Sapphire HD5850 Toxic 1GB crashing system when switching to 3D mode

[happytonamy]

Hello,

System Specs:
GA-770TA-UD3
WD Caviar Black 640GB HD
AMD Phenom II 965 125W
GSkill DDR31600 16GB (4x4)
Creative X-Fi Fatality
Sapphire HD 5800 Toxic 1GB
Corsair HX650
2 DVD drive
1 multi card reader
Win 7 64-bit Ultimate


Recently, my system had some issues and i had to clear the CMOS then reset the bios before being able to system restore it to a point before having problems. It runs stable for most things EXCEPT for when i try to run a program where the video card will switch into 3D mode. I installed 3Dmark2006 to try to test the system since it was crashing in games. 3DMark said my openAL32.dll was invalid so i reinstalled that. I was able to get 3Dmark to run but as soon as I begin the test and it pops the video card to go into 3D mode, the system reboots. Is there someplace I could find a crash file to upload to see if someone could tell me what is going on? I'm not sure if this matters, but i disabled my IEEE 1394 texas instruments controllers since it was saying it couldn't load (code 10). I don't have any firewire devices on my system. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[blazorthon]

Look through your BIOS. Maybe there are some things that aren't set up properly after the reset.

 

[happytonamy]

for my BIOS i had set it to load fail-safe defaults. i can go back through it to set up everything else. i had a minor overclock up to 3.7 ghz just by switching the multiplier on the CPU before i had the initial problems but there wasn't really anything else I changed. i didn't adjust the voltages or anything. what part of the bios would affect the GPU though. is there something for the PCI Express 2.0?

i read on a different website that it could be a problem with directX9 so i'm trying some things. I'm running Civ5 Gods & Kings in DX11 and DX9 to see if it will only crash in DX9. I just got it to crash in DX9 so now i'm trying to replicate by running it in DX11. If it doesn't crash there, it should be a directX problem.

thanks for your reply. if anyone else has any suggestions or knows where i could find an error dump for directX please let me know. Thank you.

 

[happytonamy]

i've test civ5 in both dx9 and dx11 and it crashes soon after loading. i installed the unigine heaven benchmark and this also crashes the computer. so, it has to be something video related that is causing the system to die. it's only happening when i try to go into 3D. is there some kind of program that would check my directX's or does anyone know where a crash log might be from the video crashes?

 

[happytonamy]

i've checked the dxdiag and it says my directX is fine. i updated to the newest 12.6 amd drivers from 11.12 and it still crashes when it tried to click the screen over to 3d mode. if anyone has any ideas on how to fix this i'd be grateful to hear them. thanks.

 

[blazorthon]

Make sure that when you updated your drivers, you booted into safe mode before uninstalling the old drivers, rebooted, and then installed the drivers (using driver sweeper is also a god idea).

Also, by look through the BIOS for incorrect settings, some suggestions that I'd make would be making sure that the SATA ports are set to the setting that they were set to prior to the BIOS being reset. If they wer set to IDE emulation, then make sure that they are set to that. If they were set to AHCI, then make sure that they are set to that. Remember that a BIOS reset resets the BIOS to it's defaults, not necessarily the proper settings for your computer.

If all else fails, then you might need to re-install Windows.

 

[ginghus_khan2000]

Ya, I think you need to figure out whether the problem is hardware or software. Maybe try a different install on another hard drive if you have one. Maybe try a Linux live boot disk. I don't know how much 3d acceleration testing you can do an linux live book disk but it might be informative.

Some other things that pop into my mind are..... Is the power supply up to snuff? 3d draws more power. Maybe power supply is hitting wall (this is unlikely but)...... Is the video card seated into the motherboard correctly?

You said you reset the mother board to default. Is there also an "optimal"?

I'm also wondering if the original "issue" was more extensive than a reset can fix.

Khan

 

[happytonamy]

Best answer selected by happytonamy.

 

[happytonamy]

I now have my system working. It's been able to go through the Unigine benchmark and 3dmark2006 without crashing. I spent about 3 hours last night trying to find things online that might be related to my problem when I came across a forum post on a different website talking about corrosion. I've never had this problem in the United States but for the past 3 years I've been living in China and there is a lot of coal dust in the air which causes acid rain and corrosion problems.

Today I opened my case and got a flashlight and magnifying glass. Sure enough, upon very close inspection, I saw the beginnings of mild corrosion on my motherboard and the back panel of my HD5850. It had already caused some of the chrome cover of my CPU cooler to flake off. I got a dry toothbrush and brushed out the PCIE 2.0 slot on my motherboard and then blew it out with compressed air. I also took a pencil eraser and used it on the gold connectors of my HD5850.

As an extra precaution, I switched the modular power cable for the GPU (powers the two 6 pin connectors on it) to the second spot on my corsair power supply just in case that might be causing the problem.

The other website I was reading also talked about dielectric grease like the kind you can use on automobile tail lights. The posters there had said you could put a small amount of it on the video card connectors before seating it into the motherboard to help ensure a good connection and prevent future corrosion.

Now that my system seems stable I'll hope for the best. I want to thank the people who have posted replies to this thread and my other one over the past several days while I've worked out my system problems.