HD 6870 off-center screen and freezes

[froghog1971]

I am having a recurring issue with my graphics when playing games. When I load a game, within 3-5 minutes the screen goes off center and then the system freezes. I have to unplug the computer and restart completely. I'll go through this 3-5 times and then everything will be fine, I'll have hours of uninterrupted gameplay. Then for no apparent reason, it happens again. I'll go through 3-5 more crashes and reboots and then have several more hours of uninterrupted gameplay. One thing I have noticed is it almost always happens shortly after I tab out of the game to open my browser and google something. But it frequently happens without my doing that, also. Sometimes I may have a few seconds before the freeze and when that happens, I have tried to take a screenshot. But the image the screenshot saves is normal. So I have photo-shopped an image that represents the problem so you can see what I am talking about. Does this sound like a hardware or software issue?

My system :

MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 HOME PREM 64-BIT
AM3 Phenom II X6 1055T
ASUS M4A89GTD_PRO_USB3
ATI-SAPPHIRE 100314-2SR ATI Radeon HD6870 1GB PCI-Express DDR5
COOLERMASTER RS800-80GAD3-US 800W Silent Pro Gold
CORSAIR CMV4GX3M1A1333C9x2 8GB -2X4GB- DDR3 1333
WD1002FAEX 1TB SATA2 7200rpm 64MB
SUPERTALENT AIN1-BLACK Internal 18-in-one CardReader
SONY AD-7260S-0B Internal SATA DVD+/-RW BLACK 24X DVD Burner
COOLERMASTER HAF 922M

 

[Novuake]

Driver issue is what I'm thinking. Uninstall all traces of GPU and reinstall latest drivers.

Don't forget to restart after uninstall and after reinstall.

 

[froghog1971]

I think that fixed it. I have been playing for three hours now and tabbed out several times and so far no issues. I'll give it another few hours to be sure before I close this case. If that was really it I feel stupid. This has been going for 4 months. Probably the very first driver install was corrupt. Then I just kept installing new drivers on top of that initial corrupt install.

 

[froghog1971]

Nope. It did it again. What would be the next step in troubleshooting this?

 

[Novuake]

Do you have onboard graphics?

If you do, take out your GPU and put onboard under load.
See if it does the same.

 

[froghog1971]

Sapphire is saying they are willing to RMA the card. They must have seen something like this before. When I pull the card to send it back, I'll do that and see if it is still happening.

 

[Novuake]

Nice, lucky... Sapphire is awesome...

 

[froghog1971]

Pulled card, ran benchmarks no issues. Must have been the card. Been playing WOW on low settings with the onboard graphics on the mobo, no problems.

 

[froghog1971]

Best answer selected by froghog1971.

 

[Novuake]

Nice...

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar