Sapphire 7950 3GB Vapor-X Crashes Computer

[Doug Painter]

I just received my new Sapphire 7950 today and installed it. After booting up I used the AMD cleanup utility to remove all old AMD drivers. Then I went back and got all the latest drivers and such from the site. I upgraded from an XFX Radeon 7850 1GB so the old drivers probably would have been fine but I wanted to be sure.

The first game I tried to play was BF4. The game loaded up fine into a 64 player match. Everything seemed fine and the game was running at 60fps with vsync on. But about 15 seconds in the screen just froze. My PC was completely unresponsive and I had to reset it. This time I tried Watch Dogs. I got to the main menu and clicked continue. My PC froze again during the loading screen and I had to reset. I tried once more with Watch Dogs and I got into the game but the fps was awful. It was around 15-20 fps which can't be right cause with my old 7850 1GB I could get a pretty steady 30fps or higher in some places. To my disappointment my PC froze again about 15 seconds in.

At this point I'm getting really frustrated and this time I decide to turn off the OC function on the card (there's a physical button on the card you can press) and I also made sure graphics overdrive was disabled in Catalyst. I wanted to see if overclocking was causing the crashes. I boot up BF4 again and what do you know... 15 seconds in and my PC freezes.

What could be causing this? I have experienced this problem before with the game Hearthstone. When I would play it on the "high" graphics setting it would randomly crash my PC completely and I'd have to reset. But If I played on the "medium" setting I could play for hours without a problem. That was with my old 7850 card however.

I'm guessing the issues might be related? I have no idea. It's nothing to do with temps either as I usually monitor those close and they are always good. Any help would be appreciated.

SPECS
OS - Windows 8.1 64 bit
CPU - AMD FX 4130 3.8 ghz
GPU - Sapphire 7950 3GB Vapor - X edition
RAM - 8GB
Mobo - Asus M5A97
HD - 1TB 7200 & 500GB 7200
PSU - 700W

 

[neon neophyte]

details on power supply

 

[Doug Painter]

details on power supply

Cooler Master i700 80+ bronze. Using two 6 + 2 pin PCIe power connectors.

 

[neon neophyte]

tier 3 psu. not great but not terrible. shouldnt be the cause of your problems though it is possible.

 

[Doug Painter]

I thought it might be a PSU issue as well but I don't see why it would be.

 

[Doug Painter]

Just tried to run Skyrim. Was able to play for about a minute or two on Ultra settings and I was getting a steady 60fps. Then my PC crashed again. It has been just fine as far as browsing the web and watching videos. It's only in games so far that I've had problems with this card.

 

[neon neophyte]

games consume more power

 

[Doug Painter]

games consume more power

Haha well obviously. I've just been doing some research and found a few people that were also having some problems outside of games as well. Figured mentioning that I don't have any issues outside of games might help narrow down what the problem is.

 

[neon neophyte]

im saying, that is in line with a psu problem

 

[Doug Painter]

Some updates.

I tried playing Far Cry 3 and I was able to play it for about 20 minutes getting between 50 - 60 fps with no crashing. The game never crashed so I exited out and tried BF4 one more time and again my PC crashed. But I didn't even make it into the game this time. It crashed and froze on the loading screen. So earlier today I had a friend bring over his power supply so I could see if that really was the problem. He has a corsair 800W 80+ gold power supply. So I breadboarded my system with his PSU and sure enough the problem is still there. The screen will freeze and the sound will stop and I'll have to reset.

A few other details I noticed is when my PC freezes the hard drive light will either stay solid and never change until I reset or it will become totally inactive. Also, the lights on my keyboard will turn off but my mouse still seems to stay active.

 

[neon neophyte]

suppose the next thing you could try is the ram. try running just one stick or try using your friends ram.

it is a tedious process, but systematically just swap out parts until the problem goes away. then u know which part is causing the problem.

 

[eladrion]

I bet on faulty gpu all my money

 

[Doug Painter]

Some more updates.

Tried using different ram and the problem still persists. I don't think it's the GPU because I would occasionally have this same problem with my old GPU as well (xfx 7850 1GB). It would happen only in certain games with that one. As I said above hearthstone was one of them. But I could play BF4 for hours and never have a problem. So it would have to be some other hardware compatibility issue right? Perhaps my HD is failing and locks up When loading a game? I'm open to any other suggestions for solutions. This is incredibly frustrating.

 

[eladrion]

Try your gpu in another pc...

 

[Doug Painter]

Tried it in a different PC and it worked fine. No crashes at all. Tried several different games. Skyrim, BF4, Far Cry 3, Watch Dogs and a few others.

 

[eladrion]

No idea inform us if you find solution..

 

[Embra]

Have you checked your temps and GPU/CPU usage?

I to question the PSU,

 

[eladrion]

Try another gpu in your system