Ok I've been having the "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" error since day one of my brand new system running Windows 7 (64bit, fully up-to-date). So for about a month now with a Radeon 5770, AMD PIIx4 955, Gigabyte - GA-MA770T-UD3, 4GB memory.

I've had to disable aero as that usually triggered it once or twice a day. Playing any game (crysis, bioshock 2, assassins creed) triggers it randomly after anything from 5 seconds to two hours. When it happens audio keeps going, but the screen freezes (sometimes turns black) and I have to end task and when back to my desktop the error is displayed.

I've done lots of research, but despite plenty of people having this problem I've not found a solution that works. I've made sure to remove old drivers (in safemode) and am using the latest (Catalyst 10.3).

I'm thinking two things that may have an impact and would like to hear your opinions.
1) My 500w True Blue II PSU only has a 4 pin 12v plug and the gigabyte motherboard takes an 8 pin. Everything appears to be working fine, but could this be part of the issue?
2) To keep the case nice and cool I've reduced the voltage one step (I'm not overclocking). The default voltage in the bios was a bit high (1.4v) so I reduced it to 1.375v. Again could this be the issue?

So you've not connected your motherboard properly, and you've not provided sufficient voltage to your cpu. And you're asking if those might be problems?

I had a sort of similar problem lately but fixed it by adjusting the RAM voltages to what it says on the sticker of the RAM sticks.

My mobo was undervolting massively and caused plenty of issues

Let us know how that works out.

The 5770 should manage the aero function without any problems.

Part of the power supply for the 5770 comes from the MB as well as as the 6 pin PCI-E connectors. Therefore i would say that it's a power problem.

Looking at page 22 of your MB manual I would say that your PSU, although the minimum reccommend, may be the problem here. And that you should really be using a PSU with a 8 pin (or 2x4 pin volt connectors). Especially as it sounds like a instability problem.

Slashiem said:

I had a sort of similar problem lately but fixed it by adjusting the RAM voltages to what it says on the sticker of the RAM sticks.

My mobo was undervolting massively and caused plenty of issues

Let us know how that works out.

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Thanks for the tip, I'll get myself a new corsair 650W PSU to eliminate the 4 pin 12v as the cause and check the recommended voltage of the RAM at the same time.

@billysielu: Exactly, although what is sufficient CPU... There are plenty of people undervolting far more than I do and people overclocking with less than 1.4v for this cpu. I've also seen plenty of people reporting that using a 4 pin for the 8 pin 12v should be ok in most cases, but I'll admit it gets much more uncertain with quad cores which is why I asked. Just trying to avoid spending even more money on this build only to find that the PSU was not the problem to begin with...

Edit: @Essexraptor: Thanks for taking the time. I'll get the TX650W corsair since that is on offer and seems like a good psu witha 2/4 pin 12v. I'll let you all know how that works out.

i had a similar issue but with a 5870 and the problem was due to a Windows Microsoft Update can't remember which on but if you google it. Ever since uninstalling it i havn't had this problem

Update: New PSU, no undervolting, but same "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered" and £70 poorer. Not too happy.

lynchy6789 said:

i had a similar issue but with a 5870 and the problem was due to a Windows Microsoft Update can't remember which on but if you google it. Ever since uninstalling it i havn't had this problem

Click to expand...

Ok, found this (is it you?):
"...I uninstalled this patch from Windows 7 and things seem stable for me. I had a 4870 and thought the problem was the card, I then bought a 5870 and had the same problem until I uninstalled this...

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/976264"

So I've uninstalled this and we'll see where that gets me.

Result: Made absolutely no difference.

Hi ive a 5770 it don't take too much power and as above say runs all of windows things.
check that fans working.As i had that with an 8800gtx it died as was overheating.Nvidea driver update? looks like it was over driving it.but also check you're fan speeds.download a monitoring prog to check gpu temps.(Real temps one)shows cpu and gpu temp.so you can see if it's getting too hot as may'be heatsinks not attached correctly?
You could uninstall driver and windows driver then in safe mode install ati driver then put card back in and boot up.

As ive had the prob with the logitech G19 thing.but the replacements now come with a sticker telling you to install driver before connecting K'board.So may'be that would help?
Also check connections.or probe on card where power goes but card side of plug carefully theres like some legs that come from back of plug then see if you're getting the volts.
Mate had a prob found out plug was'nt in all the way.

Dancer why did you buy another PSU? You don't need the 8 pin over the 4 if you're not overclocking. Often a lot of motherboards will have a little black cap you can put over the 4 pins not in use so the full 8 is not likely to be essential. I used to get this error quite badly with my old 2600xt and was often a driver issue, perhaps a bad install or they're just being tempremental as they can be. I'd try mixing it up with the drivers, get the 10.3s installed if you haven't already, if you have try re-installing them. if this doesn't work try some of the beta or older drivers then report back if you have no luck. Make sure you completely remove any trace of the old drivers however. I'm not a big fan of driver sweeper etc. but if you like to use them then go for it.

