond no matter what I do, and I have to hard boot the pc.

Things i tried in order to solve this problem:

1- i tried to back to the place i bought my pc and they replaced my graphic card with a brand new 6850, i came back nome hoped problem will be fixed, but it didnt.

2- I came back to the place where I bought the PC and replaced my graphic card AGAIN together with the stick of ram (4gb) and a new motherboard. as i came back home problem STILL HAPPENED. also, i tried to totally format, install all new drivers and most updated one to totally everything even my screen and mouse and keyboard and that still didnt solce my problem.

3- also important to mention that the first time i got the pc from the store they did all kind of tests to all the parts and they were all succesfull. plus I did turned off all the power options in the control panel, disabled the sleep mode, disabled the screen saved, tried to play with the option on the catalysm control abit, and some more of the more common stuff.

as for the bios, i only tried to chance the speed of my ram from auto to 1333 and that also didnt solve it. other then that i didnt touch the bios.

Im really desprate here and i really dont know what to do. im really sorry if im lacking any info if there is any chance you guys can help me and more info is req please lemme know whatever it is that u need to know and how can i check it for you guys and i will edit to the post. you guys are really my only hope i really have no idea what to do next.
Any kind of help will be really much appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[hang-the-9]

Let's try a simple thing, run the PC with the case open, and put a small fan blowing on the video card. Then run a benchmark like 3DMark for a few passes, and run Prime95 (can download both easily from a web search) to stress the RAM and the CPU. If the computer is stable with the case open like that, try again with the case closed. If the PC does this with the case open, I'd try a different power supply, maybe something in the 600+ watt range. Although the 6850 recommended PSU is 500, who knows if there are some stability issues with the PSU you have now.

Maybe, just maybe, you can try a different model video card also if the shop will let you swap it.

 

[ofek89]

I tried to change fan speed in the catalysm control to 90% and even 100% and temp on the card was around 60 c while playing the game so i dont think there is any problem with the temp.

as for the stability of the cpu and ram, they are both new so how can the problem happen after i replaced the RAM from the store and it happened again with x2 dif pieces?

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Where are you from ofek, what country?
I suspect brownout

 

[ofek89]

Where are you from ofek, what country?
I suspect brownout

hu?

 

[Max Collodi]

DelroyMonjo makes an excellent point. Before doing anything else, you should test the power quality coming from your wall outlets. If your computer works at the store but not at home it's reasonable to assume it may be an issue with your electric service.

 

[ofek89]

DelroyMonjo makes an excellent point. Before doing anything else, you should test the power quality coming from your wall outlets. If your computer works at the store but not at home it's reasonable to assume it may be an issue with your electric service.

Oh, now i understand whats the meaning of Brownout. It doesnt make sense though because before i bought this pc I have had PC in the same power outlets for almost 2.5 years everyday and i never had this problem before untill i got the new pc so i dont think there is anything wrong with my electricity.

 

[ofek89]

Hey guys.
Not so long ago I opened a thread in this forums regarding the issue I was having with black screen.
My problem was generally that I was getting random black screens while playing games (BF2, Witcher 2) what happened exactly was that my monitor turned black totally randoml, mostly when I was alt+tabbing programs and mostly when I had explorer windows opened including YouTube.

So, I have been trying to solve this problem for a loooong time without a Success untill 2 days ago, when finally I found a way to solve this problem, its been 2 days now, with Hardcore multi alt+tabbing while gaming on hard graphic games with ultra settings (like witcher 2) and NO BLACK SCREEN!

It was very important for me to share the solution I found and that worked for me with you guys, just in case someone will google the problem I had and for a hope he will see this thread that can be very helpfull.

Now before we start, some info about my rig:

Intel core I5 2310 2.9Ghz
AMD Radeon Sapphire 6850 1gb
4gb RAM
550 psu

The problem I was having was with the rig above and its important to mention this rig was TOTALLY NEW!

Things I tried to solve the problem that DIDNT work out:

*changing my graphic card (twice!) to the same one but just a new card just in case i got a falty version, after it kept happening after two times I replaced the card i understood something really weird going on.

*Updating my driver to the newest ones.

*Changing the option under control panel > power settings.

*Donwloading different fixes.

*Changing my ram because I thought maybe was falty (remember its a totally new rig).

*I changed my Gigabyte motherboard to an Intel one because I thought maybe the PCI slot was damaged.

So, after all this didnt work out, what DID work for me and SOLVE my problem was:
I saw a messege on AMD forums, and a user named "rjprado" mentioned there he changed the bios to the GPU and that it solved a problem that sounds pretty fimiliar to mine, so I decided to take the risk and I did the following:

1) downloading newest bios possible for my card, which u can find here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/96266/Sapphire.HD6850.1024.101213_1.html

2) download ATIwinflash which u can find here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/BIOS_Flashing/ATI/

so what basically u need to do is run the software and just choose the "save" to save your current bios first in case something goes wrong, then choose the "program" option and this should change your bios into the new one, then u just gotta reset the pc, and from now on the bios will be updated and you WOULDNT GET BLACK SCREEN ANYMORE!

*as for people that get "Subsystem ID" error when trying to change the bios or some fimiliar messege to that, I dont remember the exact messege, u gotta run the software from CMD, basically you just enter a number of commands to make it work from your CMD windows. the exact commands on how to do it can be found on google, just google the exact error you get and you will see how to exactly command on CMD to run the program, atm I dont remember the full error name so I cant google it for you guys in order to write it here.


The original forum topic where I found this info is located here:
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=142284&STARTPAGE=24&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

(Im not aware of all the forum policies and I hope its ok to publish it here, if not Im sorry in advance and feel free to edit that messege).

Update: 3/10/2011 - So far, still no black screens, even BF3 works great. Seems like the problem is solved.

Hope that helps guys!

 

[rolli59]

Great hope this helps many!