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HIS6950: Random Black Screening. Bad card or PSU?

Blue Army

Blue Army

Blue Army

Associate
Joined
30 Dec 2010
Posts
21
Greetings Gurus,

Well I got a new card for Christmas and thats when all the trouble started :D

I have an E6600 on a EP45-DS3 with 4GB OCZ Reaper 1150 RAM that has been rock solid for the past 2 years with both an X1950 and a HD4870.

I finally put in my new HIS HD6950 and am getting random black screen crashes with the fans blowing up to full speed and needing a hard reset.

This happens in 1 app (Cakewalk Sonar) and some games (ME2, CoD:MW2, F12010). Does not happen in over 1 hour of Furmark and has only happened once in 3DMark11. Has not yet happened in Civ V.

It happens usually at the end of the benchmark or at the end of a race or when something in a game level trips the next part of the game.

I have tried to fix this by:

1) MOBO Flash to f10 bios as mine was a little older.
2) New Drivers obviously 10:12c hotfix.
3) Proved it to happen regardless of running cpu at stock or at my 18 month long 24/7 overclock.
4) Reseated card
5) Updated Direct X

Windows 7 64 is 24/7 stable with the 6950 fitted. Machine has has been up all night at 3.1ghz. I'm typing this up on said machine now!

I just can't game and am running out of holiday!!

My PSU is 750w (42A on 12V) rated, it's not branded but has never been a problem before. I have just replaced my Arctic Freezer Pro and have plenty of case fans and have tried to up the fan speed on the card as well with no reduction in crashes.

As a lifelong Oc'er and enthusiast I'm stumped here. Can spend no more money till I get a good consensus of opinion and the HD4870 is now sitting in the boy's PC much to his delight!

Is it a bad card or PSU do you think? If so is the RMA with OC easy?

EDIT: Just to say again, this machine has been 24/7/12 x 2, it never gets switched off nor has ever played up till now.

Cheers in advance!
 
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Does the monitor turn off to give you a black screen or does the monitor display a black screen?

I used to get random GSOD's (Grey screen of death) on my 5850 at the most random times and it resulted in 100% fan speed and no response from the computer, but the monitor was displaying a grey screen rather than it turning the monitor off. The fix came from drivers eventually and haven't had a problem in ages now.
 
Rusty_Noob said:
Does the monitor turn off to give you a black screen or does the monitor display a black screen?

I used to get random GSOD's (Grey screen of death) on my 5850 at the most random times and it resulted in 100% fan speed and no response from the computer, but the monitor was displaying a grey screen rather than it turning the monitor off. The fix came from drivers eventually and haven't had a problem in ages now.
Click to expand...

Well I get both. I get a "No Input" message from the monitor sometimes with the game still running in the background with sound followed by crash or I get a straight crash with full fans.

It's proper confusing!
 
This looks like a CPU/MOBO/MEMORY problem to me.
Video card should not crash in CAkewalk sonar.
It happens at the "end of the benchmark and end of the race" suggesting it happens when the CPU and Memory is trying to load something?

Run this program for 1-2hrs at least and see what comes up.

http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=4363&file=5&evp=ffc2a25c3011b055346f699a0c02444e

>prime 95
>Enable in advance ( round off checking and SUM(INPUTS) error checking )
>torture test.
>custom
>memory to use (increase memory to max available for your system)
>run for 1hr-2hrs.

Also try Linx its an intel stress test designed to test your cpu/mobo/mem
http://www.youwatched.com/datajay/linx(0.64).7z

Same thing increase the max memory to available mem for comp, this will increase the size of the problem.
> Run for about 30-1hr.

If both programs show stability with no errors. You can narrow it down to the GPU.
 
Skyrocket said:
This looks like a CPU/MOBO/MEMORY problem to me.
Video card should not crash in CAkewalk sonar.
It happens at the "end of the benchmark and end of the race" suggesting it happens when the CPU and Memory is trying to load something?

Run this program for 1-2hrs at least and see what comes up.

http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=4363&file=5&evp=ffc2a25c3011b055346f699a0c02444e

>prime 95
>Enable in advance ( round off checking and SUM(INPUTS) error checking )
>torture test.
>custom
>memory to use (increase memory to max available for your system)
>run for 1hr-2hrs.

Also try Linx its an intel stress test designed to test your cpu/mobo/mem
http://www.youwatched.com/datajay/linx(0.64).7z

Same thing increase the max memory to available mem for comp, this will increase the size of the problem.
> Run for about 30-1hr.

If both programs show stability with no errors. You can narrow it down to the GPU.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Ran both at full stress as instructed. Both completed without errors. Linx finished in 49 mins.

I ran prime for 30 mins, In my experience that dies pretty quick when there is a problem. No errors.

Oh and as a bonus this was at higher CPU clocks than my previous :D

I have not OC'd the 6950 yet. It isn't stable at stock!

Please keep the ideas coming guys!!

A phone call to Overclockers next??
 
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If the 6950 will not fit in your lads machine then is there any chance you could trake his motherboard out and fire it up that way?. I know it's a lot of hassle but at least you'll find out if it's the card as you don't want to RMA it for OCuK to tell you it's all working well down their end and then it costs you shipping.
 
Update: Have performed complete driver sweep and reinstall of Catalyst.

Have set card fan to 50% manually in Overdrive. When starting game or benchmark can hear fan slowing enough for its audible hum to change then speed up again on game or benchmark exit.

Would this not indicate me being near maximum power draw?

Have just completed 3 x F12010 Benchmarks, 1 x Furmark Run, 2 x 3DMark11 and 10 mins of ME2 with no crashes....
 
Worth upping the PCI-e frequency from 100 to something like 103-105 mhz. Although it's a different card I recently solved random black screening with my GTX 470 by doing this and it's been rock solid for a few weeks now.
 
marktime said:
Worth upping the PCI-e frequency from 100 to something like 103-105 mhz. Although it's a different card I recently solved random black screening with my GTX 470 by doing this and it's been rock solid for a few weeks now.
Click to expand...

OK Have set PCI-e frequency from Auto to 100 for now, perhaps the bios wasn't giving 100.
 
This is looking like a power issue. Swapped PSU for my lad's which had 1x6 and 1x8 pcie lines and have been blasting round Melbourne in F1 and replays for 20 mins followed by 30 minutes of ME2 and 15 mins of Sonar without issue.

I think this is the problem. Ive also added +10 in Power in Overdrive in case there was an issue there

Glad my old supply will run his 4870 without issue till payday!

Still cant work out why I'm getting the "Out of Range" error in 3dMark11. I only have the basic version which runs at some silly small resolution, but half-way through benching it's as though the monitor has got an instruction to run the test outside the maximum resolution of my monitor.

Really odd that??

Thanks to you all for your help so far....Appreciated!
 
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