EDIT: would seem i can't read, have you tried any other drivers other than 10.3? Secondly have you checked the RAM suggestion mentioned above, i find it inprobable that this would cause the error but it would seem it has done for Slashiem. In fact i would check all your bios settings if your mobo has managed to overvolt your CPU on auto as you are suggesting there may be a good chance your RAM and everythign else is not as it should be.

Despite trying several more things the issue remains. Having done numerous searches on the issue I see that it is a common issue in Windows 7 (and vista) with ATI cards and although some people say the errors stopped after various tweaks none of those have worked for me. It seems that this driver error can be an indicator of a great range of problems from faulty gpu, bad driver install, wrong ram voltage, or combination(?) of some windows updates + hardware., etc.

What have I tried since my last post:

1. Re-installed 1.3 official catalyst driver. Yes skippy2421 I tried driver sweeper and re-installed in safe mode from 1.2 and 1.2 also had this problem, although perhaps less frequent.

2. Keeping an eye on CPU and system temps using CoreTemp (will try to download gpu-z or everest to check gpu temp, but fan is running and card does not seem especially hot)

3. Checked voltage for RAM in bios and was 1.5v as recommended for my Geil Value Ram.

4. Set windows 7 to High Performance. I will try to disable cool'n quiet and instead set the multiplier to be underclocked just to eliminate this as a cause. The multiplier goes to x16 (3.2 Ghz) so if I set it to x12 as that should be well under spec.

5. Checked all power cables well connected (I got a whole new PSU and made no difference).

6. Installed AVG virus scanner and did a full scan (all clean). I run zone alarm as firewall.

Any other suggestions for what I can try as I'm starting to think that windows 7/vista with ATI gpus must be fundamentally flawed (my wife is using a 8800GT on a nearly identical system and has had no problems at all!).

you're just unlucky mate, whatever manufacturer you use you may encounter driver problems. So let's not give up and keep going, however i'm running out of ideas but i'll have a few long shots.

Let's try overclocking your card. Obvoiusly let's not go too far and see if these errors become more frequent.

or alternatively underclock it and see if things go away. If they do faulty card. You can do this CCC control panel in the overdrive section.

Next long shot try running with no security stuff at all and minimal programs and processes see if it still goes wrong (i'm looking for software conflicts with this one) I would say safe mode but not sure that would work.

Out of curiosity what drivers have you tried? just 10.2 and 10.3 official? if you fish around this section there will be some links to betas or alternatively try 9.12s (a bit far back i know but we have to try these things)

I've spent some time over on the AMD forums and there are several long threads with people trying to sort out the "amdkmdap" display driver problem with ATI cards from 4xxx series to the latest 58xx cards. A problem which seems to have been going on since Windows Vista. I've learned more about my gpu than ever before. I've not yet solved it, but some early results are interesting after my last changes even if bioshock2 still crashes...

I've installed gpu-z to and set it to logging and I can say that temperatures never go above 67C. 69C with PCIe slightly overvolted from 1.8v to 1.85v which by the way made no difference. The GPU idles around 30+ C same as the AMD CPU (which never goes above 59C by the way and usually stays in lower 50s celsisus when running games).

I've tried removing one stick of RAM and moving it to a different slot. I've tried moving both sticks of RAM. I've turned off Cool'n Quiet. I've tried setting the GPU fan to manually run at 70% (despite not having heat issues) and I've tried undercloking from GPU Core clock of 850 Mhz to 600 MHz. I did try to play around with the ATI tray to lower the GPU memory clock, but I've not figured out to make those settings take as I can change the sliders and hit apply but it seems to be ignore and if I close the tray and go back it has reset...

Anyway, none of the above has made any difference. Disabling Aero and using just windows 7 basic has not solved the problem either, although subjectively it seems like it crashes sooner when aero is enabled...

I did find a post in AMD forum with someone saying that plugging your PC into a surge protector could "starve" your PSU of enough power and therefore cause the dreaded amdkmdap display driver error. This seemed unlikely to me, especially as I'm using a fairly expensive belkin surge protector designed for use with computers. Anyway, having nothing to lose at this stage I tried plugging my PC into the wall socket. This was fairly late last night so I've only done some brief testing. Bioshock 2 still crashes, but I was able to play longer than I usually can (over half-an-hour!) and when it did crash there was no report about amdkmdap in the event log, but just an entry that Bioshock2 stopped responding. I also tried running Crysis running through the GPU demanding frozen landscape where it has crashed _sometimes_ in the past and it didn't crash.

I've not had time yet to do further tests and this is too early to say anything. This could all just be a fluke or it might be that my system (as opposed to bioshock 2) is now more stable after plugging into the wall socket. Will test further tonight and update.

Sorry for the long post, but wanted to make it a fairly complete log of what I did. To recap I'm still running windows 7 in basic with no aero. I'm running cpu/gpu at stock values and all voltages at bios defaults with cool and quiet disabled and win7 set to high performance. Voltages are: RAM 1.5v, CPU 1.4V and PCIe 1.8v.

skippy2421 said:

Let's try overclocking your card. Obvoiusly let's not go too far and see if these errors become more frequent.

