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4870 x2 Really Unstable

Run everything at stock speeds & timings regardless what prime & memtest says about an over clock.
And is it still crashes then you can rule out the mem/cpu for sure.
Then its just the mobo & gfx card to worry about & if the mobo has another power connector near the pci-e slots then hook that up..
 
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Thanks for your replies.

Everything is at stock speeds. Tried every combination of drivers with and without CCC installed (8.5, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9)

Turned the fan up on the gfx card using CCC fan speed profile editing method and my gpu temps idle at 40 and peak in COD4 at 70 (cant check them in crysis cuz of the crashes - but i doubt its gpu temps). The 3D clock speeds are ramping up fine on entering the game as monitored by rivatuner and remain constant - dont fluctuate - but could be ramping down just once as you say and could be causing crashes??

The reason why I think its something else though is the fact that I can run the crysis benchmark on lower setting (medium; 1280x960) and it can run it and not crash - although there are a lot of artifacts. It can also run COD4 a lot better than it can run crysis - and crysis is more stressful. Adding prime95 in the background crashes COD4 immediately though.

Is there another power connector on th p5q-pro? Ive plugged the 8pin ATX12V into the top of the motherboard...
 
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Do you know anyone you could swap your graphics card with (temporarily :p)? Wouldn't have to be the same card, but something with an equally high power draw would be good.
 
So I've installed nice fresh 8.9 drivers (after uninstall then driver sweeper in safe mode) and installed rivatuner 2.11 and o/c the card by a few MHz to take off the 2D profile. Thanks for this info Vimes.

This has removed the artifacts in crysis (esp those that were present when it was set on lower settings) and it is now stable on the gpu_benchmark on anything below Very high settings. As soon as I turn it up to very high settings however it just crashes within 20 seconds usually. I can just turn a few things on very high and it last longer on the benchmark but usually crashes before the end.

Its stable in COD4 - like it was before and still crashes occasionally in Grid which is set on max settings.

Im just wondering whether its a hardware issue as I can run the games on lower settings and they seem to be fine but maxing things out crashes the system - with bsod or rsod.

Anybody got any ideas about what I should do?
 
If you got a spare drive try a fresh install on it.And see if you have the same problems.Only saying as you swaped it straight out of old pc.Thats if you have not already done it by now.But tbh i have never got grid working well without crashing on my vista 64bit drive on my xp drive np at all.ATI vista drivers suk well do of late for ME on 64bit vista.
 
Sounds like your having a right nightmare mate - as above i would try a full format . If that dosn't work, i can only assume it is the card. It might be a good idea to go to your local computer shop and get them to help you - i.e., try didn't cards and mobo.
 
I have found out that Sapphire have released a BIOS upgrade for the 4870 512mb card which fixes many of stability issues attributed to PP problems, as well, I assume, others.

Not sure, as you have not noted the cards make, if there could be one for you but I found mine on Sapphires website.

Another thought...

Have you tried turning OFF / ON VPU recovery to see what difference it makes..?

Also try different settings for the AI - when using ATT (much easier and, imo, supports the 4870 cards better) there are three settings for A.I - OFF - LOW - HIGH. You could try adjusting those and seeing what happens.
I know that many people like using Rivatuner but, just for the sake of trying, why not stop using it and use the latest ATT..?

When you get a crash what information is there to say why it has crashed..?
 
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MR.B said:
It could be this problem that affects nearly all of ATI's range of cards. Some people get it, but most dont. Hope it isn't that though 'cause theres nothing you can do to fix it if it is... believe me i've tried.

Does it ever just crash to desktop?
Click to expand...

Sorry to take so long to respond to this but to link to that thread is a joke & is no different than some people getting BSOD in windows & saying there is nothing you can do about it, but this is the BSOD for gfx cards.

This problem also effects nearly all of the NV range as well unless your saying that there is a range of NV cards that have never crashed for anyone.

Its swings & roundabouts & the most popular cards at the time will get more hits because there is more of them unless there is a fundamental flaw that will make headline techs site news if there is one.

High failure rate over heating chip on one of the NV 7xxx series.
Wrong resistor/bad soldering on some early NV 8xxx/ATI 3xxx cards...ect...


Noticed that there are a few 260/280 threads will the same problems as the 4xxx popping up on this forum now.

There are people on this very forum who had the same issues as you & have fixed it.

