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atikmdag - At a complete loss as to what to do.

I used to have the exact same bug you have, except that it was the nVidia equivalent. I couldn't work out what was causing it so had to do a complete rebuild in the end and now all is well.
 
I iterate again it can be down to bad voltage settings on overclocks (CPU was the one for me)

I ran an experiment again to prove this as manufacturer bashing is getting boring. I lowered my VCORE down significantly...few mins later, 3 or 4 stopped responding errors, then blue screen.

The one thing that perplexed me was that it didnt happen with the 8800GTS, but this might be down to power (i.e. higher power draw of 2x4850s/X2 contributes to a high Vcore droop).

Someone should start a myths thread that addresses all the tripe that comes out about ATi
 
It happily let me play GTA IV for about 1/2 hour before I had to go to work this morning, so maybe its happy now with the RAM volts up, a slight underclock of the Graphics Card memory, and removal of that powerplay rubbish.

Probably not work when I get home again, knowing my luck.

Seeing as it seems to be partly the fault of the GPU memory not being stable at default load speeds, does anyone happen to know how you go about an RMA process with PowerColor in the UK? Can't find the option on their site.

Again, thanks for all the input everyone provided! :)
 
would put my bottom dollar on it having nothing to do with the card ;)

with the right voltages on the nb and memory start turning powerplay back on and clock the card back up, see if you can narrow down exactly where the trouble lies.
 
would put my bottom dollar on it having nothing to do with the card ;)

with the right voltages on the nb and memory start turning powerplay back on and clock the card back up, see if you can narrow down exactly where the trouble lies.

What option is the northbridge voltage though, there's 4 to choose from. Which one needs increased, and by how much in your estimation?

MCH Core
MCH Reference
MCH/DRAM Reference
MCH/IO

not quite sure how overvolting the NB will solve having to underclock the 4850's memory by 20Mhz, sound suspiciously like a dodgy card to me, but I'll give it a blast, wont harm.
 
Everything is interconnected my good friend... Unstable memory will inevitably result in an unstable system, whether that be graphics related or otherwise.

what board and memory do you have? Just been having a read and by all accounts some of the gygabyte boards have similar threads out there, some of them with fairly conclusive fixes.

edit : my board is far more simple and just has one voltage for the NB it will generally be the one with the highest volatage around 1.4. I had to bump mine up to 1.6 just to get system stability (without overclocking)

BTW Max on my board is 1.75.
 
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Im probably far from the right person to be giving advice on a board that I dont own, if i search your board and 8gb over 4 sticks of memory you see quite a few people saying that they had to raise MCH core to 1.3.

some are complaining about vpu recovers, some complaining about lockups etc, at the end of the day give it a go... If it doesn't work you can rule it out. Once/if its stable though, its always best to start enabling things that you have turned off in order to narrow down where the problem came from.

Ill keep an eye on the thread, hope all goes well mate.
 
why do these things always have to be so difficult? I wonder if anybody else with this same board has similar issues? could you try running with 4gb? If stability returns you can almost be sure that its a voltage issue.

Edit : when i say stability I mean gfx stability :)
 
why do these things always have to be so difficult? I wonder if anybody else with this same board has similar issues? could you try running with 4gb? If stability returns you can almost be sure that its a voltage issue.

Edit : when i say stability I mean gfx stability :)

Tried with 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB. Doesn't seem to make any difference.
 
Yeah, I've had it in 3 other PC's recently, on one it does the same as my machine, on the two others its fine. :confused:

What are the specs of those machines? There has to be something different between the ones which it works in and the one that it doesn't, something has to be making it all go belly up.
 
What are the specs of those machines? There has to be something different between the ones which it works in and the one that it doesn't, something has to be making it all go belly up.

Umm...off the top of my head, as they're machines at work and been there for a 12-18 months now:

2 are identical and I think they're:

AMD X2 Dual Core 5600
Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 (maybe, definitely a Gigabyte board)
2GB GEiL RAM (no idea on type)

and the other is a *competitor* build machine:

Intel Core 2 Duo E5300
Motherboard, cant remember, its Abit, thats all I know off the top of my head.
4GB Crucial RAM I believe.

It works in the competitor built machine, and one of the two identical machines, but not the other. :confused:

Its not working again in my own machine this morning again, at all. Throws up an atikmdag error right as Windows starts up. Hasn't done that before. :(

Don't suppose some passing shop staff would like to say "if you return it to us, you can part exchange it against a different graphics card"?
 
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It's odd that it works in one of the identical machines, but not the other :confused:

Assuming that the parts inside both of those machines are the same, it must mean that it's either the software on those machines making the difference, or you must have a card that is really temperamental?
 
Is it possible that there's a piece of software or possibly a windows update patch on one machine but not the other? Being it works on one machine but not the other and they're, for all intents and purposes identical, you're probably in a very good position to get to the bottom of the issue.
 
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