Click to expand...

I've tried underclocking the gpu (not the gpu memory though as this is more tricky) and it made no difference. I haven't tried overclocking, but since the crashes can happen anything from 5 seconds to 10 minutes of playing I don't see how I would be able to tell if it crashes more often when overclocked. Also, from AMD forums (where many people did RMA or upgrade their cards and the replacements had the same problem) and checking my GPU temps I don't think that is the problem, but thanks for the suggestion.

skippy2421 said:

Next long shot try running with no security stuff at all and minimal programs

Click to expand...

I've not got much installed and the problem started before I installed AVG. I've tried shutting down zonealarm, but that did not make any difference.

skippy2421 said:

Out of curiosity what drivers have you tried?

Click to expand...

I've tried 10.2, 10.3 beta and 10.3 release. From AMD forum it seems this problem occurs with all drivers, although one person reported success downgrading to 8.1. However, 8.1 is a vista driver and he had to do some fiddling to get it to work on windows 7. Crazy to downgrade this far back, but hey if it works that's what I'll do.

I've come up with a temporary solution that seems to work fairly well. I say temporary because underclocking my card and turning off all power saving features / noise reduction features is not really acceptable. I really hope the catalyst drivers sort out this problem, because I'm quite disappointed by the card's apparent instability.

I have yet to zero in on which of these things has the biggest impact and I need to do more testing although I've tested for a couple of hours yesterday and no crashes.

1. In my mobo bios I've set all voltages manually to prevent the auto control over or under volting. I also disable Cool'n Quiet and run windows 7 in High performance so the CPU is always stepped to x16 @ 3.2 Ghz.

2. I'm still keeping my computer plugged into the wall socket bypassing the surge protector, but I don't think this is making a difference).

3. I'm keeping Windows 7 aero turned off as I did try turning it back on yesterday and shortly after starting Bioshock 2 it froze again. (requires further investigation).

4. Using the instructions here I've used the CCC profile handling together with the overdrive to underclock my GPU to 600 Mhz GPU and 1000 Mhz memory (from 850/1200). Potentially more importantly I've set all three steps to be the same, so that the GPU will ALWAYS run at 600/1000 and I also set the fan to always run at 75% and the CoreVoltageTarget to always be the maximum (I forget the value). This effectively disables the stepping of the GPU.

5. I also researched the driver error at microsoft developer central and found this article Timeout Detection and Recovery of GPUs through WDDM. The display driver error is basically a timeout detection which triggers after 2 seconds. Creating and setting the TdrDelay value in the registry to be 30 seconds rather than the usual 2 I'm trying to eliminate the timeout detection as the cause of the problem. Interestingly after changing this value it has only frozen once when turning on aero and then running bioshock 2 and as expected the game remained frozen for 30 seconds before the screen turned grey(ish) as before.

Conclusion: Bioshock 2 used to crash every few minutes with the above it now only crashes when I also turn on aero. Plan going forward is to find out which of the above are not needed, test lots more and figure out why it seems to crash much faster when aero is enabled (could be a coincidence, further testing should confirm).

Any suggestions or feedback is welcome.

Just so you know, I'm having this same crashing issue under Win7 x64 with a brand new 5770 under cats 10.3. Crashing occurs in and out of game, and can include complete system hangs. I havent had time to do any diagnostics, but booting the same PC under Windows XP32 its perfectly stable.

I'll keep you posted if I learn anything more. It'll be RMA'd under distance selling if I dont get this sorted though.

Hi Dancer

Sorry i haven't replied to this thread in a little while, i haven't had any real time to look at this any more so can't really offer much more help than you already have. I'm sorry to hear you're not having much luck with your card. I would say there is a slight chance that you might get lucky if you RMA'd the card but it's potentially risky as a fault may not be found due to the nature of this problem. Due to the way this error just strikes users at random it looks like the card/drivers just don't like your config. Out of curiosity have you tried the 1.4 or 1.5 betas? I believe the 1.5 fixes some issues but has some flaws i haven't checked the results of the 1.4s, could be worth checking out as you have nothing to lose.

Hi just a quick nosey in.I think it's a W7 problem as my friends now having same problem with his pc 32bit.nvidea sli'ed 7950gtx's.Plus have found quite a few user's having same problem.there was a big episode last year with vista with this i think after an update and smart/riva tune thing.check the Nvidea &evga forums. so you're not alone guy's.but the setting delay time after speaking to friend who has prob he's looking into it now and say's that is very plausable.

My 5770 has been stable with no more errors after I set the clock values and voltage as below using the CCC profile.

Clock: 40000 / 85000 / 85000
Memory: 60000 / 12000 / 12000
Voltages: 1000 / 1010 / 1010

The idle values (40000 / 6000) can probably go lower as reported by fellow 5770 owner. I don't see much point in having step 2 at all... In my thinking I either want the card to be idling or going full throttle, hence why step 2 and 3 is identical.

So in conclusion increasing idle and slightly increasing voltage seems to make the card stable.