Sapphire 4870 driver issues / crashing.

Pigbearman

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Hello all,


Well, i'll get right to the problem at hand.

I have a Sapphire 4870 512mb videocard. Over the past three - four months, I've had some issues. Nothing huge that would make me need to get a new videocard ASAP, but it has become quite an annoyance.

There are two different things that happen with this card. This, so far, has happened in most of the games I have (COD:5,WoW, TF2, etc etc) so it isn't one games problem.

1. The game will hang, sometimes for half a second, sometimes for 5 seconds, then the card will sound like it restarted itself. In COD:5 this will usually kick me out of the game (multiplayer) but other games like TF2 or something else will just recover right away. But there is always an error message that comes along with it "Display driver atikmdag has stopped responding and has recovered." I looked this problem up for a while and found no solutions, and no real causes. The only thing that has really made much sense was that there is a delay in the videocard, and some setting in vista causes it to shut the program down. This may happen a couple times a day, maybe 5 at the most in a day.

2. The monitor will just go blank. Then a "No Signal" box will pop up on my Acer 20" widescreen monitor, after about 5 seconds the monitor will just go into power saving mode. Even if I wait for a while, nothing ever comes back on the screen. Its like the videocard shut the display off. This problem is the rare one I get. I might get it once every other day (say 6+ hours of computer use, 4ish 3d gaming).

Now, its either a driver issue that nobody, not even ATI or Vista have found a fix for, or my card is bad. I have checked everything out on the card before, RAM works fine, everything displays fine. The card is not overclocked, and the MAX I have seen the temp at is 58c, which is well within the normal limits of a video card I believe.

So what could be the problem here? Everything I read or think about just brings me right back to driver issues, or the Vista thing. My drivers are up to date, my card is at a workable temperature.







Also, as a side question. Before I really had this issue, I was thinking about buying a second 4870 and running them in crossfire mode. But my motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-UD3P) only runs crossfire at the x8 speed. Will this cause any problems, will it even be worth it to buy a second one and crossfire them if they are both running x8 x8?

Thanks for all responses in advance.
 
I had the same problem playing Warhammer on my backup system using a 2900 XT (IIRC). Found no fix, same as you, so bought nVidia. Problem solved.

I'll be watching this thread, and if there is a solution I'll pop that card into a PC for the grandkids lol.
 

Pigbearman

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Oddly enough, I have seen similar problems on the internet posted on nVidia forums. Only the error reads "Display driver nvlddmkm has stopped responding and has recovered." Basically an nVidia version of the problem. So this leads me to believe it has to do with the setting in Vista that tries to restart the graphics engine. Now if only there was a way to fix that.............
 

vudali

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hi, ive got the same card and played all those games with np. You have probably tried the newset ati drivers for the card so i wil not recommend that :D.

Instead try looking at your bios version....
For example mine is BIOS Version 011.010.000.002

If this doesnt work their might be something wrong with you card.
 

Pigbearman

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Oh yeah, forgot to mention the drivers.

I updated my drivers the other day, noticed they lowered my hardware performance quite a bit, so I rolled them back and at least the performance is fine. But every driver version I have used since I bought this card 4 months ago.

Also, BIOS version is the same.
 

vudali

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then you can think if your psu is enough to power your card or just trying to see if your card is properly in the slot....

good luck man
 
Make sure you ahve the latest mobo chipset drivers also.

Heat could be causing the issue as well, manually adjust the fan speed to at least 50% in the ATI OVerdrive section of the CCC when gaming.

I was getting crappy frames rates, pixelation, and visual anomolies when playing Crysis, W@W, and Modern Warfare as well as I would ahve the occasional freeze up...come to find out it was the 4870 running well over 90C...I just upped the fan speed and have had no issues since...
 


You're prolly right about it being more that just video drivers. When I had the problem with ATI, I went back through ALL the previous drivers I had used including the original CD. Same issue. Yet most all of those drivers had run the same games without problem when originally installed.

While both vendors may share the issue, I can only repeat I installed an nVidia 250 (its an HTPC case) and the problem went away.