But you have not mentioned or pointed to a possible solution & the best you could do is basically say your stuffed.

Some being a conflict with the hard drive shutting down & starting up again in vista, Non upto date BIOS ,On-board sounddriver , X-fi driver & NIC driver killing the GFX card drivers.
 
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Eggman said:
So I've installed nice fresh 8.9 drivers (after uninstall then driver sweeper in safe mode) and installed rivatuner 2.11 and o/c the card by a few MHz to take off the 2D profile. Thanks for this info Vimes.

This has removed the artifacts in crysis (esp those that were present when it was set on lower settings) and it is now stable on the gpu_benchmark on anything below Very high settings. As soon as I turn it up to very high settings however it just crashes within 20 seconds usually. I can just turn a few things on very high and it last longer on the benchmark but usually crashes before the end.

Its stable in COD4 - like it was before and still crashes occasionally in Grid which is set on max settings.

Im just wondering whether its a hardware issue as I can run the games on lower settings and they seem to be fine but maxing things out crashes the system - with bsod or rsod.

Anybody got any ideas about what I should do?
Click to expand...

Looks like a faulty gfx card if your getting RSOD when pushing hard without over clocking the card.
 
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going to a computer store doesnt come cheap and usually the people on the front desk are just drones and have no idea about high spec computers - catering more for the masses. But dont want to RMA it and O/Cers just send it back saying there is nothing wrong with it and charging me in the meantime.

Tried it with ATT and its the same symptoms. Ill try the A.I. though tonight if I get time. Ill also try 3dmark and see if its stable in that now the PP is off.

Cheers for everyone replying and helping.
 
So - ive done a complete uninstall of my old drivers - including for some reason a left over driver detection which was present in device manager. Reinstalled 8.9 driver only and disabled Aero.

It doesnt seem to crash and reboot as often now but is instead getting the "atikmdag error but has recovered" error with it kicking me back onto desktop on about every other run of crysis gpu_benchmark on very high. Seems like my problem was a harsh version of this error that was just crashing the system instead of recovering.

Try a few more atikmdag error fixes tonight see if I can make it less frequent.
 
So this is where I am at...

The system is at stock speeds. All settings are on "auto" detect in BIOS. Ive changed them to the manufactures settings were they do not match in BIOS without changing the error crash. Ive updated the motherboard bios (1004 to 1304) which didnt change anything. Increased NB and memory voltages seperately and together - doesnt help.

All drivers are up-to-date including PCIE bus drivers. Tried all versions of ati drivers (8.5 to 8.9 and the new 8.10betas). Tried the drivers with and without CCC, with Rivatuner and with ATT. Tried disabling Aero, tried changing boot setting for memory and cpu with detect_HAL ticked and unticked in msconfig. Changed fan speeds, changed clock speeds on the gfx card including slight perminant o/c and u/c to take off PP profile switching. Taken off Catalyst AI and changed it to Advanced. Tried everything! Tried reinstalling vista multiple times. Vista has all available updates.

Somethings work in combination to lessen the problem and reduces crashes but they still happen frequently.

The only thing that takes away the problem is removal of one ram stick - which isnt a permanent solution.

Dont know what to do now....
 
Why would the system be absolutely stable on memtest86 if the RAM was faulty? seems to me like the 4GB of ram is casuing the system to become unstable but why!?

Anybody who lives in liverpool with a similar spec want to do some component swapping to test my system?? Ill be more than greatful.
 
Eggman said:
Why would the system be absolutely stable on memtest86 if the RAM was faulty? seems to me like the 4GB of ram is casuing the system to become unstable but why!?

Anybody who lives in liverpool with a similar spec want to do some component swapping to test my system?? Ill be more than greatful.
Click to expand...

If you run memtest from windows then you can not test all of it.
You need to have a bootable mem test CD/DVD from an ISO which i use.
 
I just noticed something (Sorry if it's been noted upon, there is a LOT of text in this thread)... You're running 32bit Vista right? So that 4870X2 is taking up half of your address space? One of your ram sticks won't even be seeing any action at all..

Could you perhaps try and get hold of a 64bit copy and see if that solves the problem?
 
Yeh, my 64bit vista disk is sitting in my mates house at the moment - but hes out - ill let you know if the fresh install with a 64bit OS fixes the error when i manage to get the disk off him!!...
 
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